Post-colonial Trinidad

""This work is truly unique, both in terms of its focus and its location at the very beginnings of a post-colonial Caribbean society. Although the journal was created almost fifty years ago, and much has changed, the central issues continue to inform theory and practical politics. The journal itself is well written and lively, and full of rich ethnographic detail."--B.W. Higman, Australian National University" "Colin and Gillian Clarke have created a journal that provides an ethnographic record of the East Indians and Creoles of San Fernando---and the entire sugar belt south of the town known as Naparima. They record socio-political relations during the second year of Trinidad's independence (1964), and provide first-hand evidence for the workings of a complex, plural society in which race, religion, and politics had become, and have remained, deeply intertwined. Entries occur whenever there is evidence of social scientific importance to the project, and these range from descriptions of weddings and pujas (prayer ceremonies devoted to a Hindu deity) to interviews with religious leaders, politicians, and members of the south Trinidad elite."--Jacket.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.