Claudia Jones: Beyond Containment: Autobiographical Reflections, Essays, and Poems

by Carole Boyce Davies (Editor), Claudia Jones

Claudia Jones is one of my personal heroines. I spent my formative political years in Claudia Jones's London stamping ground of Notting Hill -- it was the classic centre of post-war black activism in Britain. Most West Indian immigrants in the 1950s came by boat to Southampton and the train from there took them into Paddington. Hence the large black community in that part of West London. So I know people who had worked with Claudia Jones and spoke of her with awe. She founded two of Black Britain's most important institutions; the first black newspaper, the West Indian Gazette, and she was also one of the founding organizers of the Notting Hill Carnival.

Claudia Jones: Beyond Containment transcends the silencing and erasure historically accorded women of achievement: it makes accessible and brings to wider attention the words of an often overlooked twentieth-century political and cultural activist, who tirelessly campaigned, wrote, spoke out, organized, edited and published autobiographical writings, poetry, essays on subjects close to her political heart -- human rights, peace, struggles related to gender, race and class -- this is a collection that unites the many facets of a woman whose identities as a radical thinker and as a black woman are not in conflict.

--Book Jacket (from WorldCat)

Genres: Feminism, Biography, Politics, Nonfiction, History, Race, Theory

272 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2010

About the author

Carole Boyce Davies is Professor of African–New World Studies and English at Florida International University. She is the author of Black Women, Writing, and Identity: Migrations of the Subject; the editor of the Encyclopedia of the African Diaspora (forthcoming) and Decolonizing the Academy: African Diaspora Studies; and a coeditor of The African Diaspora: African Origins and New World Identities.

Reviews

[silly_ebadu · Rating 4 out of 5]

really enjoyed reading claudia jones’ writing, letters, and poetry. some parts of the afterword felt a bit lofty but still rate this highly.

[catherine ♡ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Once again — I love the concept of what she's saying and I love the theory of the militant Black woman as the leaders in race and sex equality.

There were, however, definitely some that connected to me more and others less, and the nature of reading compilations is that they get a little repetitive.

[Glenn · Rating 2 out of 5]

Claudia Jones was a courageous leader in the Communist Party of the USA, and pioneered the West Indian Gazette and Caribbean Carnival in the UK. Her writing is sharp, and the selection reveals a lot about her interesting life and times (though the introductory pieces by Carole Boyce Davies are a waste of space; revealing little and containing little political awareness).

But attempts (as Davies does somewhat in this selection, and much more in her other book on Jones) to portray her as someone 'Left of Karl Marx' who gave much-needed contributions on race and gender to Marxism, are severely misinformed about the extent to which Marx, Engels, and Lenin (as well as countless other solid Marxists) wrote valuably and accurately about these issues.

What's more, Jones follows the CPUSA (and the rest of Comintern) into a number of errors, particularly on the Black national question and the tactic of the popular front against racism and neo-/colonialism (i.e. as opposed to united working class opposition), though I'm sure she flip-flopped on this issue as often as the rest of them.

But despite all this, we should remember Claudia Jones, her writing, her valuable contributions (particularly to the Afro-Caribbean movement in the UK), and her dedication to the power of the united working class to overcome racism, sexism, and capitalism.

[alexandra ༊*·˚ · Rating 4 out of 5]

have to talk about this in my seminar in less than an hour and i am stressing. claudia jones is a girlboss though and is so real for everything she wrote

[Ella · Rating 4 out of 5]

it’s really positive that the profound part of this book isn’t actually claudia’s writing (we should all be reading communist/anarchist literature by now) but the fact that she was writing it when she did!! an og fr