Jan Carew

Jan Rynveld Carew (24 September 1920 – 6 December 2012) 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. 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.

Biography

Childhood in British Guiana Jan Rynveld Carew was born on 24 September 1920 at Agricola, a coastal village also called Rome, in British Guiana, the South American colony of the British Empire that would become present-day Guyana. He was the middle child and only son of Ethel Robertson and Alan Carew. Carew's father lived on several occasions in the United States and Canada, working for a while with the Canadian Pacific Railway, and thus crossing the American continent from Halifax to Vancouver. His memories would fuel the imagination of the young Carew.

From 1926 to 1938, he was educated in Guyana, first attending the Agricola Wesleyan School, then the Catholic elementary school, and then Berbice High School, a Canadian Scottish Presbyterian School, in New Amsterdam. He found the paradoxical unity of the Caribbean way of life in the "successive waves of cultural alienation" that shaped the Caribbean frame of mind from "a mosaic of cultural fragments – Amerindian, African, European, Asian."

The university years At the age of 25, Carew left Guyana for the United States, where he studied science at Howard University and Western Reserve University (1945–1948), the predecessor of Case Western Reserve University, but left without graduating. Later, he attended Charles University in Prague (1948–1950) and Sorbonne University in Paris. Carew lived at different times in the Netherlands, Mexico, the UK, France, Spain, Ghana, Canada and the United States. In 1951, while in the Netherlands, he was editor of De Kim (multilingual poetry magazine in Amsterdam). In Britain, he acted alongside Laurence Olivier and edited the Kensington Post in 1953. He also worked as a broadcaster and writer with the BBC and lectured in race relations at the University of London. He was the first editor of the black-oriented publication Magnet News, launched in London in February 1965.

Between 1962 and 1966, Carew lived in Jamaica with his then wife Sylvia Wynter, subsequently moving to Canada for some years before settling in the US. survived by his widow Dr. Joy Gleason, his daughters Lisa St Aubin de Terán and Shantoba Eliza Carew, and his son, David Christopher Carew.

Activism

The black movement and the problem of culture Carew was a pioneer in the field of Pan-African Studies. but he remains best known for his first novel, Black Midas (1958). He was a contributor of reviews, articles, short stories and essays to many periodicals, including John O'London's Weekly, Time and Tide, ArtReview, New England Review and Bread Loaf Quarterly, The New York Times, Saturday Review, New Statesman, African Review, The Listener, Journal of African Civilizations, Black Press Review, New Deliberations, Journal of the Association of Caribbean Studies, Black American Literature Forum, Pacific Quarterly, and Race & Class. His many works include:

Novels / novellas

Black Midas (London: Secker & Warburg, 1958; Peepal Tree Press, 2009, ); published as A Touch of Midas in US (New York: Coward, 1958, ) The Wild Coast (London: Secker & Warburg, 1958; Peepal Tree Press, 2009, ) The Last Barbarian (London: Secker & Warburg, 1961, ) Moscow is Not My Mecca (London: Secker & Warburg, 1964, ); published as Green Winter (Stein & Day, 1965, ) The Riverman – novella (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1987) The Sisters – novella (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1987) The Sisters and Manco's Stories (Oxford: Macmillan Caribbean Writers, 2002, ) The Guyanese Wanderer: Stories (Louisville, KY: Sarabande Books, 2007, )

Poetry

Streets of Eternity (privately printed, 1952, ) Sea Drums in My Blood (Trinidad: New Voices,1981, ) Return to Streets of Eternity (Smokestack Books, 2015, )

Juvenile / young adult fiction Sons of the Flying Wing (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1970) The Third Gift, illus. Leo and Diane Dillon (New York: Little Brown & Co., 1974, ) Children of the Sun, illus. Leo and Diane Dillon (New York: Little Brown & Co., 1980, ) Stranger than Tomorrow: Three Stories of the Future (London: Longman, 1976, ) Save the Last Dance for Me, and Other Stories, (London: Longman, 1976, ) The Twins of Ilora (New York: Little, Brown 1977) The Lost Love, and Other Stories, Longman (London: Longman, 1978) The Man Who Came Back, Longman (London: Longman, 1979, ) The Cat People, Longman (London: Longman, 1979, ) Dark Night, Deep Water (London: Longman, 1981, ) Dead Man's Creek: Two Stories (London: Longman, 1981, ) House of Fear: Two Stories (London: Longman, 1981, ) Don't Go Near the Water (London: Longman, 1982, ) Time Loop (London: Hutchinson Education, 1983, ) Death Comes to the Circus (London: Hutchinson Education, 1983, ) Computer Killer (London: Hutchinson Education, 1985, )

