Description: A biography of radical black reformer, publisher, bookshop owner and Caribbean politician Jessica Huntley (1927-2013).
Brief description: Toyin Falola, Ph.D., is the Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities and University Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Texas at Austin (USA), and most recently the Kluge Chair of the Countries and Culture of the South, the Library of Congress in Washington DC (USA). A global icon in African Studies, Falola has received twenty eight honorary doctorates.
Review Quotes:
"Jessica Huntley's Pan-African Life offers a deeply inspiring exploration of Jessica Huntley's early anti-colonial activism in British Guiana (Guyana), her confrontations with racism after migrating, and her crucial role in radical Black publishing in Britain. Claudia Tomlinson's thorough research makes this book essential for anyone dedicated to understanding the workings of decolonization and women's emancipation, while presenting a story that has not been told before." --Nigel Westmaas, Professor of Africana Studies, Hamilton College, USA
"This powerful and accessible account of Jessica Huntley's life's work tracks her principled commitment to and involvement in anti-colonial, anti-racist and antiimperialist activism in the Caribbean and the UK. It enriches the archive of the Black radical activist tradition, foregrounding the central place of Black women in creating and sustaining movement and organizing - decolonizing infrastructures of transformation - from below." --Alissa Trotz, Professor of Caribbean Studies and Women and Gender Studies, University of Toronto, Canada "In bringing the story of this remarkable woman to life, Claudia [Tomlinson], a London-based associate fellow of the Royal Historical Society, documents in detail the political ferment of post-war Guyana and Britain, separate upheavals created by people's mass refusal to be second-class citizens. Like a lotus flower growing in the mud, Jessica Huntley emerged from both to flourish and bloom." --Islington Tribune