Jan Carew

You Tube Videos of Jan Carew

2010-07-01T13:57:00.004-05:00

The Columbian Era - Jan Carew and Edward Scobie (1)

(First of 12 videos from this panel)

For Partial List of Videos of Jan Carew on You Tube, Click Here

Tribute to Jan Carew, May 11, 2010, London

2010-06-01T12:56:00.000-05:00

A Tribute to Jan Carew
From: http://www.irr.org.uk/2010/may/ha000012.html

EVENT

A tribute evening for Jan Carew

11 May 2010

A tribute evening for Jan Carew, Race & Class, Editorial Committee member.

Tuesday 11 May 2010, 6-8.30pm
The Tabernacle, Powis Square, London W11 2AY

Speakers include:

Colin Prescod - Chair Institute of Race Relations
Dr Kimani Nehusi - activist, academic and author
Arif Ali - Hansib Publications
Doris Harper-Wills - storyteller and poet
Dr Godfrey Brandt - educator and poet
Juliet Alexander - compère
Makeda Coaston - facilitator

Please RSVP to: info@hansib-books.com or call 020 8523 0888.

Events listing is provided for information only. Inclusion in this listing should not be taken to imply that the Institute of Race Relations supports an event or is involved in organising it.

Tribute to Jan Carew

Posted on May 10, 2010 by operationblackvote

http://operationblackvote.wordpress.com/2010/05/10/tribute-to-jan-carew/

A tribute event is to be held tomorrow in honour of the Caribbean intellectual Jan Carew.
Best known for his seminal novel Black Midas, Carew was also a founding father of Britain’s Black Power Movement, publishing and editing the paper Magnet.
Born 24 September 1920 in Guyana, Carew is a novelist, playwright, poet and educator. His poetry and first two novels, Black Midas and The Wild Coast, were significant landmarks of the West Indian literature then attempting through writing to cope with its colonial past and assert its wish for autonomy. Carew also played an important part within the Black movement gaining strength in England and North America, publishing reviews and newspapers, producing programs and plays for the radio and the television.

A. Sivanandan of the Institute of Race Relations, said of Carew: “Jan heralded and helped to shape the cultural revolution against colonialism and racism in poetry, painting, polemic and play. A wandering minstrel uprooted and cast abroad by the imperial imperative, he rooted himself wherever he was in the struggles of the people around him. And he was in many places, wearing many faces, but always in the same cause: freedom for the oppressed and downtrodden – teaching, writing, broadcasting, engaging with mighty men and women such as Malcolm X and Claudia Jones, Cheddi Jagan and Kwame Nkrumah, Paul Robeson and Langston Hughes.”

Reception and Tribute evening for Jan Carew
Tuesday 11 May 2010, 6-8.30pm
The Tabernacle, Powis Square, London W11 2AY

Date-With-A-Book Book Club Chooses "Black Midas" for May 2010

2010-05-01T13:13:00.001-05:00

Date with a Book, the book club that focuses on the work of writers from the Caribbean and the Caribbean Diaspora, has chosen Jan Carew's "Black Midas" as their selctoin for May, 23, 2010.

For more information: Date-With-A-Book

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

2009-05-22T18:45:00.013-05:00

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.

U of L professor chronicles experiences of African Americans who immigrated to Russia

2009-05-15T12:35:00.011-05:00

Click here to read full article

"Black Students in Red Russia" BBC Interview

2009-05-11T17:24:00.000-05:00

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

2009-05-05T16:30:00.000-05:00

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

2009-05-01T16:15:00.000-05:00

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:

2007-11-23T13:58:00.001-05:00

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.

-----------------

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

2007-06-11T16:45:00.001-05:00

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

2007-06-11T15:51:00.001-05:00

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)
--

LEO Weekly Review of the Guyanese Wanderer

2007-05-02T23:54:00.001-05:00

... “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

2007-01-11T17:11:00.001-05:00

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

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

U of L professor chronicles experiences of African Americans who immigrated to Russia (Full Article)

2006-05-15T12:43:00.000-05:00

U of L professor chronicles experiences of African Americans who immigrated to Russia
Writer:Larry Muhammad
2/8/2009 Louisville Courier-Journal

Post-Soviet Russia today is often thought of as a corrupt oligarchy that dominates neighboring republics through economic and military means.

But in the early 20th century, some considered Russia an egalitarian paradise, its Bolshevik Revolution a beacon of hope for the world's downtrodden -- including some African-Americans.

