BOOK REPORT ON STUART HALL BY ANNIE PAUL 100% correct answer

The book named “Stuart Hall” by Annie Paul was written based on Stuart Hall’s life.
 Annie Paul is an India-born writer and critic who has lived in Jamaica for 20-plus years. She
 is head of the Publications Section at the Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic
 Studies, the University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica. Stuart Hall was a Jamaican-British
 academic, writer and cultural studies pioneer, who was born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1932
 and died in London aged 82 in February 2014. It was about his academic adventure,
 intellectual and political legacy and his life as a son and a friend. He won the “Additional”
 Jamaica Scholarship as well as the “Rhodes Scholarship” to which he left Jamaica and
 attended Merton College at Oxford University in England to study literature, learned about
 culture, pre-colonialism and race. Hall lived in a time were racism and classism was at large,
 due to parents being “mixed race” which means “black” and “white”. As in terms of racism,
 this has been an issue over the centuries because the Europeans who were considered “white”
 were privileged to those who were considered “black” since the Africans worked for
 Europeans in the plantations and were enslaved and punished to obey them. As for culture the
 slaves were not allowed to practice their own religion since it was against the “whites”
 orders. These issues of contributed to how Stuart Hall saw life and how he experienced them,
 these are colonialization (black culture), social stratification and racial discrimination, social
 institutions (in terms of family and colonial education), feminism and culture which will be
 further explained.
 Firstly, in the book the first theme that was portrayed was colonialism. Colonialism is
 a practice of domination, which involves the subjugation of one people to another (Kohn and
 Reddy). This has been occurring in the Caribbean for decades because of the control by
 Europeans. Colonialism is almost the same as imperialism because both were forms of
 conquest that were expected to benefit Europe economically and strategically. This issue
 occurred variously throughout the book. As seen in the book (Paul Ch. 1) where
 
pigmentocracy stating that depending on the colour of your skin that’s who has the authority
 in the society or in the colonies which was generally mostly the “whites”. Hall’s mother,
 Jessie sole purpose was to get her family to follow the traditions and practices of the white
 culture. According to Marx manifesto (Paul Ch. 1) “The arguments had a resonance,
 particularly in societies still under colonial rule where the labouring classes were treated with
 little respect.” The influences of Marx, Lenin and other communist writers made the young
 Stuart Hall a socialist for life because these individuals were trying to fight for the justice of
 the black culture for them to be able to get better working conditions and better wages. Hall
 had exposure to the black culture, which his mother didn’t allow, when he visited his
 grandmother and he heard the singing and clapping from the Pentecostal church next to her
 house to which he felt a “physical closeness” Annie said. Eventually, Hall became disgusted
 by his mother’s obsession to uphold the British culture and in young Hall’s mind (Paul Ch. 1)
 “… and her colonial outlook struck the young boy as being out of step with what was needed
 in a society looking forward to independence from Britain.” It was seen “colonialism”
 throughout the book outlined that colour showed who ruled over who in the Caribbean.
 Secondly, another major theme was that exposed in the book was social stratification
 in terms of social and colour. Social stratification is a term used to describe the way people in
 society are sorted into a hierarchy primarily based on wealth, but also based on other socially
 important characteristics that interact with wealth and income, such as education, gender,
 and race (Cole, “The Way People Are Ranked and Ordered in Society”). In history, this has
 always been an issue because again as seen before colour matters to know where individuals
 stand in a society. As observed in (Paul Ch. 1) Hall’s parents, Herman and Jessie had different
 social classes, his mother “Jessie Hopwood came from a well-established Port Antonio family
 endowed with fair complexion and social capital if not actual wealth.” Whereas his father,
 Herman Hall originated from (Paul Ch. 1) “… lower-middle-class family, from rural Jamaica,
 was not as favourably equipped either with fair skin or social standing.” Also, Hall learned
 the fact that his family were slave-holders and anti-abolitionist which made him resent his
 mother and this knowledge conflicted him to whether or not he is accepted by the “whites”
 but encouraged him to voice his opinion on slavery. Likewise, in the book where Hall’s
 mother prohibited the relationship between Patricia (his older sister) and her boyfriend (a
 medical student from Barbados) because of his skin colour being black and Jessie was against
 it because her efforts of make them upkeep the expectations of a “light complexion” family.
 Patricia had a nervous breakdown and went into depression, she was never the same after this
 she never worked again and she didn’t get involved romantically again, Hall saw this as “… a
 disease of colonialism” (Paul Ch. 6). The content proposed that it does matter how much
 wealth, colour and race mattered to be how individuals would be seen in society.
 At this point in the book racial discrimination was clearly portrayed. Racial
 discrimination refers to unequal treatment of persons or groups on the basis of their race or
 ethnicity (Pager and Shepherd). This was shown when Hall’s mother didn’t approve of her
 daughter’s alliance and insisted that she ended her relationship as it was not what she was
 taught in her British upbringing. Hall was taught the British way of life by his mother but in
 England at college he would be tolerated but not welcomed because of his colour as by the
 fact that he was considered a “colonial” (Paul Ch.2). In Jamaica Hall had more privilege as he
 was considered brown but now at college in England there is a difference, as he is considered
 to be black. He found it difficult to be able to fit in without losing himself in the process as
 well as his black culture. This issue of racial discrimination occurred where a couple had an
 where the woman was a Swedish and her Jamaican husband experienced where a group of
 whites known as the “White Riots of 1958” attacked the husband until his West Indian friends