Jan Carew | |
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Born | Jan Rynveld Carew 24 September 1920 Agricola village, British Guiana |
Died | 6 December 2012 Louisville, Kentucky, US | (aged 92)
Resting place | Winston-Salem, North Carolina, US (cremated) |
Occupation | Novelist, playwright, poet, educator |
Nationality | Guyanese |
Citizenship | American |
Education | Berbice High School |
Alma mater | Howard University (1945–1946) Western Reserve University (1946–1948) Charles University, Prague (1949–1950) Sorbonne (M.Sc. 1952) |
Literary movement | Postcolonialism, 20th Century |
Notable works | Black Midas (1958) The Wild Coast (1958) |
Spouse | Joan Mary Murray (m. 1952) Sylvia Wynter (m. 1958, div. 1971) Joy Gleason (m. 1975) |
Children | Lisa St Aubin de Terán (with Joan Murray) David Christopher Carew (with Sylvia Wynter) Shantoba Eliza Carew (with Joy Gleason) |
Website | |
jancarew |
Jan Rynveld Carew (24 September 1920 – 6 December 2012)[1] was a Guyana-born novelist, playwright, poet and educator, who lived at various times in The Netherlands, Mexico, the UK, France, Spain, Ghana, Jamaica, Canada and the United States.
Carew's works, diverse in form and multifaceted, make Jan Carew an important intellectual of the Caribbean world. His poetry and first two novels, Black Midas and The Wild Coast (both published in 1958 by Secker & Warburg in London), were significant landmarks of Caribbean literature then attempting to cope with its colonial past and assert its wish for autonomy.
Carew worked with the late Guyana President Cheddi Jagan in the fight for Guianese independence from Britain.[2] He also played an important part in the Black power movement gaining strength in Britain and North America, publishing reviews and newspapers, producing programmes and plays for radio and television. His scholarly research drove him to question traditional historiographies and the prevailing historical models of the conquest of America. The way he reframed Christopher Columbus as a historical character outside his mythical hagiography became a necessary path in his mind to build anew the Caribbean world on sounder foundations.