George Lamming

Who they were

George William Lamming OCC was a Barbadian novelist, essayist, and poet. He first won critical acclaim for In the Castle of My Skin, his 1953 debut novel. He also held academic posts, including as a distinguished visiting professor at Duke University and a visiting professor in the Africana Studies Department of Brown University, and lectured extensively worldwide.

Early life

Early life and education George William Lamming was born on June 8, 1927, in Carrington Village , Barbados, [ 1 ] of mixed Afro-Barbadian and English parentage. After his mother, Loretta Devonish, married his stepfather, Lamming split his time between his birthplace and his stepfather's home in St David's Village. He attended Roebuck Boys' School and Combermere School on a scholarship. Encouraged by his teacher,

Path and career

Career Lamming left Barbados to work as a teacher from 1946 to 1950 in Port of Spain , Trinidad , [ 1 ] at El Colegio de Venezuela, a boarding school for boys. He then emigrated to England where, for a short time, he worked in a factory. As he later wrote: "Migration was not a word I would have used to describe what I was doing when I moved with other West Indians to England in 1950.

Writing Lamming wrote six novels: In the Castle of My Skin (1953), The Emigrants (1954), Of Age and Innocence (1958), Season of Adventure (1960), Water with Berries (1971), and Natives of My Person (1972). His much acclaimed first novel, In the Castle of My Skin , featuring an autobiographical character named G., can be read as both a coming-of-age story as well as the story of the Caribbean. [ 1 ] His second novel, The Emigrants , was a sequel to his debut autobiographical work,

Honours and recognition In 2008, Lamming was awarded CARICOM 's highest award, the Order of the Caribbean Community (OCC), [ 1 ] "honoring fifty-five years of extraordinary engagement with the responsibility of illuminating Caribbean identities, healing the wounds of erasure and fragmentation, envisioning possibilities, transcending inherited limitations. In recognizing this son and ancestor, CARICOM is applauding intellectual energy, constancy of vision,

Why this date

George Lamming appears on our June 4 calendar for 2022 as a death entry.