Forum, February 13, 2009: Exile and Cultural Inheritance in the Short Fiction of Jan Carew

February 13, 2009                                                                                                                                               

David Anderson, Department of English

"Exile and Cultural Inheritance in the Short Fiction of Jan Carew"

Jan Carew is one of the leading Caribbean intellectuals of the last half-century. Novelist, playwright, actor, film maker, government official, historian, and professor, Carew has spent his career examining Caribbean history and its rich varieties of culture, and searching for literary strategies to represent that richness. Professor Anderson’s talk will discuss Carew’s latest collection of short fiction, The Guyanese Wanderer, focusing on the many meanings of exile (historical, physical, and cultural) in Carew’s fiction, but also the themes of return and cultural reclamation that are central to this collection. 

The University of Louisville Faculty Research Forum is a forum for talks by our faculty and the occasional guest on humanities and social science topics of interest to interdisciplinary audiences.  These forums are sponsored by the Commonwealth Center with assistance from the College of Arts and Sciences.

      This year the Forum will be a joint project of CCHS and the Anne Braden Institute for Social Justice Research,  highlighting a range of justice-themed research on various social and historical issues.Faculty Research Forums are held in the Bingham Humanities Building, Room 300 and begin at 3:30 p.m. unless otherwise noted.

"Black Students in Red Russia" BBC Interview

BBC RADIO 4 Wednesday 14 January 2009

Black Students In Red Russia Wednesday 14 January  11.00-11.30am BBC RADIO 4

"In the Sixties, Seventies and Eighties, Soviet-funded scholarships were offered to large numbers of students from developing countries to enable them to study in the Soviet Union. Presenter Burt Caesar tells the story of these students and finds out what happened to them...

"...Guyanese writer Jan Carew drew closely on the personal stories of students who travelled east for his 1964 novel, Moscow Is Not My Mecca. He shared a house with many of these students in London, a transit point on their journey. The programme includes an interview with Jan Carew, now in his late eighties..."

..  read more at the BBC Press Office 

Back Pedaling Into Mayflower Time': Malcolm X, C.L.R. James and the Black Radical Tragic

The Hunter College Department of English & Graduate English Club Presents:

"Back Pedaling Into Mayflower Time': Malcolm X, C.L.R. James and the Black Radical Tragic"

a presentation by

Jeremy Glick,
Assistant Professor, Department of English, Hunter College

November 24th, 2008, 7:30PM
11106 Hunter North

Professor Glick couples together some observations on Malcolm X's use of memorable lines from William Shakespeare during his 1964 Oxford Union debate presentation with an introduction to how he is reading C.L.R. James's use of the tragic in his historical writings on the Haitian Revolution. His commentary begins with an extended engagement with Guyanese novelist, critic, and political activist Jan Carew's reflections of his time with Malcolm recorded in Carew's 1994 memoir: Ghosts in Our Blood: With Malcolm X in Africa, England, and the Caribbean. Both Malcolm and James frame the tragic as a term that mines the importance of both the contingent and the strategic in challenging both liberalism and right-wing dominance.

http://www.hunter.cuny.edu/~english/events/Jeremy%20Glick.html

This talk is free and open to the public.

Chats With Mentors: Thursday, March 27, 2008

4:00pm to 6:00pm March 27, 2008   Chat with Mentors: Pan-African Studies Celebration  (Talks) Jan Carew and Tchaiko Ruramai Kwayana, veteran educators in black studies, will discuss the challenges and successes of black studies programs in higher education. This is the first in a series of talks to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the master's degree in Pan-African studies March 27-29. Location: Ekstrom Library, University of Louisville Price: free Sponsor: Department of Pan-African Studies Contact:  tatall01@louisville.edu  502-852-4192 or 502-852-5985

An evening with Jan Carew:

A celebration of writing and reading

Thursday, December 6, 2007
5 - 7 P.M.

Blue Mountain Coffeehouse
400 E. Main, Louisville, KY, USA - corner of Main and Preston ( Map )
(502) 582-3220

Announcing: The Guyanese Wanderer
Inaugural edition, the Linda Bruckheimer Series in KY Literature of Sarabande Books

Jan Carew sets a fabulist eye and elegant hand to both old world and new. Combining Caribbean folklore, ghost story, adventure tale, and the literature of European exile, these narratives contain a spirited dialect and colloquial voice that startles and delights. The journey begins in Carew's homeland, among the gaudy parrots, jaguars, and six o'clock bees of Guyana, and then shifts to the boulevards of London and Paris. Carew's characters--hunters and seers, buffoons and book-people--defy convention, especially the strong-willed women.

