Kenneth Ramchand, ed. West Indian Narrative: An Introductory Anthology.  Nelson Thornes Ltd; Rev Ed edition (June 1980)

Part IV

Samuel Selvon--Born 1923 in Trinidad. Educated in Trinidad. Publications include novels A Brighter Sun (1952), An Island Is A World ((1955), The Lonely Londoners (1956), Turn Again Tiger (1958), I Hear Thunder (1965), The Housing Lark (1965),  and short stories Ways of Sunlight (1958).

Ways of Sunlight, a collection of short stories, the settings occur both in Trinidad (Part One) and in London (Part Two). In both sets the central characters are West Indian and speak that dialect.

"In the writings of Samuel Selvon, the colloquial idiom which is associated with the speaking voice and oral literature, is exploited more fully than in any other West Indian author.

George Lamming -- Born in 1927 in Barbados. Educated in Barbados. Publications included novels - In the Castle of My Skin (1953), The Emigrants (1954), Of Age and Innocence (1958), Season of Adventure (1960), and essays - The Pleasure of Exile (1960).

In the Castle of My Skin  deals with childhood in the West Indies -- a story of boyhood and growing up in a Barbados village in the 1930s and 1940s -- partly autobiographical and partly a chronicle of change.

This childhood is filled with naiveté, wonder and discovery and the adventure extracted by boys and girls from their surroundings. 

This novel of childhood also provides a portrait of the village and its adults. "By the end of the book, childhood has passed and the old way of life in the village has been disturbed."

Other Books by Lamming

Conversations II: Western Education and the Caribbean Intellectual  (2000)  /  Black World (March 1973)  /  Canon Shot and Glass Beads (1974)

The History of the Guyanese Working People, 1881-1905 (1981)  / Natives of My Person (1972)  / Water with Berries  (1972)

Geoffrey Drayton -- Born 1924 in Barbados. Educated in Barbados and Cambridge University. Publications include Three Meridians (poems, 1951), Christopher (a novel, 1959), and Zohara (a novel, 1961).

Christopher, a sad book, consists of a series of childhood experiences of the son of an unhappy sugar planter. When the books ends, Christopher's childhood is over and it is marked by the death of his black nurse Gip who had provided him affection and comfort which he was unable to receive from his parents. "The book may be compared to a film without a narrator, and without dialogue. We are spectators of the silent drama of a sensitive boy's reactions to the events and objects of the caged world which his parents have made for him.

Andrew Salkey -- Born 1928 in Panama. Educated in Jamaica and London University. Publications include A Quality of Violence (novel, 1959), Escape to an Autumn Pavement (novel, 1960), West Indian Stories (editor, 1960), Hurricane (children's novel, 1964), Earthquake (children's novel, 1965), Stories from the Caribbean (editor, 1965), Commonwealth Poetry (editor West Indian section, 1965); and "Jamaica Symphony" (long poem unpublished, winning Thomas Helmore Poetry Prize, 1955).

Hurricane, fiction aimed at children, is a story of the development and explosion of a hurricane. No symbolism here, Salkey deals with a hurricane as hurricane from a boy's eye view

"Joe, his sister Mary, and their parents are sitting right in their home, waiting for the hurricane to strike and then move away. . . . Joe drops asleep. . . . wakes up to find the hurricane raging. there is precise meteorological detail and realistic description. the boy's attempt to explaim what is happening, the mother reading Psalm 91, and the just avoided explosion of bad temper are other means by which the hurricane is conveyed to our senses" (Ramchand, 129)

Other Salkey Books

In the Border Country and Other Stories (1999)  / Island Voices: Stories from the West Indies (1965)

In the Hills Where Her Dreams Live (1979)  /  Anancy's Score (1973) /  Anancy, Traveler (1998)

Breaklight: An Anthology of Caribbean Poetry (1971)  / Caribbean Essays: An Anthology (1973)

In The Games, Leon, the main character, wins the fifteen-mile Blue Riband cycle event. The action primarily deals with events previous to the race. His father and his brother Dolphus are involved. His girl-friend Sylvia, involved with another man, makes Leon promise to marry her if he wins. Thus the story is "not simply" about the winning of a race but rather "about love and about the inter-involvement of people in a small community.