The Journal of Caribbean Studies is the main publication of the Association of Caribbean Studies, founded in 1979 by O. R. Dathorne, who edited it from its first number in 1980. Dathorne (1934–2007) was a Guyanese novelist, poet and critic whose career ran through West Africa before it reached the Caribbean diaspora in North America: unable to find a university post in England after completing his doctorate, he was hired at the University of Ibàdàn, later taught at Port Harcourt and in Sierra Leone, worked for UNESCO, and wrote The Black Mind: A History of African Literature (1974) before founding the Association.
That double life shows on the masthead. Ulli Beier — founder of Black Orpheus and of the Mbari Club at Ibàdàn, both held elsewhere in this Library — sits among the journal's editorial consultants alongside Walter Allen and René Depestre, with Cheddi Jagan added from 1985. The advisory board gathers Miguel Barnet, E. R. Braithwaite, Jan Carew, Austin Clarke, Nancy Morejón, Orlando Patterson, Andrew Salkey, Sam Selvon and Ivan Van Sertima, and the honorary committee runs from Aimé Césaire in Martinique to Jorge Amado in Brazil.
The journal was multidisciplinary by design, inviting work on anthropology, economics, education, folk culture, geography, history, creole and pidgin languages, linguistics, literature, music, politics, psychology, religion and sociology, in English, French or Spanish. It was published from Coral Gables, Florida, while Dathorne directed Caribbean, African and African-American studies at the University of Miami; by the 1988 number it had moved with him to Lexington and was being published for the Association by the University Press of Kentucky.
The OlongoAfrica Library holds three issues — Vol. 4 No. 1, Vol. 5 Nos. 1 and 2, and Vol. 6 No. 2 — together with Caribbean Aspirations & Achievements, the abstracts booklet from the Association's seventh annual conference in 1985, also edited by Dathorne.
