Students of Caribbean studies in North American universities will welcome this four-volume compilation of interdisciplinary readings on the West Indies. Excellent collections that have been published and used in the West Indies, such as Trevor Munroe and Rupert Lewis (eds.), Readings in Government and Politics of the West Indies (1971), and Norman Girvan and Owen Jefferson (eds.), Readings in the Political Economy of the Caribbean (1971), are available only in very limited editions.
Teachers who utilize collections of readings often favor the omission of some items and the addition of others. Alert to this circumstance, Comitas and Lowenthal have made a gracious effort to embrace the fields of history, geography, anthropology, sociology, economics, politics, and the arts, in order to present a broad sketch of all aspects of West Indian culture and society. Noteworthy features include the presentation of material on political economy, the working classes, family life, the character of groups that dominate the economic life of the region, and an occasional polemic.
Most of the essays deal with the Commonwealth Caribbean (primarily Trinidad and Jamaica), very few with Haiti and the French and Dutch colonies, and none with the Spanish-speaking nations. While it may be true, as the editors contend, that the Commonwealth Caribbean has attracted the majority of recent scholarly attention, it is unfortunate that some of the vast literature that exists on Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic was not included. If revised editions of these volumes are contemplated, the editors should correct this oversight.
The origins of the selections also deserve some comment. Of the 72 items, 45 are contributed by West Indians (mostly Trinidadians and Jamaicans) and 27 by non-West Indians (mostly North American and British). This is a decent start but, given the significant amount of academic production from the various campuses of the University of the West Indies and from the Caribbean’s intelligensia, future collections of this sort may be enhanced by relying even more on Caribbean sources and less on the widely published and orthodox metropolitan scholarship that has dominated Caribbean studies so far.
Overall, these four readers are very versatile and useful tools for courses in Caribbean studies. Clearly, no other collection includes quite the range and variety of material presented by Comitas and Lowenthal.
