C. L. R. James Broke Through the World’s Boundaries
C. L. R. James spent his life crossing the boundary lines of race and class, from the colonial Caribbean to Britain and the United States. The world is finally starting to catch up with his pioneering works of Marxist history.
C. L. R. James in 1938. (Wikimedia Commons)
We are now a third of a century or so since the passing of C. L. R. James (1901–89), and just as long since the appearance of the “authorized” biography, hastily prepared to be published in his lifetime. In the decades since, many volumes and many, many more scholarly essays and contemplative commentaries on various aspects of his life and work, have continued to appear.
It is no exaggeration to say that John L. Williams’s book C. L. R. James: A Life Beyond the Boundaries is a landmark. From now on, everyone interested in James, his ideas, and his activities will need to start here.
Reaching Over the Divides
A talented journalist and nonprofessorial scholar, Williams makes only one mistake of note. On the very first page, he insists that the aged James, arriving back in London in the early 1980s, was already “yesterday’s man,” forgotten for decades and rediscovered only as the end of his life approached.
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