The emigrants george lamming

George Lamming, the Barbadian novelist, has died only five days short of his 95th birthday. A towering figure in Caribbean letters and fierce proponent of regional unity, his work was part and parcel of other writers from the colonial and postcolonial world eyeing both the metropole and their developing homelands. On Saturday, Mia Amor Mottley, the prime minister, wrote on Twitter that she had planned to visit Mr Lamming on his birthday June 8 and said that his first novel The Castle Of My Skin , written in , ought to be required reading for every Caribbean child.

Unfortunately, we will now have to switch to a national celebration via an official funeral for a man who has given so much to his country, his people, his region and the world. It was my good fortune to listen to him deliver various public lectures across the campuses of the University of the West Indies. George Lamming was also recognised as an important thinker on political and cultural independence.

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George William Lamming was born in After embracing life in Britain, by the s, he would grow disillusioned with life there and returned to Barbados. In an extensive interview with The Royal Gazette in , only nine months before the referendum on independence, Mr Lamming said Bermudians should be guided by practical concerns — not nationalism — if and when they weigh independence.

In the past, they had a certain amount of political and economic protection as the dependencies of major powers. In other words, you can be independent without exercising sovereignty. Bermudians must realise this. Mr Lamming was in Bermuda to conduct a three-week creative writing seminar at the Bermuda College and a reading of his prose at the National Gallery.

He urged Bermudians to look at the experiences of Caribbean Commonwealth countries, which have exchanged a measure of the freedoms they had won with independence for interdependence as a regional bloc.

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As the Caribbean experience indicates, Mr Lamming said, there is no room for nationalist sentiment in the global marketplace. He noted that many Barbadians who were against independence in would not want to go back to the old system of governance today. You must be Registered or Signed in to post comment or to vote.