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The influence of historian, author, and revolutionary CLR James will be featured on Wednesday in a pre-festival event of the 2022 NGC Bocas Lit Fest.
Bocas Lit partners with the UK literary organisation the Royal Society of Literature (RSL) to host the panel discussion The RSL Remembers CLR James. It is part of the RSL’s Vital Discussions series.
“James’s work and thought are as relevant and as radical now as they ever were, perhaps even more so,” says Nicholas Laughlin, festival and programme director of the NGC Bocas Lit Fest.
And that is why the late thinker (born in Trinidad in 1901, died in London in 1989) is being considered by the RSL.
Hosted online by the British Library, starting at 2.30 pm TT time, the panel brings together TT novelist Ayanna Lloyd Banwo, James’s former publisher Margaret Busby, James’s former wife and colleague Selma James, and Nicole-Rachelle Moore, the British Library’s Curator of Caribbean Collections.
The panellists will lead the audience in an exploration of James’s writings through three of his most esteemed works: the novel Minty Alley, the literary study Mariners, Renegades, and Castaways, and The Black Jacobins, James’s classic study of the Haitian Revolution.
The event is free for RSL members and digital events passholders. For further information and to book tickets, non-members can visit rsliterature.org/rsl-event/vital-discussions-rsl-remembers-c-l-r-james/.
The NGC Bocas Lit Fest – Four Days to Change the World, which runs from April 28 to May 1, will also bring focus to James’s life. A new full-length biography, C.L.R. James: A Life Beyond the Boundaries, will be discussed on April 28. Williams — a biographer and novelist from Cardiff, Wales — will be in conversation with Barbadian scholar Aaron Kamugisha.
[caption id="attachment_950105" align="alignnone" width="650"] John L Williams's biography on CLR James. -[/caption]
“I write biographies because people fascinate me,” says Williams. “In particular, I’m interested in people whose lives defy the expectations of their society — mavericks, seers, tricksters.” He describes James as a “thoroughly admirable, brilliant, and inspiring thinker.” Williams, who was influenced by Caribbean culture growing up in Cardiff and London in the 70s and 80s, says that James’s analysis of how cricket and the Caribbean impacted the UK and vice versa made him “rethink” how he saw the world.
From Minty Alley and The Black Jacobins to Beyond a Boundary, across his prolific essays and political activities, James encouraged individual and collective reflection, and promoted independence from boundaries imposed by self and by the legacy of colonialism. His activism against racism and colonialism, and for socialism and Pan-Africanism, secured him a place among the foremost intellectuals of the 20th century and beyond.
“To think seriously about social change and the future of Caribbean societies, we need to draw on all the resources of our past thinkers and doers. James is one of those we’ll still be engaging with for generations to come,” says Laughlin.
This session, from 8-9 pm, like all festival events, is free to all and requires no registration, streaming at bocaslitfest.com and the festival’s YouTube and Facebook platforms.
 
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