Quote by George Lamming: “The past is not behind us, it's alive in us.”

This quote powerfully states that history is not a finished chapter but an ongoing force within individuals and societies. It emphasizes how past experiences, traumas, and cultural heritage continuously shape our present identities, actions, and perspectives, residing deeply within our very being.

As Caribbean nations solidified their independence, Lamming's work continued to explore how the legacies of slavery and colonialism were internalized and manifested in the lives and psyche of Caribbean people.

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.