The Arrivants

This epic trilogy traces the migrations of African peoples in and from the African continent, through the sufferings of the Middle Passage and slavery, and dramatizes 20th-century journeys to the UK, France and the US in search of economic and psychic survival. The Arrivants exemplified Brathwaite’s ambition to create a distinctively Caribbean form of poetry, which would celebrate Caribbean voices and language, as well as African and Caribbean rhythms evoking Ghanaian talking drums, calypso, reggae, jazz and blues -- Lyn Innes * Guardian *
A sophisticated tough intelligence… His technique dazzles, and through the handling of rhythm and image he makes the world his own * Sunday Times *
Praise for Kamau Brathwaite * - *
His dazzling, inventive language, his tragic yet unquenchable vision, make Kamau Brathwaite one of the most compelling of late twentieth century poets -- Adrienne Rich
Kamau Brathwaite is a connecting spirit. He explores the African presence in Africa, the Caribbean, and the world, not in its staticness but in its movement, in its changingness, in its interactions -- Ngugi wa Thiong'o
No other writer of that remarkable generation was more transparent to the inner process of decolonization; and no other writer among his peers was as committed to making literature align down to its very bones, down to its typefaces and orthographies, with the task of forging a new consciousness... Those of us who share that history, whether East Asian, South Asian, Middle Eastern, African, Caribbean, American, are enormously indebted to him for the clear and steady way he confronted and clarified our understanding of ourselves -- Vijay Seshadri * The Paris Review *
Brathwaite showed me a new, richer path to self-respect, aiding me in acknowledging the sea-crossing language that ties Africa to the Caribbean shores I grew up on, and, through this, he helped me remember how I love my old home when I needed to rediscover that love the most -- Gabrielle Bellot * The New York Review of Books *