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Austin Clarke Biography, Books, and Similar Authors

Austin Clarke Biography

Austin Clarke was a professor of literature and taught at Yale, Brandeis, Williams, Duke, and the Universities of Texas and Indiana.

Biography of austin clarke Austin Clarke was born in in St. James , Barbados , where he received his early education in Anglican schools. Clarke was a reporter at the Timmins Daily Press and the Globe and Mail , before joining the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation as a freelance journalist. He subsequently taught at several American universities, including Yale University Hoyt fellow, —70 , Duke University —72 , and the University of Texas visiting professor, and helped establish black studies programs at several universities. He was not the first Canadian writer of African origin, that distinction belonging to 19th-century author Amelia E.

He assisted in setting up a Black Studies program at Yale in , after which he became the cultural attach&#; of the Embassy of Barbados in Washington, D.C. Culminating with the international success of The Polished Hoe, which won the Giller Prize, the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, and the Trillium Prize, Austin Clarke's work since includes eleven novels, six short-story collections, and four memoirs.

He lived in Toronto until his death in June

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    The polished hoe by austin clarke At the same time, he wrote a number of well-received novels that portrayed the life of Caribbean transplants such as himself to the northernmost cities of North America. Clarke was born in the town of St. James in At the time, Barbados was a colonial possession of Britain , with a large population of English who worked there as civil servants or owned large plantations on which Barbadians worked. As a youth, he excelled in school and was accepted at Combermere, the top school in Barbados and considered the first step toward a career in the civil service — the best financial opportunity toward which a Barbadian might aspire on the island.

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    Austin clarke poems Austin Ardinel Chesterfield Clarke, born in Barbados, is one of the most prolific Canadian writers of Afro-Caribbean descent; he is considered the godfather of Caribbean-Canadian writing. His body of work spans four decades of literary productivity including ten novels, six short story collections, three memoirs, and a number of newspaper articles and essays and helps to define and nuance discussions about the African diaspora , the immigrant experience, ethnicity, and the multicultural, international contexts of his writing. The major themes of the Toronto trilogy The Meeting Point [], Storm of Fortune [], and The Bigger Light [] , and his other Canadian-based novels and short stories, include cultural dislocation and adjustment, race, class and cultural hegemony, and issues of gender. In both his Canadian and Caribbean writing, Clarke explores the postcolonial dilemmas of identity, poverty, exile, belonging, and nationhood, while celebrating cultural resuscitation in the New World through Afro-Caribbean speech rituals. Prestigious awards conferred on Clarke signify his lifelong contribution to the literary arts in Canada and the Caribbean.

    Her works for the stage include Amistad Voices, Club Harlem, Kid Zero, Homer G & the Rhapsodies, and The Ballad of Emmett Till, winner of the (more)

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