|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Austin Ardinel Chesterfield Clarke was born in 1934 on the island of Barbados. Growing up there, Clarke and his family lived in poverty. From early on in his life, however, it became apparent that means of escape from that life. After completing his primary education at St. Mathias Boys School Ð an experience prominently featured in Clarke's first book of memoirs Growing Up Stupid Under the Union Jack (1980) Ð Clarke proceeded to secondary school at the age of ten. A middle-class school that provided a distinctly British education, Combemere exposed Clarke to all the classics of English literature at a very young age. In 1950, Clarke entered Harrison College, the most prestigious boys school on Barbados, and received his Cambridge and Oxford higher-school certificates in 1952.
After teaching at a rural secondary school for three years, Clarke left for Canada on a three year study leave. Entering Trinity College in 1955, Clarke studied economics and political science. Soon, however, he found his classes to be less interesting to him than the world of politics and literature. In 1957, he married Betty Reynolds, abandoned his university studies, and took on a series of short-term jobs. During this period he continued to work on his writing and took on the first of a succession of jobs as a journalist.
Devoting himself entirely to his writing in 1962, he began a prolific period in his career, writing several short stories and the manuscripts for The Survivors of the Crossing (published in 1964), Amongst Thistles and Thorns (pub. 1965) and The Meeting Point (pub. 1967) all between 1962 and 1964. During the mid 1960s, Clarke also began working as a freelance broadcaster for the CBC for whom he recorded a series of interviews and documentaries on black issues in North America and Britain.
In the late 1960s and early 70s, Clarke accepted appointments as a visiting lecturer in creative writing and African American literature at a number of major American universities including Yale, Duke, and Brandeis. Despite his hectic schedule during this period, Clarke still managed to publish another novel Storm of Fortune (1971) and a collection of short stories entitled When He Was Free and Young and He Used to Wear Silks (1971). Clarke stayed in the U.S. from 1974-1975 after accepting a position as a cultural attachŽ to the Barbadian Embassy in Washington. Clarke's career with the Barbadian government continued when he was asked in 1975 to return to his homeland to become the General Manager of The Caribbean Broadcasting Corporation. A more political experience than he had anticipated, Clarke's determination to reform the government agency was the subject of much controversy, culminating in a premature termination of his contract.
Returning to Canada in 1976, Clarke wrote The Prime Minister (1977), an autobiographical and highly political novel modelled on his unhappy experiences as a civil servant in Barbados. Attempting to enter the political arena in Canada, Clarke ran unsuccessfully as a Progressive Conservative candidate in the 1977 Ontario provincial election. Perhaps inspired by his recent stay in Barbados, he began to write his memoirs, the first volume of which, Growing Up Stupid Under the Union Jack (1980), won the 1980 Casa de las Americas Prize for Literature.
Aside from writing a weekly column for the Barbadian newspaper The Nation from 1979-82, the 1980s were not an especially prolific period in Clarke's literary career. While in the mid-1980s he did succeed in have two collections of short stories and one novel published Ð When Women Rule (1985), Nine Men Who Laughed (1986), and Proud Empires (1986), respectively Ð his commitments to both provincial and federal politics hindered the completion of much creative work.
After serving on the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada between 1988 and 1993, Clarke renewed his focus on writing and produced several important books. Returning to the short story form, Clarke published two new collections: In This City (1992) and There Are No Elders (1993). Still finding non-fiction to be an important creative Ð and occasionally political Ð outlet, Clarke also wrote A Passage Back Home (1994), a memoir of his friendship with the Trinidadian writer Sam Selvon; the political pamphlet "Public Enemies: Police, Violence, and Black Youth"; and, most recently, Pigtails n' Breadfruit: the Rituals of Slave Food, a "food memoir" that combines recipes with memories of his formative years in Barbados.
Clarke's greatest triumph of the 1990s, though, was certainly the publication of The Origin of Waves (1997), his first novel in eleven years. The recipient of excellent reviews from across Canada, the novel won Clarke the honour of being named the inaugural recipient of the Rogers Communications Writers' Trust Fiction Prize in 1998. More importantly, this success renewed public and critical interest in Clarke's oeuvre and led to the 1998 republication by Random House Canada of not only Growing Up Stupid Under the Union Jack, but also the novels which make up Clarke's "Toronto trilogy": The Meeting Point, Storm of Fortune, and The Bigger Light.
Hopefully, these recent successes and the greater availability of some of his most important texts will help earn Clarke a more prominent place in the Canadian canon. As more and more writers of colour in Canada become important names in Canadian literature, perhaps Clarke will also receive the attention he truly deserves as a trailblazer of immigrant writing in Canada and one of the more important Canadian writers of the last thirty-five years.
| Meeting Point, The |
$ 27 | BUY |
|---|---|---|
| Storm of Fortune |
$ 17.95 | BUY |
| Bigger Light, The |
$ 27 | BUY |
| Passage Back Home, A |
$ 19.95 | BUY |
|
Northwest Passages 628 Penzer Street Kamloops, BC, V2C 3G5 CANADA |
 |
telephone: 250-372-1972 toll free: 1-877-7CANLIT fax: 250-374-0915 e-mail: info@nwpassages.com |
©1996-1999 Northwest Passages.Site created by MediaWeb Solutions & Northwest Passages using The B.O.S.S. |
|