Episodes in My Life: The Autobiography of Jan Carew: Compiled, Edited and Expanded by Joy Gleason Carew

by Jan Carew, Joy Gleason Carew (Editor)

Overview

Towards the end of a long and astonishingly full life, whose scope and variety most of us can only dream about, Jan Carew began writing his memoirs. A global, multifaceted man, they cover his multiple lives as Guyanese/Caribbean novelist, anti-colonial and anti-imperialist activist, the early shaper of Black Studies in the United States, actor and playwright, painter, agricultural evangelist, advisor to Heads of State in Africa and the Caribbean and theoretician of the Columbian origins of racism in the Americas. Where there are gaps, Joy Gleason Carew goes back to some of the vivid, eyewitness journalism Jan Carew wrote in those heady days of hope and struggle.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781845232450
Publisher:	Peepal Tree Press Ltd.
Publication date:	11/01/2015
Edition description:	None
Pages:	300
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Jan Carew (1920-2012) led a rich and varied life as a writer, artist, educator, philosopher, Pan-Africanist, and advisor to heads of state in Ghana, Guyana, Jamaica and Grenada. He is best known for his landmark novels, Black Midas and The Wild Coast. The author of Blacks, Reds, and Russians: Sojourners in Search of the Soviet Promise, Joy Gleason Carew is the resident linguist and an Associate Professor in the Department of Pan-African Studies at the University of Louisville. She has been teaching in academe for over forty years, in institutions as varied as community colleges, major research universities, small liberal arts colleges, and historically black universities. She met Jan Carew in 1974 at Northwestern University and they spent the next 37 years collaborating on projects together in the US and abroad.

Table of Contents

Introduction 7

I Anoke: The Awakening

Introduction to Section I 11

"Drums" 13

1 My Roots 15

2 From Customs Officer to Studies in America 23

3 Encounters with Chcddi 36

"Requiems" 44

II Eastern Bloc Overtures

Introduction to Section II 47

4 Prague Studies 49

5 Guest of the Union of Soviet Writers 55

"Being Black in Belorussia is Like Being from Mars" New York Times 66

6 Return to the USSR 71

"Epilogue" 86

III A Third World Writer in Exile

Introduction to Section III 91

7 Trespass to Paris and Amsterdam 93

"The Weeping Trees", De Kim 104

8 London Adventures 106

"What is a West Indian?" West Indian Gazette 126

9 Wimbledon Life 129

"The Odd-Job Man", Pepperpot 139

10 Waging the World Struggle 142

"South Kensington Revisited", Pepperpot 160

IV In Whose Backyard?

Introduction to Section IV 163

11 Return to B.G. 165

"Federation: Shadow or Substance?" Flamingo 170

12 The Cuban Missile Crisis 173

"What the Cuban Revolution Means to Me", Guyana Mirror 180

13 The Caribbean Society for Culture and Science 185

"Harvesting History in the Hills of Bacolet", Quaecumque 197

V From Lotus-Eating Into the Jaws of a Coup

Introduction to Section V 209

14 Lotus-Eating in Ibiza 211

15 Nkrumah and Me 219

16 The Coup 225

"Coup in Ghana: Season of Violent Change", New World 234

VI Offers to Good to Resist

Introduction to Section VI 245

"Exile" 247

17 Canada Beckons 249

"A Long Way to Go", Globe 258

"Culture and Rebellion", Race of Class 263

18 The Lure of Ebony Towers 271

19 Northwestern Battles 285

"African American Studies: A Position Paper" 299

Bibliography and Special Exhibits 305

Index 315