Introduction: the language continuum; the oral tradition; before emancipation; from emancipation to black liberation; the literary tradition; the 18th and 19th centuries; the 20th century. Note on the text. Part 1 The oral tradition: anonymous - work-songs, dancing songs, Guinea corn, songs, my deery honey, freedom a come oh!, song of the king of the Eboes, Negro song at Cornwall, a Negro song, a popular Negro song, Quaco Sam, Sangaree kill de captain, war down a Monkland, two man a road, Mas' Charley, I have a news, there's a black boy in a ring, you ask me; Oku Onuora - last night, pressure drop, reflection in red; Brian Meeks - Las' rights, the coup-clock clicks; Michael Smith - black bud, I an I alone or Goliath; Valerie Bloom - trench town shock (A Soh Dem Sey), wat a rain. Part 2 The literary tradition: anonymous - from A Pindarique Ode on the Arrival of His Excellency Sir Nicholas Lawes etc.; Francis Williams - from an ode to George Haldane etc.; Nathaniel Weekes - from Barbados, I and II; James Grainger - from The Sugar-Cane, books II and IV; John Singleton - from A General Description of the West Indian Islands, book II, book III; anonymous - from a poetical epistle etc., from Jamaica, a Poem in Three Parts etc.; J.B. Moreton - ballad; James Montgomery - from The West Indies; M.J. Chapman - from Barbadoes, African dirge; William Hosack - from The Isle of Streams, stanzas X - XIV, stanzas XLV - LI; Robert Dunbar - from The Cruise, from The Caraguin; Henry Dalton - the emigrant ship; Horatio Nelson Huggins - from Hiroona - the introduction, canto XII, ????? 23-6; Egbert Martin - trade, national anthem; Thomas MacDermot - from San Gloria (from Columbus's soliloquy), Cuba, a market basket in the car; Donald McDonald - a song of those who died, breakfast in bed (influenza in war-time), a citizen of - the world; Alfred Cruickshank - God or mammon, let us be frank, the convict song; W. Adolphe Roberts - on a monument to Marti, peacocks, the maroon girl, a valediction; Claude McKay - Fetchin water, subway wind, the white house, if we must die, baptism; Jean Rhys - our gardener, Obeah night, Martin Carter - university of hunger, from I Come from the Nigger Yard, till I collect, there is no riot, for a man who walked sideways, the great dark, as new and as old, bent, our number; Evan Jones - genesis, walking with R.B., November, 1956, the song of the banana man, the lament of the banana man; Shake Keane - shaker funeral, coming back, from Volcano Suite: Soufriere (79) I; Daniel Williams - we are the cenotaphs; Andrew Salkey - remember Haiti, Cuba, Vietnam, Soufriere, clearsightedness, postcard from Mexico, 16.X.1973, a song for England, dry river bed; Henry Beissel - pans at carnival; Derek Walcott - a far cry from Africa, from Another Life, chapter 20, forest of Europe, the spoiler's return; Edward Kamau Brathwaite - horse weebles, starvation and blues, schooner, harbour. (Part contents)
