A feminist retelling like no other: the story of Malcom X's Mother

The mother of the African American revolutionary, Malcolm X, was a Grenadian woman born at the turn of the 20th century in a rural community in a colonial society where access to education had only just begun for the children of working people and the power of white plantation owners still had few limits.

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 period of 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. The author of three novels, a collection of short stories and three collections of poetry, she has recently retired from teaching Caribbean Literature at the University of Maryland.