Latineos - Latin America, Caribbean, arts, culture

How do we give a voice to those on the margins? We must, first, find their voice – for every human has a voice. We can wander into their world, into shops or up into high-rise flats, to listen out for conversation. Yet, what if we are talking of the furthest margins - those who are so isolated and harried as to barely have conversation?

Lawson Edward ‘Kamau’ Brathwaite was born in Bridgetown, Barbados, in 1930. He studied at Harrison College in Barbados before attending Cambridge University on a scholarship. He attained his BA in History in 1953 from Pembroke College and continued studying to get his teacher’s certificate one year later.

Within Caribbean literary circles, Kamau Brathwaite (née Lawson Edward Brathwaite, Bridgetown, Barbados, 1930) stands among the most important, influential, prolific and respected names, alongside, for instance, Derek Walcott and V S Naipaul and George Lamming – all members of the same remarkable generation of writers, who, quite suddenly, put Caribbean literature ‘on the map’ towards the end of the decade of the fifties and through the nineteen-sixties.