{"id":899,"date":"2021-04-28T15:16:47","date_gmt":"2021-04-28T19:16:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/london\/?p=899"},"modified":"2021-08-14T14:38:52","modified_gmt":"2021-08-14T18:38:52","slug":"samuel-selvon-a-brief-biography-of-a-trinidadian-expatriate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/london\/samuel-selvon-a-brief-biography-of-a-trinidadian-expatriate\/","title":{"rendered":"Samuel Selvon: A Brief Biography of a Trinidadian Expatriate"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_900\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-900\" style=\"width: 222px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-900\" src=\"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/london\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/252\/2021\/04\/Sam_Selvon_1952_cropped-222x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"222\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/london\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/252\/2021\/04\/Sam_Selvon_1952_cropped-222x300.jpg 222w, https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/london\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/252\/2021\/04\/Sam_Selvon_1952_cropped.jpg 266w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 222px) 100vw, 222px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-900\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Samuel Selvon<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Samuel Selvon was born on May 20, 1923 in Trinidad, the sixth of seven children born to Bertwyn Selvon, an Indian cocoa merchant, and Daisy Dickson, a biracial Anglo-Indian. Selvon grew up in a middle-class home; after he completed his primary education in 1937, he attended Naparima College. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">However, Selvon left the college in 1938, without taking the school certificate examination. He enlisted in the Trinidad Royal Navy Reserve in 1939 and became a wireless operator. Thereafter, he moved to the Port of Spain where he worked for the <\/span><i style=\"font-size: 1rem\">Trinidad Guardian<\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">. He also wrote stories and columns under several pseudonyms, including Ack-Ack, Michael Wentworth, and Esses. In 1947, Selvon married Draupadi Persaud, with whom he had one child, born after the couple relocated to London in 1950. In London, Selvon worked as a clerk for the Indian Embassy, and wrote in his spare time. His first novel, <\/span><i style=\"font-size: 1rem\">A Brighter Sun<\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">, was published in 1952. This debut novel was followed by the publication of several more novels (including <\/span><i style=\"font-size: 1rem\">The Lonely Londoners <\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">in 1956), a collection of short stories entitled <\/span><i style=\"font-size: 1rem\">Ways of Sunlight<\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> (1958), and a collection of plays named <\/span><i style=\"font-size: 1rem\">Highway in the Sun<\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> (1991). In 1962, Selvon and Persaud divorced, and in 1963, Selvon married Althea Daroux, with whom he had three children. From 1975-1977, Selvon held a fellowship in creative writing at Dundee University. In 1978, Selvon moved to Canada, where Daroux had relatives. He took up writer-in-residence appointments at the universities of Victoria, Winnipeg, Alberta, and Calgary (where he worked for a few months as a janitor when he first arrived in Canada). A lifelong smoker, Selvon died of respiratory failure due to chronic lung disease on April 16, 1994.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Samuel Selvon was born on May 20, 1923 in Trinidad, the sixth of seven children born to Bertwyn Selvon, an Indian cocoa merchant, and Daisy Dickson, a biracial Anglo-Indian. Selvon grew up in a middle-class home; after he completed his primary education in 1937, he attended Naparima College. However, Selvon left the college in 1938, &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/london\/samuel-selvon-a-brief-biography-of-a-trinidadian-expatriate\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Samuel Selvon: A Brief Biography of a Trinidadian Expatriate&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3602,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,32],"tags":[182,183,180,181,184,43],"class_list":["post-899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-project-3-author-archive","category-samuel-selvon","tag-calypso","tag-canada","tag-selvon","tag-trinidad","tag-writer-in-residence","tag-london"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/london\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/london\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/london\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/london\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3602"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/london\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=899"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/london\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/899\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":902,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/london\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/899\/revisions\/902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/london\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/london\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/london\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}