Strictly Facts + Resources
Strictly Facts Reads
Explore our Caribbean Resources section, where you'll discover a rich collection of books and references that delve into the captivating stories, cultures, and histories of the Caribbean. From compelling novels to insightful academic texts, these resources offer a deeper understanding of this enchanting region.
Currently Reading
Smaddification: Dance and Decolonization in Jamaica by Amanda Michelle Reid
This book explores how dance and performance became central to Black self-determination in post-independence Jamaica. Drawing on Rex Nettleford’s concept of “smaddification”—the process of becoming someone through movement, spectacle, and taking up space—Reid examines how artists and thinkers used movement to imagine and enact freedom and positions Jamaican dance as a vital site of decolonization and global Black nationalist aesthetics.
Carnival & Caribbean Festival Culture
“After the Dance: A Walk Through Carnival in Jacmel, Haiti” by Edwidge Danticat
Carnival of Trinidad Edition of the Caribbean Quarterly Journal, 1956
“High Mas: Carnival and the Poetics of Caribbean Culture” by Kevin Adonis Browne
“The Dragon Can’t Dance” by Earl Lovelace
The Maroons
“The Rebel Woman in the British West Indies During Slavery” by Lucille Mathurin Mair
Who Was Dutty Boukman? - Boukman Academy
“The Mother of Us All: A History of Queen Nanny, Leader of the Windward Jamaican Maroons” by Karla Gottlieb
“Maroon Societies: Rebel Slave Communities in the Americas” by Richard Price
“The Maroons of Jamaica 1655-1796: A History of Resistance, Collaboration and Betrayal” by Mavis C. Campbell
“Flight to Freedom: African Runaways and Maroons in the Americas” by Alvin O. Thompson
Caribbean Languages
“Caribbean & African languages” by Morgan Dalphinis
“Exploring the Boundaries of Caribbean Creole Languages” by Hazel Simmons-McDonald
“Language, Culture and Caribbean Identity” by Jeannette Allsopp and John R. Rickford
“Language Issues in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines” by Paula Prescod
“The African Lexis in Jamaican: Its Linguistic and Sociohistorical Significance” by Joseph T. Farquharson
“The Haitian Creole Language: History, Structure, Use, and Education” by Arthur K. Spears and Carole M. Berotte Joseph
Writing Jamaican the Jamaican Way (Raitin Jamiekan Di Jamiekan Wie)
Style & Fashion
“Colonization in Reverse” by Louise Bennett Coverley
“African Lace-bark in the Caribbean: The Construction of Race, Class, and Gender” by Steeve O. Buckridge
“Decolonizing Diasporas: Radical Mappings of Afro-Atlantic Literatures” by Yomaira C Figueroa-Vásquez
“Tropical Aesthetics of Black Modernism (The Visual Arts of Africa and its Diasporas)” by Samantha A. Noël
U.S.V.I.
A History of the Virgin Islands of the United States Paperback by Isaac Dookhan
America's Virgin Islands: A History of Human Rights and Wrongs by William Boyer
Non-Sovereign Futures: French Caribbean Politics in the Wake of Disenchantment by Yarimar Bonilla
Storytelling, Storytellers & Information Systems: with Emphasis on the Virgin Islands Paperback by Cipriani A. Phillip Jr.
East Indian Indentureship
“On Anti-Blackness in the Indo-Caribbean Community” by Cristine Khan
“The Groundings With My Brothers” by Walter Rodney
“Coolie Woman: The Odyssey of Indenture” by Gaiutra Bahadur
“A House for Mr. Biswas” by V.S. Naipaul
“Tales of the Sea” by Gaitura Bahadur
Belize, Panama & Garifuna Culture
“Caribbean Spaces: Escapes from Twilight Zone” by Carole Boyce Davies
“Beka Lamb” by Zee Edgell
“In Times Like These” by Zee Edgell
“A Section for Women: Journalism and Gendered Promises of Anti-Colonial Progress in Interwar Panama” by Kaysha Corinealdi
“Colón Man a Come: Mythographies of Panama Canal Migration” by Rhonda Frederick
“Dying to Better Themselves: West Indians and the Building of the Panama Canal” by Olive Senior
“How the Panama Canal Took a Huge Toll On the Contract Workers Who Built It” by Caroline Lieffers
“Panama in Black: Afro-Caribbean World Making in the Twentieth Century” by Kaysha Corinealdi (Published October 2022)
“The Silver Men: West Indian Labour Migration to Panama, 1850-1914” by Velma Newton
“Tropic Death” by Eric Walrond and Arnold Rampersad