SAM SELVON’S BIOGRAPHY

The internationally acclaimed Caribbean writer Samuel Dickson Selvon was born in San
Fernando, in the south of Trinidad, in 1923, into a middle class Christian family. His parents
were East Indian: His maternal grandfather was Scottish, his mother, half-Scottish, and his
father, manager of a dry goods store, was a first-generation immigrant from Madras. Thus, he
grew up in a world mixed with different cultures and races such as the Indian, African, North
American, English, French, Chinese and Spanish. 1 Speaking of his East Indian background he
once said, “(…) I grew up in Trinidad as a Trinidadian and my mother’s father was a Scotsman
and my father was an Indian. So I’m an offspring of that and I grew up in Trinidad completely
Westernized, completely Creolized, not following any harsh, strict religious or racial idea at all.” 2

He undertook his studies at Naparima College, in San Fernando, till the age of fifteen, when he
had to leave to work. For a short period of five years, from 1940 to 1945, he worked as a
wireless operator with the Royal Naval Reserve. During that time his writing vocation began.
Then, he moved to Port of Spain, where he worked as a journalist for The Trinidad Guardian
and literary editor of The Guardian Weekly for another five years. Most of his early work, which
consisted in short stories and poems, was published under different pseudonyms.

In the 1950’s he moved to London, England. His first novel, A Brighter Sun, published in 1952,
was written during his voyage to the Old Continent. Then came his second novel, An Island is a
World. In 1956 The Lonely Londoners made its way to the public, receiving high praises and
international recognition. This novel deals with the black immigrant community and its life in
England, its “mother country”. It belongs to a trilogy which includes Moses Ascending (written
almost twenty years later) and Moses Migrating (1983) concerning the adventures and trials of
a black Caribbean immigrant, Moses Aloetta, in London.

After living in London for twenty-eight years, Selvon decided to go back to the Western
hemisphere, choosing Alberta, Canada, as his last residence, where he lived till his death. There
he worked as a visiting professor at the University of Victoria teaching creative writing. After the
end of that job, and just for a few months, he started working as a janitor at the University of
Calgary, before becoming writer-in-residence there.

As to his family life, he had four children: a daughter from his first marriage to Draupadi
Persaud in 1947, and two sons and a daughter from his second marriage, in 1963, to Althea
Daroux.

Sam Selvon died from a heart attack in Trinidad on 16 April 1994, on one of his visits to his
country.

Bibliography
1
Susheila Nasta, introduction to “Moses Migrating: A Novel” incomplete

2
“Oldtalk”:Two interviews with Sam Selvon - http://users.unimi.it/caribana/essays/caribana_1/SELVON%20S.%20-
%20J.%20THIEME%20and%20DOTTI._A.pdf
  A Brighter Sun (1952)
 An Island is a World (1955)

 The Lonely Londoners (1956)

 Ways of Sunlight (1957)

 Turn Again Tiger (1959)

 I Hear Thunder (1963)

 The Housing Lark (1965)

 The Plains of Caroni (1970)

 Those Who Eat the Cascadura (1972)

 Moses Ascending (1975)

 Moses Migrating (1983)

 Foreday Morning (1989)

 Eldorado West One, collected one-act plays (1989)

 Highway in the Sun and Other Plays (1991)

SAM SELVON’S STYLE