Trinidad Guardian

James died in London on May 31, 1989 and was buried at Tunapuna Cemetery on June 12 after his body was returned to Trinidad. Walton Look Lai, in C L R James’s Caribbean, records that the Trinidad g...

I remember attending James’s funeral with my father, replete with every religious invocation by pundit, priest, and maulvi. I was open-mouthed at the boldfaced state hypocrisy of the formal political speeches, watching T&T claim a dead man whose politics, atheism, Marxism and criticism had made him unwelcome in Trinidad during his lifetime. My father’s comment that Trinidad claimed him only after Britain and the United States admired his work has stayed with me. It is an old colonial reflex. We love writers celebrated abroad, but often downgrade our own people and our own work. Hopefully, someday that confidence will come when we become the centre of our own world.

that last line like it was written for the misfits! 😀