Dark Laboratory: On Columbus, the Caribbean, and the Origins of the Climate Crisis (Doubleday; Hamish Hamilton, 2025) is Tao Leigh Goffe’s groundbreaking debut—a lyrical and unflinching excavation of the Caribbean as both a site of extractive violence and ecological resistance. Interweaving personal narrative, colonial history, and environmental critique, Goffe traces how racial capitalism reshaped island ecologies through the forced labor of enslaved Africans and indentured Chinese workers. Mining everything from guano to myth, Dark Laboratory reframes the climate crisis as a racial and imperial catastrophe. At once elegy and blueprint, the book offers a powerful meditation on survival, memory, and the transformative knowledge rooted in island life.

Note: This will be a hybrid event, taking place on Monday June 30 at 6pm. Tao, who will be joining us by videocall, will be introduced by PSL team member Tom Western. You are welcome to attend in person at the Cultural Center in Neochori or online at this link.