Christine Okoth

Seeing the Caribbean through Trinidad, as Hurvin Anderson does, is a different proposition from looking at it via Jamaica, or that other island, Britain. With the discovery of oil in the 19th century, Trinidad and Tobago became both plantation society and petro-state. The contradictions inherent in this rural-industrial hybrid have proved fertile ground for Anderson, who often dares his subjects to retreat from view.

As one half of the independent press Allison & Busby, Margaret Busby published writers including Buchi Emecheta, Roy Heath and John Edgar Wideman, helping books to move across national borders. In Part of the Story, a collection of her writings from the 1960s onwards, the routes by which Black culture reaches its audience are rarely straightforward.