Quote by George Lamming: “The language of the master is a tool. We must re‑tool it.”

This quote addresses the challenge faced by postcolonial societies. It means that while the language of the colonizer can be useful, it must be adapted and reshaped by the colonized people to genuinely express their unique experiences and forge their own identity, rather than simply mimicking the former oppressor.

In the aftermath of independence movements in the Caribbean, intellectuals like Lamming debated how to decolonize not just political systems, but also cultural expressions, particularly language and literature.

Barbadian novelist and essayist who left Barbados for Britain in 1950 and whose debut novel In the Castle of My Skin is a landmark of Caribbean literature. His 1960 critical work The Pleasures of Exile examined Caribbean writers' experience of displacement and the colonial literary inheritance.