Today we celebrate the 95th birthday of novelist, poet, and playwright, Sam Selvon. Born to humble beginnings in rural south Trinidad in 1923, his East Indian heritage and West Indian upbringing would greatly shape his future identity as a writer.
Selvon started writing during his spare time while working in the oilfields, serving in the Royal Naval reserve, and writing for newspapers and literary magazines. In his early twenties, he wrote and published several short stories and poems in his native Trinidad. However, it was his move to England in 1950 which set the stage for his career to blossom.
Drawing from his personal experiences as an immigrant, Selvon published his pioneering novel “The Lonely Londoners” in 1956. In it, he gave the unique Caribbean creolised English, or "nation language", a narrative voice of its own on an international stage. “The Lonely Londoners” was later followed by two more London-based novels: “Moses Ascending” (1975) and “Moses Migrating” (1983), both of which continued the saga of Caribbean immigrants and their experiences in London.
Today’s Doodle by guest artist Jayesh Sivan depicts Selvon and other members of the Caribbean migrant community set against the backdrop of London, which served as the inspiration and setting for much of his works.
Happy birthday, Sam Selvon!
Early concepts of the doodle below
SAM Selvon found fame with his 1956 novel The Lonely Londoners which focused on the migration of West Indians to Britain in the 1950s and 1960s, known as the Windrush generation.
A Google Doodle celebrates the life of the writer on what would have been his 95th birthday.
GoodReads.com Sam Selvon found fame with his novel The Lonely Londoners
Who was Sam Selvon?
Samuel Dickson Selvon was born on May 20, 1923 in San Fernando in Trinidad, he had six other siblings.
He started work aged 15 and was a wireless operator with the Royal Naval Reserve during the Second World War.
When the war ended he wrote for the Trinidad Guardian as a reporter and also started writing stories and descriptive passages under various pseudonyms such as Michael Wentworth.
Sam moved to London in the 1950s and worked as a clerk for the Indian Embassy and wrote in his spare time.
Google Doodle as marked Sam Selvon's birthday
He also worked for the BBC producing two television scripts, Anansi the Spiderman, and Home Sweet India.
Sam was a fellow in creative writing at the University of Dundee between 1975 and 1977 and he later moved to Alberta, Canada and taught creative writing as a visiting professor at the University of Victoria.
He later became a writer-in-residence at the University of Calgary.
Sam died on a trip to Trinidad of respiratory failure due to extensive bronchopneumonia and chronic lung disease on 16 April 1994.
What was The Lonely Londoners about?
Published in 1956 The Lonely Londoners is his most famous work and noted for his use of creolised English for both the narrative and dialogue.
It focuses on the experiences of migrant West Indians who came to Britain in the 1950s and 1960s and tells their daily lives and the differences between them, due to race, class and wealth.
The central character is Moses Aloetta, a veteran émigré who, after more than ten years in London, has still not achieved anything of note and whose homesickness increases as he gets older.
Sam started writing the book in standard English but thought this didn’t convey the experiences and thoughts of his characters and created a narrator who used the same creolised form of English as the characters.
WIKIMEDIA The Lonely Londoners looks at the plight of the Windrush generation having come to Britain
The significance of The Lonely Londoners
Along with George Lamming’s novel The Emigrants in 1954, The Lonely Londoners is an early example of what has become known as post-colonial writing.
Critic Helon Habila wrote in March 2007: "One imagines immediately the loneliness that must have gnawed at these immigrants whose memory of their sunny, convivial island communities was their only refuge at such moments.
“But although this is a book about exile and alienation, it is not a sad book. Even when his characters are under-going the direst of tribulations, Selvon has a way of capturing the humour in the situation.
“The message of The Lonely Londoners is even more vital today than in 50s Britain: that, although we live in societies increasingly divided along racial, ideological and religious lines, we must remember what we still have in common - our humanity."
