Ebook: Words Unchained: Language and Revolution in Grenada

The Grenada Revolution, which began on 13 March 1979 and was suppressed by the U.S. invasion of October 1983, proved to be the most sustained anti-imperialist process as yet to have taken place in an English-speaking country, and it made a significant impression on the struggles and hopes of the Caribbean people.

How did the Revolution begin to free the Grenadian people from the colonial complexes and alienation associated with the language they learned from their colonisers? How were the mass organisations of the Revolution and its democratic institutions contributing to a new confidence and articulacy as the people grasped new structures and mechanisms of self-expression and criticism? How were the educational initiatives in the schools and the literacy programme giving the Grenadian people a new sense of the power of knowledge and words?
How was the submerged richness of the Creole language being reclaimed and nourished?

The author worked for two years in Grenada's National In-service Teacher Education Programme and wrote frequently for Grenada's national newspaper, The Free West Indian. In 1972, his book describing the cultural and linguistic imperialism in the English-speaking Caribbean, The Forsaken Lover: White Words and Black People, won the Martin Luther King Award. Words Unchained answers some of the questions raised in that book by pointing to the living revolutionary experience of the people of Grenada as expressed through their spoken and written words.