Betina puts her husband in his place with a prospecting knife. Belfon comes of age with the help, and seduction, of Couvade, a preacher-woman. A tagalong hunter named Tonic gets in over his head in a stampede of hogs. And in London, a black man called Caesar, prefers a landlord who puts his racism up front.

Carew has lived a long life, in countries all over the world. He's comfortable taking on just about anything, whether racial prejudice or whimsical fable, the fierce natural world or city slum. These are the brilliant songs of a learned man.

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This event qualifies for Continuing Education Credit  in Literature and the Spoken Word through the Program in Community Communications of the Adena Center at Webster University.  For more information or to register for CEU credit, please email communitybiz@yahoo.com.

"The Guyanese Wanderer" Published by Sarabande Books

The Guyanese Wanderer
by Jan Carew

ISBN: 978-1-932511-50-5 (paper)
Price: $15.95 (paper)
Publication date: 07/2007

Sarabande Books is publishing "The Guyanese Wnderer" as the Inaugural edition of the Linda Bruckheimer Series in KY Literature.

From the Publisher:

In The Guyanese Wanderer, Jan Carew sets a fabulist eye and elegant hand to both old world and new. Combining Caribbean folklore, ghost story, adventure tale, and the literature of European exile, these narratives contain a spirited dialect and colloquial voice that startles and delights. The journey begins in Carew's homeland, among the gaudy parrots, jaguars, and six o'clock bees of Guyana, and then shifts to the boulevards of London and Paris. Carew's characters—hunters and seers, buffoons and book-people—defy convention, especially the strong-willed women.

Read More...

Publishers Weekly Review of The Guyanese Wanderer

Publishers Weekly
May 28, 2007


The Guyanese Wanderer:
Stories by Jan Carew
Sarabande, TP ISBN 9781932511505,
$14.95, Fiction


Excerpt:

The exploitation of Guyana's wry peasantry centers Guyana-born, Louisville-based Carew's lushly descriptive collection. In these 10 sharply observed tales, Carew makes a Guyanese sensibility-its wanderings home and away-palpable.


Complete Review:

The exploitation of Guyana's wry peasantry centers Guyana-born, Louisville-based Carew's lushly descriptive collection. "Chantal" proves a cautionary story of how far a husband can push his wife-and vice versa-before triggering a violent backlash. Two of the tales involve the passage to manhood of young Belfon, whose hard-luck mother gives him away in "The Visit" when she gets pregnant by a man other than Belfon's father. Brought up by his wealthy godfather, Atlassa, Belfon is the first student from his village of Biaro to win a place at the university, and in "The Initiation of Belfon," he heads to Trinidad by boat. He stops at the home of an old family friend and sensuous preacher-woman, Couvade, who teaches him more about the world than his godfather could. The last three stories pursue a West Indian man in exile, Cesar, who emigrated to Britain during WWII and remains in London as part of a "colonial old-timer" community, suffering enduring discrimination and eager to return home. In these 10 sharply observed tales, Carew makes a Guyanese sensibility-its wanderings home and away-palpable. (July)
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LEO Weekly Review of the Guyanese Wanderer

... “The Guyanese Wanderer” was recently issued by Sarabande Books as the inaugural edition of the Linda Bruckheimer Series in Kentucky Literature.    The 10 stories include recurring characters who are presented in a dazzling array of perspectives. There is a general flow to the settings — which start at the meeting point of South America and the Caribbean, and end in the capitals of post-World War II Europe — that mirrors Carew’s travels up to the 1960s. The personal adventures are described with details that are finely drawn with an eye for sensuous detail and an ear for contemporary language....

Click here to read the complete LEO Weekly Review of the Guyanese Wanderer

King tribute seminar to examine social movements

Nexuses of Change
Jan. 18, 4-6 p.m.
Seminar Room, Belknap Research Building
University of Louisville
Louisville, KY, USA
Admission is free and open to the public


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Today’s peace movement, past civil rights struggles, anti-Vietnam War protests and a push for black power — all those efforts will be discussed at “Nexuses of Change: Explorations into Seminal Social Movements of the 20th Century,” an event to honor the work of Martin Luther King Jr.

Here are the topics and speakers:

“World War II, the Fight Against Fascism and the Anticolonial Movement: Lessons for the Peace Movement Today,” Horace Campbell, Syracuse University
“Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights and Anti-Vietnam War Movements,” Richard Sobel, Northwestern University
“The Black Power Movement and the Prying Open of Elitist Universities,” Jan Carew, Northwestern University professor emeritus