They came, they saw, they felt conquered. This lecture will reflect on the aesthetics of Caribbean emigrant authors.

They came, they saw, they felt conquered. Turning to the later works of Samuel Selvon and George Lamming, and the writing of Andrew Salkey, Edward Kamau Brathwaite, and Linton Kwesi Johnson, this lecture will reflect on the aesthetics of Caribbean emigrant authors. Considering how the form of their works reflected a changing Britain in the 1960s-80s, it will explore how their motifs, and themes of fragmentation and rupture, signal the emergence of a new Black British consciousness.

This lecture is by Malachi McIntosh, an Associate Professor of World Literatures in English at the University of Oxford and the Barbara Pym Tutorial Fellow in English at St. Hilda’s College. He is the author of Emigration and Caribbean Literature (2015) and the editor of Beyond Calypso: Re-Reading Samuel Selvon (2016). He is a 2023 British Library Eccles Fellow and the recipient of a Royal Society of Literature Giles St Aubyn Award (2022).

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