This book analyses cricket’s place in Anglophone Caribbean literature. It examines works by canonical authors – Brathwaite, Lamming, Lovelace, Naipaul, Phillips and Selvon – and by understudied writers – including Agard, Fergus, John, Keens-Douglas, Khan and Markham. It tackles short stories, novels, poetry, drama and film from the Caribbean and its diaspora. Its literary readings are couched in the history of Caribbean cricket and studies by Hilary Beckles and Gordon Rohlehr. C.L.R James’ foundational
Beyond a Boundary provides its theoretical grounding. Literary depictions of iconic West Indies players – including Constantine, Headley, Worrell, Walcott, Sobers, Richards, and Lara – feature throughout. The discussion focuses on masculinity, heroism, father-son dynamics, physical performativity and aesthetic style. Attention is also paid to mother-daughter relations and female engagement with cricket, with examples from Anim-Addo, Breeze, Wynter and others. Cricket holds a prominent place in the history, culture, politics and popular imaginary of the Caribbean. This book demonstrates that it also holds a significant and complicated place in Anglophone Caribbean literature.
Table of Content
1. Introduction: Cricket, Literature and What CLR James Knew.- 2. Remembering Boyhood, Fathering, and the Villages of Cricket.- 3. “You want to deny me style”: Cricketing Representation, Communal Manhood and Nationbased Becoming.- 4.“Give the Ball to the Poet”: Poetic “Rites”, Heroic Action and Sublime Ambitions.- 5. Playing Away, Playing Again.- 6. Conclusion.
About the author
Claire Westall is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of English and Related Literature at the University of York, UK. She publishes regularly on cricket and literature. She is also co-author of The Public on the Public (2015) and co-editor of Cross-Gendered Literary Voices (2012), Literature of an Independent England (2013), and Prison Writing and the Literary World (2020).
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