Red Emma’s

In 1492, Christopher Columbus arrived on the Caribbean Island of Guanahaní to find an Edenic scene that was soon mythologized. But behind the myth of paradise, the Caribbean and its people would come to pay the price of relentless Western exploitation and abuse. In Dark Laboratory, Dr. Tao Leigh Goffe embarks on a historical journey to chart the forces that have shaped these islands: the legacy of slavery, indentured labor, and the forced toil of Chinese and enslaved Black people who mined the islands’ bounty—including guano, which, at the time, was more valuable than gold—for the benefit of European powers and at the expense of the islands’ sacred ecologies.

Braiding together family history, cultural reportage, and social studies, Goffe radically transforms how we conceive of Blackness, the natural world, colonialism, and the climate crisis; and, in doing so, she deftly dismantles the many layers of entrenched imperialist thinking that shroud our established understanding of the human and environmental conditions to reveal the cause and effect of a global catastrophe. _Dark Laboratory _forces a reckoning with the received forms of knowledge that have led us astray.

Through the lens of the Caribbean, both guide and warning of the man-made disasters that continue to plague our world, Goffe closely situates the origins of racism and climate catastrophe within a colonial context. And in redressing these twin apocalypses, Dark Laboratory becomes a record of the violence that continues to shape the Caribbean today. But it is also a declaration of hope, offering solutions toward a better future based on knowledge gleaned from island ecosystems, and an impassioned, urgent testament to the human capacity for change and renewal.

“Goffe’s ear is tuned to songs of resistance, to what it looks like to make life amid (and after) colonial subjugation…noble and necessary.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Dark Laboratory is stunning, brilliant and transformative. With a vast archive and a mighty pen, Tao Leigh Goffe tells the story of modernity and its discontents through the land, legacy, and people of the Caribbean. Upon reading this book, you will have a new understanding of the world.” —Imani Perry, National Book Award-winning author of South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation

Tao Leigh Goffe is a London-born, Black British award-winning writer, theorist, and interdisciplinary artist who grew up between the UK and New York. Her research explores Black diasporic intellectual histories, political, and ecological life. She studied English literature at Princeton University before pursuing a PhD at Yale University. She lives and works in Manhattan where she is currently an Associate Professor at Hunter College, CUNY. Dr. Goffe has held academic positions and fellowships at Leiden University in the Netherlands and Princeton University in New Jersey.

Robbie Shilliam, Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University, is a scholar of postcolonial politics and racial politics in the field of International Relations. He is co-editor of the Manchester University Press book series, Postcolonial International Studies. Robbie is a long-standing active member of the Global Development section of the International Studies Association, and has served as the association's Vice President. His next book, _Move Outta Babylon: Rastafari Reason and Political Economy, _will be published with Penguin Books.