Hundreds of black professionals frustrated by racism in the United States -- farmers, engineers, teachers, artists and intellectuals -- rushed to this new land of socialist opportunity between the 1920s and 1940s, seeking the respect and freedom denied them in the land of their birth.

They're the subject of "Blacks, Reds, and Russians: Sojourners in Search of the Soviet Promise" (Rutgers University Press, 2008), a new book by Joy Carew, an associate professor of pan-African studies at the University of Louisville.

Carew, a teacher of the Russian language who has led several tours to the country, said that Vladimir Lenin, the victorious revolutionary intent on transforming the society after centuries of Czarist rule, was suspicious of old-guard bourgeois specialists and sought help elsewhere.

"The model under Lenin of the Soviet experiment was very hopeful," Carew said in an interview. "People wanted to believe they were participating in constructing something new, and (had) no reason to believe this wasn't the case."

American blacks with technical and professional skills -- and sympathies for the Soviet experiment -- were actively recruited to emigrate, Carew said.

And as she notes in her book: "The black specialists could serve as bridges between the country's non-Russian people of color and the plans of a modernizing Soviet state. Ultimately, the majority of the black sojourners of the 1920s and 1930s returned to the United States shortly after their study or contract periods. ‚Ä¶ But a smaller group decided to remain, as the prospects of life under the Soviet experiment seemed far brighter than the certainty of returning to the Great Depression and a life under the crippling 'Jim Crow' in the United States."

Some well-known black leaders were involved, including scientist George Washington Carver, who helped organize an early team of agricultural experts; writer Langston Hughes, who traveled extensively in the country by train and wrote lengthy reports on life there; W.E.B. DuBois, America's leading black intellectual at the time; and Paul Robeson, the world-renowned actor, concert performer and political activist.

But as the Soviet Union and the United States became geopolitical adversaries in the 1950s, any such association with a communist government or political party invited career-ending public ostracism, if not imprisonment for treason.

The House Committee on Un-American Activities subpoenaed many blacks to testify, including the defiant Robeson, whose passport was revoked.

And although DuBois is known for his groundbreaking study, "The Souls of Black Folk," he's also often criticized for sugarcoating the Soviet despotism that presaged the bloody reign of Joseph Stalin.

"When you get to the 1950s, they believed that under Nikita Khrushchev there was an opportunity to return to that earlier society, that egalitarian time that appreciated the talents of everyone," Carew said.

"There was a kind of pragmatism; you had the Stalinist years, but at the same time you had no perfect models out there. Certainly with Jim Crow and lynching going in America and the colonial behavior of the European nations, you had no saints out there. Soviet support of the anti-colonial movement, that was a big part of it. This made the alliance with the Soviets more important."

Many African-American professionals of the era settled permanently in Russia, marrying Russian citizens, raising families and assimilating into Russian society.

"Blacks, Reds, and Russians" is grounded in primary source material and interviews with descendants, but tells this compelling race-relations saga as well from Carew's first-hand experience.

She began studying Russian language and culture while attending The Putney School in southern Vermont in 1960, received her bachelor's and master's degrees in the language from Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago and first visited the Soviet Union as a college student in 1967.

In 1979, she returned with her husband, Jan Carew, the noted author and leading Caribbean intellectual who in the 1950s had studied in Czechoslovakia. He was invited to Russia by the Soviet Writers' Union and his first novel, "Black Midas," was translated into Russian.

Her parents, Maurice and Eliza Gleason, had visited Russia in 1957 and had left a detailed log of stories.

She wrote, "A special feature was that their group would be among the first to visit the Soviet Union in the Nikita Khrushchev era. My father knew Paul Robeson through the fraternity they shared and was well aware of his struggles with the U.S. government over his support of the Soviet Union. He was curious to test Robeson's contention that Soviet relations with blacks were quite different from those between whites and blacks in the United States."

She recounted the later growth of expatriate disappointment with special treatment while average Russian citizens suffered, the constant surveillance by secret police, and suspicions during the Cold War that they were American spies.

But she called hate crimes based on race that occurred in Russia an anomaly caused by the collapse of the Soviet system, and called her personal journey a fascinating adventure.

"I took Russian in school because I wanted to be different," she said. "Then I heard the stories my parents told.

"Taking something on a whim -- that's led to my life's path. It's been an elaborate series of experiences that I've never regretted."