The Point is to Change the World: Selected Writings of Andaiye

The Guyanese radical activist Andaiye (1942–2019) was one of the most important public intellectuals in the Caribbean, whose work on behalf of working people, in the cause of women, and with international solidarity movements is known both regionally and globally. This collection of essays, The Point is to Change the World, was edited by Guyanese sociologist Alissa Trotz, and completed weeks before Andaiye’s death. It is an essential guide to the collapse of the dream of social transformation of the Caribbean Left, seen through the eyes of an uncompromising radical willing to swim against the tide of neoliberal predation in contemporary Caribbean society. I was privileged enough to introduce Andaiye as the keynote speaker at the Fourth Pat Emmanuel Distinguished lecture at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus in November 2009. As I sought to contextualize the importance of her work for the audience, Andaiye let out an amused sardonic chuckle—alerting me that my characterization of her as one of the leading Caribbean radical intellectuals of her generation meant little to her, and more to her speaker. This typical candor, coupled with her legendary impatience for foolishness, made Andaiye for almost half a century one of the quintessential voices of the Caribbean left. The value of this book lies in its presentation of a radical’s journey through a moment of revolutionary striving in the 1970s, with a resurgent social movement— Caribbean feminism—that she would do so much to forge, and onwards with a flexible grounded intelligence towards selfdetermination for the working people of Guyana, her home, the Caribbean, and the world. The collection is divided into four parts, and 27 different articles, with forewords by Clem Seecharan, Robin D.G. Kelley, and Honor-Ford Smith with an editorial introduction by Alissa Trotz and afterword by Anthony Bogues. The four sections represent overlapping areas of Andaiye’s engagement in the world—the first a record of her organizing in the region; the second her contribution to the struggle for unwaged, caring work. In both we see Andaiye’s flexible radical intelligence, always preoccupied with the fate of the working people of the Caribbean. The changing socioeconomic condition of the Caribbean region from the revolutionary struggle of the 1970s against postcolonial elite domination, through the acceptance of structural adjustment by its state managers in the 1980s, and the Caribbean’s contemporary plight, intensified Andaiye’s preexisting activism in socialist and feminist groups, from the Working People’s Alliance (WPA) to Caribbean Feminist Research in Action (CAFRA) and Red Thread. The focus of Andaiye’s work in feminist groups moved towards the politics of