Word: selvon
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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TURN AGAIN TIGER, by Samuel Selvon (246 pp.; St. Martin...
...Tiger wants something bigger than this life has to give him. When he deliberately burns his books. Author Selvon makes his points: knowledge cannot be forced; the hero's road runs briefly day-to-day and not in one glorious sweep to the stars. Throughout, Author Selvon's Trinidad is vivid beyond any travel writer's account- drenched in sunlight, touching in its poverty, and flashingly alive in the near-calypso lingo of its hopeful, gossiping peasants...
...Brighter Sun, by Samuel Selvon. The marriage and dreams of a pair of teen-age Trinidadians; a fresh and authentic first novel by a young West Indian (TIME...
...about? Could he ever break away from his dreary existence? Could a colored ma~n ever get a break in a white man's world? He daydreamed about getting an education and becoming a great lawyer. He would go to England or the U.S. But unlike Author Selvon, Tiger doesn't get away. At story's end, with the G.I.s and the big pay envelope gone, he is getting ready to plant corn...
What makes A Brighter Sun shine more steadily than most current fiction is a freshness of speech and locale that is as welcome as its direct, unsurprised look at life. Author Selvon still has a way to go as a craftsman in fiction, but his native lingo rings true, and the native squalor and insular ignorance have been triple-distilled and mixed with his ink. At the very least, he knows what poor Tiger learned the hard way: "You don't start over things in life; you just have to go on from where you stop...