Jan Rynveld Carew is a novelist, playwright, poet and educator. His works, diverse in their forms and multifaceted, makes of Jan Carew an important intellectual of the Caribbean world. His poetry and his first two novels, Black Midas and The Wild Coast, were significant landmarks of the West Indian literature then attempting through writing to cope with its colonial past and assert its wish for autonomy. Carew also played an important part within the Black movement gaining strength in England and North America, publishing reviews and newspapers, producing programs and plays for the radio and the television. His scholarly research drove him to question traditional historiographies and firstly the prevailing historical models of the conquest of America. The way he reframed Christopher Columbus as an historical character outside his mythical hagiography became a necessary path in his mind to build anew the Caribbean world on sounder foundations.

Childhood in the British Guyana

Jan Rynveld Carew was born 24 September 1920 at Agricola, a coastal village in Guyana also called Rome. Guyana was then a South American colony of the British Empire. From 1924 to 1926, the Carews lived in the United States but Jan Carew and his elder sister had to come back to Guyana after the kidnapping of his younger sister in New York in 1926. The child would be recovered in 1927 and sent back to her family in 1927. Carew's father lived on several occasions in the United States and Canada, working a while the Canadian company, The Canadian Pacific Railway, and thus crossing the American continent from Halifax to Vancouver. His memories would fuel the imagination of the young Carew.
From 1926 to 1938, he was educated in Guyana, firstly attending the Agricola Wesleyan School, then the Catholic elementary school and the Berbice High School

Berbice High School

Berbice High School is a school in New Amsterdam, Guyana.The Boys' school was established on 5 September 1916, on the ground floor of the residence occupied by Rev. J. A. Scrimgeour, BA. Mr. C. A. Pugsley was the school's first Headmaster. Nine pupils were enrolled on the founding day...

, a Canandian Scottish Presbyterian School, in New Amsterdam. He got his Senior Cambridge Exam in 1938.

In 1939, he became a part-time teacher at the Berbice High School for Girls, and then was called up to the British Army as the war broke out in Europe. He served in the Coast Artillery Regiment until 1943. From 1943 to 1944, he was a customs officer in Georgetown.
At the time, he published his first text in the Christmas Annual and working a lot on his painting and drawing. From 1944 to 1945, he worked at the Price Controls Office in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad.

Jan Carew feels to be part of the Caribbean world that for him includes "the island archipelago, the countries of the Caribbean littoral and Guyana, Surinam, and Cayenne." He finds the paradoxical unity of the Caribbean way of life in the "successive waves of cultural alienation" that shaped the Caribbean frame of mind from "a mosaic of cultural fragments -Amerindian, African, European, Asian."

The university years

At age 17, he left Guyana for the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 where he studied at Howard University

Howard University

Howard University is a federally chartered, non-profit, private, coeducational, nonsectarian, historically black university located in Washington, D.C., United States...

 and Western Reserve University (1944-8), the predecessor of Case Western Reserve University

Case Western Reserve University

Case Western Reserve University is a private research university located in Cleveland, Ohio, USA...

. He also went to Charles University in Prague (1948–50) and the Sorbonne

Sorbonne

The Sorbonne is an edifice of the Latin Quarter, in Paris, France, which has been the historical house of the former University of Paris...

 in Paris.

Exile and literature

He has taught at the University of London

University of London

-20th century:Shortly after 6 Burlington Gardens was vacated, the University went through a period of rapid expansion. Bedford College, Royal Holloway and the London School of Economics all joined in 1900, Regent's Park College, which had affiliated in 1841 became an official divinity school of the...

, Princeton

Princeton University

Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....

, Rutgers, Illinois Wesleyan

Illinois Wesleyan University

Illinois Wesleyan University is an independent undergraduate university located in Bloomington, Illinois. Founded in 1850, the central portion of the present campus was acquired in 1854 with the first building erected in 1856...

, Hampshire College

Hampshire College

Hampshire College is a private liberal arts college in Amherst, Massachusetts. It was founded in 1965 as an experiment in alternative education, in association with four other colleges in the Pioneer Valley: Amherst College, Smith College, Mount Holyoke College, and the University of Massachusetts...

, Northwestern

Northwestern University

Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston and Chicago, Illinois, USA. Northwestern has eleven undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools offering 124 undergraduate degrees and 145 graduate and professional degrees....

 and Lincoln

Lincoln University (Pennsylvania)

Lincoln University is the United States' first degree-granting historically black university. It is located near the town of Oxford in southern Chester County, Pennsylvania. The university also hosts a Center for Graduate Studies in the City of Philadelphia. Lincoln University provides...

