George Lamming

George Lamming (born 1927), is a novelist and poet. He was born in Barbados and teaches at Brown University.

Biography

Early life and education

George Lamming was born on June 8, 1927 in Carrington Village, Barbados, of mixed African and English parentage. After his mother married his step-father, Lamming split his time between his native village and his step-father's home in St David's Village. Lamming attended Roebuck Boys' School and Combermere School on a scholarship. Encouraged by his teacher, Frank Collymore, Lamming found the world of books and started to write.

Career

Before moving to England, he worked from 1946 to 1950 as a teacher at El Colegio de Venezuela, a boarding school for boys in Port of Spain, Trinidad. He then emigrated to England where, for a short time, he worked in a factory. In 1951 he became a broadcaster for the BBC Colonial Service. His writings were published in the Barbadian magazine "Bim", edited by his teacher Frank Collymore, and the BBC's "Caribbean Voices" series broadcast his poems and short prose.

He entered academia in 1967 as a writer-in-residence and lecturer in the Creative Arts Centre and Department of Education at the University of the West Indies. Since then, he has been a visiting professor at the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Pennsylvania and a lecturer in Denmark, Tanzania, and Australia.

Published works

* "In the Castle of My Skin" (1953)
* "The Emigrants" (1954)
* "Of Age and Innocence" (1958)
* "Season of Adventure" (1960)
* "The Pleasures of Exile" (1960)
* "Water with Berries" (1971)
* "Natives of my Person" (1972).

Awards

*1955: Guggenheim Fellowship
*1962: Canada Council fellowship
*1998: Langston Hughes Medal

Critical Work About Lamming

*Dalleo, Raphael. “Authority and the Occasion for Speaking in the Caribbean Literary Field: George Lamming and Martin Carter.” "Small Axe" 20 (June 2006): 19-39.
*Forbes, Curdella. "From Nation to Diaspora: Samuel Selvon, George Lamming And the Cultural Performance of Gender." Kingston: University of West Indies Press, 2005.
*Nair, Supriya. "Caliban's Curse: George Lamming and the Revisioning of History." Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996.
*Pouchet Paquet, Sandra. "The Novels of George Lamming." Heinemann, 1983.
*Saunders, Patricia. "The Pleasures/Privileges of Exile: Re/covering Race and Sexuality in "The Pleasures of Exile" and "Water With Berries". "Alien-Nation and Repatriation: Translating Identity in Anglophone Caribbean Literature." Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2007.
*Joseph, Margaret Paul. "Caliban in Exile: The Outsider in Caribbean Fiction." Greenwood, CT. 1992.