Dark Laboratory

Author Tao Leigh Goffe
Narrator Tao Leigh Goffe
Publisher Penguin Books Ltd
Publish Date 6 March 2025
Run Time 12 hours and 44 minutes
Format Audio
Genre Climate change, Colonialism and imperialism, Economic history, Ethnic groups and multicultural studies, History of the Americas, Memoirs, Slavery and abolition of slavery, Social and cultural anthropology, Social and cultural history, Social groups and identities, Social impact of environmental issues, Violence, intolerance and persecution in history.

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From award-winning writer and theorist Tao Leigh Goffe, an urgent investigation into the intertwined history of colonialism and the climate crisis – and the lessons we can learn to fight for a better world.

Our planet is on the precipice of dramatic ecological breakdown and climate despair is at an all-time high. But there are many communities who have survived beyond the environmental destruction wrought on them by colonialism – and they hold the solutions for climate repair.

Using the Caribbean as a case study, Tao Leigh Goffe traces the vibrant and complex history of the islands back to 1492 and the arrival of Christopher Columbus when the Caribbean became the subject of Western exploitation. Charting the human and ecological forces that have shaped the islands, Goffe examines the legacy of fierce warrior Queen Nanny of the Maroons, engages in pressing cultural debate about stolen artefacts and human remains which are kept hidden in museum archives, and visits Indigenous farming cooperatives who are using ancestral knowledge to rebuild their communities.

Using the Caribbean as a both a warning and a guide, Dark Laboratory takes hopeful and galvanizing teachings from the islands communities to offer illuminating solutions to the ecological crisis. From guano to sugarcane, coral bleaching to invasive mongoose populations, Dark Laboratory is a lyrical, vibrant and urgent investigation into the greatest threat facing humanity.

‘Necessary, thoroughly compelling . . . Every page is mixed with heart and conviction’ Monique Roffey, author of ‘The Mermaid of Black Conch’

© Tao Leigh Goffe 2025 (P) Penguin Audio 2025

Critics Review

Noble and necessary . . . Goffe’s ear is tuned to songs of resistance, to what it looks like to make life amid (and after) colonial subjugation

New York Times Book

A necessary, much needed cri de coeur, a thoroughly compelling book about the climate crisis and the Caribbean region. Dark Laboratory is utterly unique to read; it is punch the air, punch in the gut, heart palpitations thrilling. Goffe isn’t just a scholar of the current climate emergency but a poet and a feminist who joins the dots . . . Every page is mixed with heart and conviction. Mandatory reading on climate and the Caribbean region

Monique Roffey, author of 'The Mermaid of Black Conch'

Groundbreaking . . . In a narrative spanning hundreds of years, thousands of miles and successive waves of colonial driven migration, Goffe charts the development of the modern western ideology that has come to dominate the world

Guardian

Spinning off in unexpected and creative directions . . . new possibilities emerge in the collision of ideas, including the hopeful possibility of healing and restoration . . . the constant divergences and convergences of the text are entirely deliberate – an apt way of showing how racial inequality runs like mycellium through the story of climate. This is a book about interconnections, about allowing different lines of thought to cross-pollinate each other

The Earthbound Report

A timely and refreshingly provocative study . . . [Goffe] proves to be an engaging scholar, and her work will go far in reshaping academic approaches to her most interesting subject matter . . . [Dark Laboratory] leaves the reader with something to ponder

Kirkus

Hugely important . . . A truly illuminating book that joins the dots on the ideologies and realities that underpin our world, written with clarity, passion, insight and a frequently beautiful poetic turn of phrase. Essential reading for anyone with a curiosity over the true shape of global structures, and the intersections of identity, colonialism, capitalism and the climate crisis

Jeffrey Boakye, author of 'Black, Listed'

A work of searching curiosity and intelligence that traces the connections between colonial power, racial violence and the perilous state of our planet today, while also sketching a path to a more liveable, less unequal future. It is a necessary book and an important one

Ekow Eshun, author of 'The Strangers: Five Extraordinary Black Men and the Worlds That Made Them'

Nimble and prophesying, truthful and rigorous, Professor Tao Leigh Goffe roots the climate crisis to its true origins – the exploitation of people of colour – without hyperbole or lambast. This is the way it is. In having the knowledge, determination and simple intent to go where others have not, Dark Laboratory is a benchmark, both for experts within the climate struggle, and those wishing to know more. A vital, compelling and nuanced addition to the most pressing debate of modern times

Courttia Newland, author of 'A River Called Time'

A powerful and tender and inspiring journey through time, landscapes and ideas that shape our understanding of the origins of climate breakdown and futures we can and must realise

Joycelyn Longdon, founder of ClimateinColour

This timely book illuminates the connections between colonization and climate change by providing poignant real-world examples which expose the historically illiterate thinking of powerful nations on this topic

Corinne Fowler, author of 'Our Island Stories: Country Walks Through Colonial Britain'

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