Clarke, Austin C. –
Writer
Wrote Controversial Article
Role Model for Next Generation
Penned Culinary Memoir
Selected writings
Sources
Novelist, short-story writer, and memoirist Austin Clarke has sometimes been hailed as Canada&#x;s first multicultural writer. A native of Barbados, Clarke arrived in Toronto in the s and began a career in journalism soon afterward that included time as managing editor of Contrast, the city&#x;s flagship black newspaper. 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. For more than three decades, Clarke, in oracular style, has delineated the blend of vigour and resilience that informs the experience of the exiled West Indian, declared Globe and Mail writer Donna Nurse.
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. Clarke&#x;s father was an artist, and his mother worked as a hotel laundress. As a youth, he excelled in schoo
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. 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
Books by this author
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When Austin Clarke passed away Sunday morning in Toronto, the news was broken by Barbados’ The Nation. It seems fitting that the death of Canada’s pre-eminent black writer was first reported in the land of his birth: the culture that sustained his spirit and imagination.
His most famous book, The Polished Hoe (), was the story of the sexual exploitation of an island woman. It brought him the Scotiabank Giller Prize and marked the apex of a literary career that spanned more than fifty years. Clarke’s extensive oeuvre—nearly a dozen novels, several story collections, as well as memoirs and poems—feature Bajans at home or West Indians in Canada. His characters battle the outer challenges of colonialism, racism, and economic hardship and the inner challenges of colonial mentality and racial shame. Yet he manages to evoke their wit and resilience through an exuberant Bajan language. Clarke believed that language—specifically, vernacular—was the most significant aspect of his narratives. “Vernacular is the lingua-franca of Barbados,” he told me in “[O]ne can no longer deprecate this language by calling it a dialect.”
Clarke’s early works including The Survivors of the Crossing
Austin Clarke
Austin Clarke (), along with Louis MacNeice and Patrick Kavanagh, is regarded as one of the leading Irish poets in the generation after Yeats. Born in Dublin he spent most of his life in Ireland, apart from a year spell in London in the 20s and 30s, and Irish themes &#; the culture, landscape, religion and politics of his native home &#; dominate his poetry. Even more significant than subject matter, however, was Ireland&#;s influence on the structure and texture of Clarke&#;s poetry through his engagement with the Gaelic tradition. His deep knowledge of the folk and bardic strands of Gaelic poetry was first established during his time studying at University College Dublin, and his application of its techniques to verse written in English remains his greatest innovation. His time at University College coincided with the turbulent period following the Easter Rising. This had a personal resonance for Clarke when he succeeded to the University lectureship made vacant by the execution of his one-time tutor, Thomas MacDonagh, for his part in the rebellion. Clarke&#;s first book of poetry, The Vengeance of Fionn, a long narrative poem retelling an Ossianic legend, sho
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