Familiar Stranger

Product Description

Writer, thinker, and one of his age's leading intellectual lights, Stuart Hall lived through an era of seismic change. Growing up in a middle-class family in 1930s Jamaica, still then a British colony, the young Stuart Hall found himself caught between two worlds- the stiflingly respectable middle class in Kingston, who, in their habits and ambitions, measured themselves against the white planter elite; and working-class Jamaica, neglected and grindingly poor, though rich in culture, music and history. But as colonial rule was challenged, things were beginning to change in Kingston and across the world. When, in 1951, a scholarship took him across the Atlantic to Oxford University, Hall gained unexpected access to this other Jamaica. Also making the journey to Britain were young Jamaicans from all walks of life, as well as writers and thinkers from across the Caribbean. Now, Hall faced a new struggle- that of building a home, a life, an identity, in a post-war England so rife with racism that it could barely recognize his humanity. This is the story of Stuart Hall's early life. Told with passion and wisdom, it is a story of how the forces of history shape who we are.Writer, thinker, and one of his age's leading intellectual lights, Stuart Hall lived through an era of seismic change. Growing up in a middle-class family in 1930s Jamaica, still then a British colony, the young Stuart Hall found himself caught between two worlds- the stiflingly respectable middle class in Kingston, who, in their habits and ambitions, measured themselves against the white planter elite; and working-class Jamaica, neglected and grindingly poor, though rich in culture, music and history. But as colonial rule was challenged, things were beginning to change in Kingston and across the world. When, in 1951, a scholarship took him across the Atlantic to Oxford University, Hall gained unexpected access to this other Jamaica. Also making the journey to Britain were young Jamaicans from all walks of life, as well as writers and thinkers from across the Caribbean. Now, Hall faced a new struggle- that of building a home, a life, an identity, in a post-war England so rife with racism that it could barely recognize his humanity. This is the story of Stuart Hall's early life. Told with passion and wisdom, it is a story of how the forces of history shape who we are.
Stuart Hall was born in Kingston, Jamaica and educated at Merton College, Oxford. A pioneering cultural theorist, campaigner, and Founding Editor of the New Left Review, Hall was one of the most influential and adventurous thinkers of the last half century. He was Director of the University of Birmingham's Centre for Cultural Studies from 1968, and from 1979 was Professor of Sociology at the Open University. His published work includes The Popular Arts (1964), the co-authored volume Policing the Crisis(1978), and The Hard Road to Renewal- Thatcherism and the Crisis of the Left (1988).