Marshall's "Reena" and Other Stories (1983) collects several of the author's short fiction from the 1950s and 1960s, as well her personal comments on each.

Michelle Cliff's No Telephone to Heaven (1996) explores the intermingled histories of Africans and Europeans in the Caribbean. This nonlinear novel focuses on the dual nature of culture, as a uniting and a destructive force.

George Lamming's In the Castle of My Skin, written in the 1950s, recounts growing up in the 1930s in a small Barbados community. G, from a poor, black family, provides an eyewitness account to the social, racial, and political struggles that beset the island.

Nobel Prize-winner Derek Walcott has represented the many faces of the Caribbean—its society, cultural identity, history, and development— through his rich and imagistic poetry. Collected Poems, 1948-1981 (1987) includes some of his best poems and provides a good...