Familiar Stranger: A Life between Two Islands

Description

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.

Stuart Hall was born in Kingston, Jamaica and educated at Oxford University. A pioneering cultural theorist, campaigner, and founding editor of the New Left Review, Hall was one of the most influential and adventurous thinkers of the last half century. He was Director of the University of Birmingham's Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies from 1972, and from 1979 was Professor of Sociology at the Open University. His published work includes The Popular Arts (1964), the co-authored volume Policing the Crisis (1978), The Hard Road to Renewal- Thatcherism and the Crisis of the Left (1988), and, with Sarat Maharaj, Modernity and Difference (2001).

Much more than a memoir, Familiar Stranger is a fascinating insight into how a life shapes a brilliant mind -- Andrea Levy This is a miracle of a book -- George Lamming Compelling. Stuart Hall's story is the story of an age. He was a pioneer in the struggle for racial, cultural, and political liberation. He has transformed the way we think -- Owen Jones Vivid... a subtle and subversive memoir of the end of Empire -- Colin Grant * Guardian *