Non-fiction Cry Black Power (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1970) Rope the Sun (Third Press, 1973) (Editor) Out of Time, illus. Howard Phillips (Cardiff: Adult Basic Education Centre, 1975, ) Indian and African Presence in the Americas (Atlanta: Georgia State University, 1984, ) Grenada: The Hour Will Strike Again (Prague: International Organization of Journalists Press, 1985, ) Fulcrums of Change: Origins of Racism in the Americas and Other Essays (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1988, ) Ghosts in Our Blood: With Malcolm X in Africa, England and the Caribbean (Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 1994, ) Rape of Paradise: Columbus and the Birth of Racism in the Americas (Brooklyn: A & B Publishers, 1994; Seaburn Publishing, 2006, ) Potaro Dreams: My Youth in Guyana (Hansib Publications, 2014, ) Episodes in My Life: The Autobiography of Jan Carew — edited by Joy Gleason Carew (Peepal Tree Press, 2015, )

Essays

"Being Black in Belorussia is Like Being from Mars" (The New York Times, 19 September 1971) "Look Bwana, in East Africa you carry a bicycle on the bus, eat crocodile tail and get to know the people who married the wind" (The New York Times, 24 October 1971) "The Caribbean writer and exile" (Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 8, No. 4, 1978, pp. 453–475) "The fusion of African and Amerindian folk myths" (Caribbean Quarterly, Vol. 23, No. 1, 1977, pp. 7–21 and Bim, Vol. 16, No. 64, 1978, pp. 241–257) "Estevanico: The African Explorer" (Journal of African Civilizations, Vol. 3. No. 1, April 1981, pp. 86–99, ) "Columbus and the origins of racism in the Americas: part one" (Race & Class, April 1988, Vol. 29: pp. 1–19) "Columbus and the origins of racism in the Americas: part two" (Race & Class, April 1988, Vol. 30: pp. 33–57, ) "United We Stand! Joint Struggles of Native Americans and African Americans in the Columbian Era" (Monthly Review, Vol. 44, No. 3: July–August 1992) "Columbus: a harbinger of slavery and racism" (The New York Amsterdam News, 11 July 1992, pp. 2 & 29) "Moorish Culture-Bringers: Bearers of Enlightenment" (in Ivan Van Sertima, ed., Golden Age of the Moor, New Brunswick: Transaction Press, 1992, pp. 248–277, ) "Culture and Rebellion" (Race & Class: Special issue – Black America: the street and the campus, Vol. 35, No. 1, July – September 1993) "Jonestown revisited" (Eusi Kwayana, A New Look At Jonestown: Dimensions from a Guyanese Perspective, Carib House, 2016, ) "The Ivory trade: The cruelest trade of all, white gold" "The Synergen project" "The Amaranth project"

Radio plays 1957: The River Man, BBC 1958: The Legend of Nameless Mountain, BBC 1958: Anancy and Tiger, BBC 1960: The University of Hunger (with Sylvia Wynter) BBC 1968: Song of the Riverman, BBC Radio 3

Television plays

1961: The Big Pride (with Sylvia Wynter), ITV/Associated Television 1961: The Day of the Fox, Associated Television (starring Sammy Davis Jr.) 1963: Exile from the Sun, Associated Television (never performed) 1998: The Paul Robeson Award (for "living a life of art and politics") 2002: The Clark-Atlanta University Nkyinkyim Award 2003: The Caribbean-Canadian Lifetime Creative Award from the Caribbean Canadian Literary Exposition 2008: Independent Publisher Bronze Prize for Multicultural Fiction (for The Guyanese Wanderer)