Helen Thomas examines the ways in which Caryl Phillips responds both creatively and critically to the psychological effects of cultural dispersal, racism and economic exploitation in the black Atlantic. Highlighting the continuing negotiations between Britain and its previous colonies, this study demonstrates the ways in which Phillips's fictional and non-fictional work reformulates contemporary and historical traumatic crises and corresponding agents of survival. Phillips's work is discussed not only in terms of critical emphasis upon past events, but also in terms of its vision of a more expansive dimension of collective experience.