In this classic work published in the heady days of anti-colonial revolution, Groundings with My Brothers follows the global circulation of emancipatory ideas, from the black students of North America to the Rasta counterculture of Jamaica and beyond. The book is striking in its simultaneous ability to survey the wide and heterogeneous international context while remaining anchored in grassroots politics, as Rodney offers us first-hand accounts of mass movement organizing. Having inspired a generation of revolutionaries, this new edition will re-introduce the book to a new political landscape that it helped shape, with reflections from leading scholar-activists.
About the Author
In his short life, the Guyanese intellectual Walter Rodney emerged as one of the leading thinkers and activists of the anticolonial revolution, leading movements in North America, the African continent, and the Caribbean. In each locale, Rodney found himself a lightning rod for working class Black Power. His deportation catalyzed twentieth-century Jamaica’s most significant rebellion, the 1968 Rodney riots, and his scholarship trained a generation how to think politics at an international scale. In 1980, shortly after founding of the Working People’s Alliance in Guyana, the 38-year-old Rodney was assassinated.
What People Are Saying
“If Walter Rodney’s assassins were under the impression that they could arrest the flow of his ideas by destroying his body, they could have not been more wrong … In the context of the new resistance fo global capitalism, his captivating analysis resonates more than ever before.” Angela Davis, author of Women, Race and Class
“The Groundings with My Brothers issues an open call, even today, for the black intellectual to engage in the discourse of black consciousness and black power, and also to actively seek out concrete tactics and strategies which are necessary for our liberation.” Carlos Clarke, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Belize
“Rodney’s perspective is alive, dazzling with the potential of revolution.” Vijay Prashad, author of The Poorer Nations and Director of the Tricontinental Institute for Social Research
“In short order, Groundings became the single most influential Black Power text in the Caribbean as well as the region’s most notable ideological contribution to Black Power globally.” Michael West, Groundings: Development, Pan-Africanism, Critical Theory, Vol. 4, No. 1, 2018