Familiar Stranger: A Life between Two Islands

The autobiography of a man who lived through the last days of colonialism to become one of the greatest cultural thinkers of his time

Growing up in a middle-class family in 1930s Jamaica, still then a British colony, the young Stuart Hall found himself caught between two worlds- the stiflingly respectable middle class in Kingston, and working-class Jamaica, grindingly poor, though rich in culture, music and history. But as colonial rule was challenged, things were beginning to change. When, in 1951, a scholarship took him across the Atlantic to Oxford University, Hall gained unexpected access to this other Jamaica. Also making the journey to Britain were young Jamaicans from all walks of life, as well as writers and thinkers from across the Caribbean. Now, Hall faced a new struggle- that of building a life in a post-war England so rife with racism that it could barely recognize his humanity.