Lovelace, Earl

July 13, 1935

The writer Earl Lovelace was born in Toco, Trinidad, in 1935 and grew up in Tobago. He was educated in Tobago, Trinidad, and the United States, and in 1964 he won the British Petroleum Independence Literary Award with the manuscript of While Gods Are Falling (1965). That impressive debut was followed by the publication of The Schoolmaster (1968), The Dragon Can't Dance (1979), The Wine of Astonishment (1982), Jestina's Calypso and Other Plays (1984), A Brief Conversion and Other Stories (1988), and Crawfie the Crapaud (a children's story, 1997). Salt, a novel that dazzles with its humanistic and multicultural ethos, was published in 1996 and went on to win the prestigious Commonwealth Writers Prize in 1997. Growing in the Dark: Selected Essays (edited and introduced by Funso Aiyejina) was published in 2003. These essays, which span 1967 to 2002, confirm Lovelace as one of the most consistent and perceptive organic and original thinkers, writers, and aesthetes from the Caribbean region.

Lovelace has the distinction of being one of the few West Indian writers of his generation to live and write out of the region at a time when metropolitan exile was the more lucrative option. In his journey from being a new writer in 1964 to becoming a nationally and internationally celebrated writer, Lovelace has worked as a forest ranger, agricultural assistant, proofreader, journalist, resident playwright and director of grassroots theatre groups, and university lecturer. He has always been an avid reader of books and an astute student of people, and these interests have served his commitment to writing about Trinidad and Tobago and the Caribbean.

Lovelace's work celebrates people's desire to belong, their need to claim and understand their landscape and history, and the impulse to recognize the human dignity inherent in both, in spite of whatever human failings may exist. He has championed the language and culture of the folk, whom he envisions as the most instinctive and versatile culture bearers and culture creators in the region. His persistence in his commitment to his craft is matched by a compassion in the presentation of his characters and their struggle for self-apprehension and self-realization. Lovelace's compassion is born out of his self-identification with the people among whom he lived and worked, men and women who demonstrated their love of life and an awareness that each person must be responsible for the world he or she lives in, a philosophy that has directed his abiding desire to create fictions in which the multiplicity of voices and perspectives of a multicultural society are properly ventilated.

In recognition of his contribution to literature and culture, Lovelace has won several awards over the years, including the Pegasus Literary Award for his outstanding contribution to the Arts in Trinidad and Tobago (1966), a Guggenheim Fellowship (1980), Trinidad and Tobago's Chaconia (Gold) Medal (1988), and the University of the West Indies' Honorary Doctor of Letters (2002).

See also Caribbean/North American Writers (Contemporary); Literature of the English-Speaking Caribbean

Bibliography

Aiyejina, Funso. "Lovelace's Prospect: Masquerade or Masquerader?" Trinidad and Tobago Review 16, nos. 7–9 (1994): 7–10.

Aiyejina, Funso. "Novelypso: Indigenous Narrative Strategies in Earl Lovelace's Fiction." Trinidad and Tobago Review 22, nos. 7–8 (2000): 15–17.

Cary, Norman Reed. "Salvation, Self, and Solidarity in the Work of Earl Lovelace." World Literature Written in English 28, no. 1 (1988): 103–114.

Down, Lorna. "In a Native Voice: The Folk as Subject in Lovelace's Fiction." Caribbean Studies 27, nos. 3/4 (1994): 377–389.

Hodge, Merle. "Dialogue and Narrative Voice in Earl Lovelace's 'The Schoolmaster'." Journal of West Indian Literature 8, no. 1 (1998): 56–72.

Meek, Sandra. "The 'Penitential Island': The Question of Liberation in Earl Lovelace's 'Salt'." Journal of Caribbean Studies 15, no. 3 (2000/2001): pp. 273–297.

Nair, Supriya. "Diasporic Roots: Imagining a Nation in Earl Lovelace's 'Salt'." South Atlantic Quarterly 100, no. 1 (2001): 259–285.

O'Callaghan, Evelyn. "The Modernization of the Trinidadian Landscape in the Novels of Earl Lovelace." Ariel: A Review of International English Literature 20, no. 1 (1989): 41–54.

Sunitha, K. T. "The Discovery of Selfhood in Earl Lovelace's Fiction." Commonwealth Novel in English 5, no. 1 (Spring 1992): 27–37.

funso aiyejina (2005)