Kamau Brathwaite

Edward Kamau Brathwaite ( born May 11, 1930 as Lawson Edward Brathwaite in Bridgetown, Barbados) is an English poet, writer and co-founder of the Caribbean Artists Movement (CAM). He became known for his work on the cultural life of black Africans in Africa and the American diaspora.

Life

Kamau Brathwaite visited from 1945, the Harrison College in Barbados and received in 1949 the Barbados scholarship to attend Cambridge University. To 1953, he began collaborating in the BBC Caribbean Voices program in London. In 1954, he graduated with a diploma of education science of Pembroke College, and went in 1955 as Education Officer for the Ministry of Education to the Gold Coast to Ghana. In 1960 he married the Guyanarin Doris Monica Wellcome Guyana in Guyana during a vacation.

While in Ghana, he wrote the play Odale 's Choice, which was premiered at the Mfantisman Secondary School in Ghana. A full production of the play was later listed in Accra. 1962 moved Brathwaite on the other side of the Atlantic and became a resident tutor Department of Extra - Mural Studies in St. Lucia. The end of 1963 he traveled to the University of the West Indies ( UWI ), Mona Campus in Kingston to teach at the Faculty of Humanities.

1965 Brathwaite returned back to England to do his doctorate at the University of Sussex with a thesis on the Creole society in Jamaica. During this time he was in London in 1966 a founder and secretary of the Caribbean Artists Movement (CAM). In 1971 he founded the magazine Savacou at the University of the West Indies for the CAM. In the same year received the name Kamau Brathwaite by the grandmother of the Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiong'o in Limuru, Kenya, during his fellowship at the University of Nairobi.

Between 1997 and 2000 Kamau Brathwaite spent three Maroon Years in Cow Pasture, his now famous and then after a hurricane build house in Barbados. During this time he married the Jamaican Beverley Reid.

Kamau Brathwaite is since 1991 Professor of Comparative Literature at New York University.

Work

Brathwaite argues for a return of Caribbean literature on African traditions, which he sees as the only way to regain their own identity. His particular interest is the Creole languages ​​and musical techniques such as improvisation ( with whom he dealt about 1967 in his essay Jazz and the West Indian Novel). Brathwaite also wrote dialect poetry and engaged in religious rituals and music styles like reggae. Later works deal more with political problems and reveal frustration regarding failing political upheaval in the Caribbean. In the 90s, his poetry was also marked by personal misfortunes and more autobiographical in nature; Hurricane Gilbert destroyed Brathwaites house and his library, his wife Doris died. From the mid- 90s, he went back to his increasingly early ideas of a Caribbean culture and tradition. Brathwaite represents an image of the poet as "divine interpreter" ( as " Performer of the Divine " ), who is a victim of materialistic thinking.

Awards

Writings (selection )

  • Four Plays for Primary Schools, 1964
  • Odale 's Choice, 1967
  • Rights of Passage, 196x
  • Masks, 196x
  • Islands, 1969
  • Folk Culture of the Slaves in Jamaica, 1970
  • The Development of Creole Society in Jamaica, 1770-1820, 1971
  • The Arrivants, 1973
  • Contradictory Omens: Cultural Diversity and Integration in the Caribbean, 1974
  • Other Exiles, 1975
  • Days & Nights, 1975
  • Black Blues, 1976
  • Mother Poem, 1977
  • Soweto, 1979
  • History of the Voice, 1979
  • Jamaica Poetry, 1979
  • Barbados Poetry, 1979
  • Sun Poem, 1982
  • Afternoon of the Status Crow, 1982
  • Gods of the Middle Passage, 1982
  • Third World Poems, 1983
  • History of the Voice: The Development of Nation Language in Anglophone Caribbean Poetry, 1984
  • X / Self, 1987
  • Sappho Sakyi 's Meditations, 1989
  • Shar, 1992
  • Middle Passages, 1992
  • Zea Mexican Diary, 1993
  • Trenchtown Rock 1993
  • Barabajan Poems, 1994
  • Dream Stories, 1994
  • Words Need Love Too, 2000
  • Ancestors, 2001
  • Magical Realism, 2002
  • Golokwati, 2002
  • Born to Slow Horses, 2005, winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize 2006
  • Limbo, Oxford AQA GCSE English Anthology, 2005
University of Cambridge Mona, Jamaica Kingston, Jamaica Autobiography Pembroke College (Cambridge) Cholmondeley Award Neustadt International Prize for Literature Integrated Authority File
296853
de