 Universities.

Jan Carew has lived in Holland, Mexico

Mexico

The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

, France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

, Spain

Spain

Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

, Ghana

Ghana

Ghana , officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country located in West Africa. It is bordered by Côte d'Ivoire to the west, Burkina Faso to the north, Togo to the east, and the Gulf of Guinea to the south...

, Canada

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

 and the United States. In England, he acted with Laurence Olivier

Laurence Olivier

Laurence Kerr Olivier, Baron Olivier, OM was an English actor, director, and producer. He was one of the most famous and revered actors of the 20th century. He married three times, to fellow actors Jill Esmond, Vivien Leigh, and Joan Plowright...

 and edited the Kensington Post .

The novels and short stories

He is the author of Green Winter, Grenada: The Hour Will Strike Again, Black Midas, The Wild Coast, Fulcrums of Change, Ghosts in Our Blood: With Malcolm X in Africa, England and the Caribbean, The Last Barbarian, and The Guyanese Wanderer (Sarabande Books

Sarabande Books

Sarabande Books is an American not-for-profit literary press founded in 1994, and located in Louisville, Kentucky, publishing poetry, fiction and nonfiction.The press was co-founded by Sarah Gorham and Jeffrey Skinner...

, 2007).

The academic career

His essays include: "The Caribbean writer in exile", "Columbus and the origin of racism in the Americas", "The fusion of African and Amerindian folk myths", "United we stand","Culture and Rebellion","Black America: the street and the campus", "Jonestown revisited", "The Ivory trade

Ivory trade

The ivory trade is the commercial, often illegal trade in the ivory tusks of the hippopotamus, walrus, narwhal, mammoth, and most commonly, Asian and African elephants....

: The cruelest trade of all, white gold", "The Synergen project", "The Amarnth project", "Estevanico: The African Explorer," "Rape of Paradise: Columbus and the Origin of Racism in the Americas," and "Moorish Culture-Bringers: Bearers of Englightment".

The black movement and the problem of culture

Some of the noted figures he has been connected to are W. E. B. Du Bois, Paul Robeson

Paul Robeson

Paul Leroy Robeson was an American concert singer , recording artist, actor, athlete, scholar who was an advocate for the Civil Rights Movement in the first half of the twentieth century...

, Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes

James Mercer Langston Hughes was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist. He was one of the earliest innovators of the then-new literary art form jazz poetry. Hughes is best known for his work during the Harlem Renaissance...

, Malcolm X

Malcolm X

Malcolm X , born Malcolm Little and also known as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz , was an African American Muslim minister and human rights activist. To his admirers he was a courageous advocate for the rights of African Americans, a man who indicted white America in the harshest terms for its...

, Kwame Nkrumah

Kwame Nkrumah

Kwame Nkrumah was the leader of Ghana and its predecessor state, the Gold Coast, from 1952 to 1966. Overseeing the nation's independence from British colonial rule in 1957, Nkrumah was the first President of Ghana and the first Prime Minister of Ghana...

, Shirley Graham Du Bois

Shirley Graham Du Bois

Shirley Graham Du Bois was an American-born author, playwright, composer, and activist for African-American and other causes, as well as spouse of noted African-American thinker, writer, and activist W. E. B...

, Maurice Bishop

Maurice Bishop

Maurice Rupert Bishop was a Grenadian politician and revolutionary who seized power in a coup in 1979 from Eric Gairy and served as Prime Minister of the People's Revolutionary Government of Grenada until 1983, when he was overthrown in another coup by Bernard Coard, a member of his own...

, Cheikh Anta Diop

Cheikh Anta Diop

Cheikh Anta Diop was a historian, anthropologist, physicist, and politician who studied the human race's origins and pre-colonial African culture. He is regarded as an important figure in the development of the Afrocentric viewpoint, in particular for his theory that the ancient Egyptians were...

, Edward Scobie, John Henrik Clarke

John Henrik Clarke

John Henrik Clarke , born John Henry Clark, was a Pan-Africanist American writer, historian, professor, and a pioneer in the creation of Africana studies and professional institutions in academia starting in the late 1960s.He was Professor of African World History and in 1969 founding chairman of...

, Tsegaye Medhin Gabre, Sterling D. Plumpp and Ivan Van Sertima

Ivan van Sertima

Ivan Gladstone Van Sertima was an associate professor of Africana Studies at Rutgers University in the United States....

.

See also