Ocean Stirrings: History, the Sea, and Creative Murmurings in the story of Louise Little, Mother of Malcolm X

Co-organised by the Centre for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS) and Peepal Tree Press.

This lecture will be delivered by author and researcher Professor Merle Collins. After the talk, Merle will be joined by poet and scholar Professor Stewart Brown for a dialogue about books, writing, research and history. The speakers will reflect on the connections between research and creative practice and strategies for disrupting dominant historical narratives. This event marks the publication of Collins’ new book Ocean Stirrings and Black History Month. Merle will introduce and read from Ocean Stirrings, a novel written in tribute to Louise Langdon Little, the Grenadian mother of Malcolm X and his seven siblings. In Ocean Stirrings, Merle Collins has created a moving and deeply feminist novel that not only creates a memorable individual life but also has much to say about the passage from colonialism towards independence. 

Merle Collins was born in Aruba to Grenadian parents who returned to Grenada soon after her birth. During the Grenada Revolution, she served as a coordinator for research on Latin America and the Caribbean for the Government of Grenada. She left Grenada in 1983. She is the author of three novels: Ocean Stirrings (shortlisted for the Orwell Prize, and Bocas Award for Caribbean Fiction), Angel and The Colour of Forgetting, a collection of short stories: The Ladies are Upstairs, and three critically acclaimed collections of poetry. She has recently retired from teaching Caribbean Literature at the University of Maryland.

Stewart Brown is the editor of The Heinemann Book of Caribbean Poetry, and The Oxford Book of Caribbean Short Stories, as well as critical studies of the great West Indian poets Derek Walcott, Kamau Brathwaite and Martin Carter. A poet himself, he has published four distinguished collections of poems, most recently Elsewhere: new and selected poems. He is now retired from the University of Birmingham, where he was Reader in Caribbean Literature, and for many years the Director of the Centre of West African Studies.