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Edgar Mittelholzer -- Born 1909 in
British Guiana. Died in England 1965. Publications include
novels
Corentyne Thunder, 1941; A Morning at the
Office, 1950; Shadows Move Among Them, 1951;
Children
of Kaywana, 1952; The Weather in Middenshot, 1952; The
Life and Death of Sylvia, 1953;
Kaywana Stock: The
Harrowing of Hubertus, 1954; My Bones and My Flute,
1955; Of Trees and the Sea, 1956; A Tale of Three
Places, 1957;
Kaywana Blood, 1958; The Weather
Family, 1958; A Tinkling in the Twilight, 1959; Latticed
Echoes, 1960;
Eltonsbrody, 1960; The Mad
MacMullochs, 1961; Thunder Returning, 1961; The
Piling of Clouds, 1961; The Wounded and the Worried,
1962; Uncle Paul, 1963; The Aloneness of Mrs. Chatham,
1965; The Jilkington Drama, 1965). The Adding Machine (a
short fable, 1954), With a Carib Eye (travel, 1958), and A
Swarthy Boy (autobiography, 1963). [Note:
The Old Blood (1958) and
Kaywana Blood,
1958 may be the same book.] |
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Children of Kaywana is the first part
of Edgar Mittelholzer's massive trilogy. the other parts are Kaywana
Stock and Kaywana Blood. Mittlelholzer presents the
history of the Van Groenwegel family from the seventeenth
century to agitation for independence in British Guiana in 1953.
Children of Kaywana begins in 1612
with Kaywana, daughter of an Arawak woman and an English sailor,
Adriansen van Groenwegel (a Dutchman) and ends with the stubborn
but hopeless stand of the descendants of Kaywana against
rebelling slaves in 1763.
There are six generations call van Groenwegel
in the novel and in each there is a crisis. Mittelholzer
explores a theory of heredity and expresses and interest in the
connection of sex and violence. * * * *
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Namba Roy. Born 1910 in Jamaica. Died
1961. A sculptor and painter who held exhibitions in London and
Paris. Educated in Jamaica. Publications included Ivory as
the Medium in 'Studio' (1958) and
Black Albino (a novel,
1961); unpublished
No Black Sparrows (a novel).
The Jamaica Maroons were among the earliest
of the black men in the West Indies to achieve and hold their
freedom from slavery. They established themselves in remote
communities in the mountains. Namba Roy was a Maroon
descendant. His novel
Black Albino
is set in a Maroon community in the Jamaican hills in the
eighteenth century |
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. This historical novel imaginatively reconstructs the
Jamaican Maroon world. The early Maroons had fresh memories of
Africa and Africa appears in the novel in how the Maroons'
organizational life and language.
The beloved leader, Tomaso is banished by his
envious blood-brother Lago, who fears that Tomaso's wife
Kisanka is a witch in that she has given birth to an albino
child. And Lago convinces the community that the
"white" child Tamba is a curse on the tribe and the
family is exiled and suffers.
The misery and isolation of the black albino
provides the reader with a unique angle on the "ugliness
and irrationality of colour prejudice." * * * *
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Victor Stafford Reid -- Born
1913 in Jamaica. Educated in secondary and commercial in
Jamaica. Publications included
New Day (a historical
novel, 1949),
The Leopard (a novel, 1958),
Sixty-five
(a school text based on New Day).
"In Namba Roy's
Black Albino,
Africa appears in a semi-historical way.
The Leopard by
V.S. Reid invokes Africa in another manner." Kinya of the
Mau-Mau Rebellion (1952-1953) is the setting for Reid's novel;
his lead character is part Kikuyu and part Masai. Reid had
never set foot on the African continent. |
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Both Jamaica and Africa had experienced
colonization and the topic is taken up in Reid's first novel New
Day, which deals with the rebellion at Morant Bay in1865.
Both rebellions were over the question of land and with the
inequality of colonial society.
"The Leopard tells the story of
how Nebu stalks and slays a white man, and how he, in turn, is
stalked by a leopard." An objection to the novel: "The
writing is beautiful and poetic but why does the author put in
so much violence and why does he make his characters speak and
think about it in such loving terms. After all these are people,
not beasts."
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To Sir with Love
is about the experiences
of a black teacher in a slum school in London. Initially, the
students are aggressive. But the teachers understand their
insecurity. By the need of the book the teacher has taught
patience and tolerance and thus has transformed "an
undisciplined bunch of near-savages into a descent, civilized
group of pupils.
Source: Kenneth Ramchand,
West
Indian Narrative: An Introductory Anthology. London, 1966
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updated 1 October 2003 |
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