Kamau Brathwaite

This epic trilogy traces the migrations of African peoples in and from the African continent, through the sufferings of the Middle Passage and slavery, and dramatizes 20th-century journeys to the UK, France and the US in search of economic and psychic survival. The Arrivants exemplified Brathwaite’s ambition to create a distinctively Caribbean form of poetry, which would celebrate Caribbean voices and language, as well as African and Caribbean rhythms evoking Ghanaian talking drums, calypso, reggae, jazz and blues

A sophisticated tough intelligence… His technique dazzles, and through the handling of rhythm and image he makes the world his own

His dazzling, inventive language, his tragic yet unquenchable vision, make Kamau Brathwaite one of the most compelling of late twentieth century poets

Kamau Brathwaite is a connecting spirit. He explores the African presence in Africa, the Caribbean, and the world, not in its staticness but in its movement, in its changingness, in its interactions

Brathwaite showed me a new, richer path to self-respect, aiding me in acknowledging the sea-crossing language that ties Africa to the Caribbean shores I grew up on, and, through this, he helped me remember how I love my old home when I needed to rediscover that love the most

A New World Trilogy

Containing Kamau Brathwaite’s first three poetry collections – Rights of Passage (1967), Masks (1968) and Islands (1969) – The Arrivants is the visionary book that transformed the direction of Caribbean literature for decades to come. 
 
Exploring his homeland – its natural beauty, its violent history, and the technologies of survival that sustain its people – Brathwaite takes us on an odyssey of self-discovery as he wrestles with the complex cultural inheritance of the Caribbean and the existential quest for being in the African diaspora. During the era of global postcolonial independence movements, The Arrivants pioneered a distinctly Caribbean poetic expression, one that captured the rhythms of speech and everyday experiences of people on the islands and beyond. 
 
Through the collisions of regional dialect, music, historical flashbacks, and excursions throughout Africa and the Americas, Brathwaite restores an African subjectivity and spirituality to Caribbean life and bridges the psychic rupture of the middle passage. Rich, imaginative, bold, The Arrivants is a vigorous and unforgettable volume that charts the emergence of one of the most unique poets of the twentieth century.

The Arrivants

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Kamau Brathwaite

Praise for The Arrivants

This epic trilogy traces the migrations of African peoples in and from the African continent, through the sufferings of the Middle Passage and slavery, and dramatizes 20th-century journeys to the UK, France a ...

A sophisticated tough intelligence… His technique dazzles, and through the handling of rhythm and image he makes the world his own

Praise for Kamau Brathwaite

This epic trilogy traces the migrations of African peoples in and from the African continent, through the sufferings of the Middle Passage and slavery, and dramatizes 20th-century journeys to the UK, France a ...

A sophisticated tough intelligence… His technique dazzles, and through the handling of rhythm and image he makes the world his own

Praise for Kamau Brathwaite

This epic trilogy traces the migrations of African peoples in and from the African continent, through the sufferings of the Middle Passage and slavery, and dramatizes 20th-century journeys to the UK, France a ...

A sophisticated tough intelligence… His technique dazzles, and through the handling of rhythm and image he makes the world his own

Praise for Kamau Brathwaite

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