Ferdinand Dennis

Last updated

Ferdinand Dennis

FRSL
Born (1956-03-18) 18 March 1956 (age 67) [1]
Kingston, Jamaica
Education Leicester University (1975–78);
Birkbeck College, London University (1978–79)
Occupation(s)Writer, journalist and broadcaster
Notable workBehind the Frontlines: Journey into Afro-Britain (1988);
The Sleepless Summer (1989);
The Last Blues Dance (1996);
Duppy Conqueror (1998)
Awards1988 Martin Luther King Memorial Prize

Ferdinand Dennis FRSL (born 18 March 1956) [2] is a writer, broadcaster, journalist and lecturer, who is Jamaican by birth but at the age of eight moved to England, where his parents had migrated in the late 1950s. [3] Dr James Procter notes: "Perhaps as a result of his Caribbean background (a region probably marked more than any other by movements and migration), Dennis is a writer ultimately more concerned with routes than roots. This is foregrounded in much of his fictional work, notably his most recent and ambitious novel to date, Duppy Conqueror (1998), a novel which moves from 1930s Jamaica to postwar London and Liverpool, to Africa. Similarly, Dennis' non-fiction centres on journeying rather than arrival, from Behind the Frontlines: Journey into Afro-Britain (1988) to Voices of the Crossing: The Impact of Britain on Writers from Asia, the Caribbean and Africa (2000)." [2]

Contents

Biography

Ferdinand Dennis was born in Kingston, Jamaica, [4] and grew up in north Paddington, London, [5] where he and his siblings – two brothers and a sister – relocated in 1964 to join their parents. [3]

Dennis read sociology at Leicester University (1975–78), [2] [6] after which he was employed as an educational researcher in Handsworth, Birmingham. [7] [8] He studied for a master's degree at Birkbeck College, London University (1978–79). [2] [6] In 1991 he was made Honorary Research Fellow at Birkbeck. [4] He received a Wingate Scholarship in 1995. [9] He has lectured in Nigeria, and from 2003 to 2011 taught Creative and Media Writing courses at Middlesex University. [10]

As a broadcaster, he has written and presented numerous talks and documentaries for BBC Radio 4 [11] – such as the series After Dread and Anger (1989), [12] Journey Round My People, for which he travelled in West Africa, Back To Africa (1990) [13] [14] and Work Talk (1991–92; conversations with black people living in Britain, including Diane Abbott, Valerie Amos, Emeka Anyaoku, Norman Beaton, Winston Branch, Margaret Busby, Merle Collins, Val McCalla, and Josette Simon, produced by Marina Salandy-Brown) [15] – as well as a television programme about Africa for Channel 4.

Dennis has also worked as a journalist for publications including Frontline and City Limits magazines. [2] His writing has been published in a range of magazines, newspapers and anthologies, among them The Guardian , [16] Granta , [17] Critical Quarterly , [18] Black British Culture and Society: A Text Reader (ed. Kwesi Owusu, 2000), Hurricane Hits England: An Anthology of Writing About Black Britain (ed. Onyekachi Wambu, 2000), and IC3: The Penguin Book of New Black Writing in Britain (2000). [19]

With Naseem Khan, Dennis co-edited Voices of the Crossing: The Impact of Britain on Writers from Asia, the Caribbean and Africa (2000). He also was a co-researcher (with Kole Omotoso and Alfred Zack-Williams) of the 1992 compilation West Africa Over 75 Years: selections from the raw material of history, edited by Kaye Whiteman.

Dennis is the author of three novels – The Sleepless Summer (1989), The Last Blues Dance (1996); and Duppy Conqueror (1998) – and two travelogues: Behind the Frontlines: Journey into Afro-Britain (1988) – his first book, which won the Martin Luther King Memorial Prize – and Back to Africa: A Journey (1992), in which he visited Cameroon, Ghana, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Nigeria and Senegal. In 2021, his collection of short stories written over five decades, The Black and White Museum, came out from HopeRoad Publishers. [20]

Dennis was elected to the management committee of the Society of Authors in October 2017, to serve for a three-year term. [21] [22]

Critical reception

Dennis's first novel, The Sleepless Summer (1989), is said to enjoy "cult status in Britain's African-Caribbean community", [23] while his second, The Last Blues Dance (1996), is described as "Warm, humorous, poignant... a wonderfully engaging novel that weaves together the lives of a rich cast of characters, creating a sense of both community and individuality, tenderness and suspense." [23]

In praise of 1998's Duppy Conqueror, World Literature Today said:

"Ferdinand Dennis is faultless in his depiction of artifacts, customs, speech, and behavior in the three continents of Marshall's adventures; his descriptions of the externals and his analyses of the internal motivations of his characters–both minor and principal–are quite arresting, whether he is writing about 'the unintended arrogance of the shy person' or commenting on 'love that came without duty and expired without money, leaving a rancid odour of guilt.' Duppy Conqueror is neither a bildungsroman nor a political treatise, though it shares some of the elements of both subgenres; it is almost a fictional biography of a sixty-year-old thinking proletarian searching for racial and ideological roots. Some readers will read Dennis's novel as a roman a clef, others as a contemporary version of Claude McKay's Banana Bottom and Home to Harlem extended to Africa; but few will read it without admiration and considerable satisfaction." [24]

Other favourable coverage came from The Times Higher Education : "This very ambitious novel is nothing less than a history of the twentieth century, seen though Afro-Caribbean spectacles... Framed as a postcolonial picaresque, it has a hurtling energy which raises it above Dennis's previous work. Finally, and most importantly, Duppy Conqueror brims with humour and low comedy. It is a pleasing change from the wilfully ponderous treatment of historical memory and diasporic identity in much contemporary postcolonial fiction." [25] According to The Independent ′s Rachel Halliburton: "Duppy Conqueror presents a giant's eye view of the exiled African psyche. An ambitious and compelling novel.... This is a novel packed to the brim with layers of symbolism, individual and cultural memories, and fascinating historical stories. Reading it once just won't be enough." [26]

Calling Voices of the Crossing (2000) "a fine anthology of 14 memoirs by writers from Africa, the Caribbean, India and Pakistan" (E. A. Markham, Attia Hosain, Beryl Gilroy, John Figueroa, David Dabydeen, Mulk Raj Anand, Dom Moraes, Buchi Emecheta, Rukhsana Ahmad, G. V. Desani, Homi Bhabha, James Berry, Farrukh Dhondy and Nirad Chaudhuri), the New Statesman reviewer Robert Winder wrote: "...the memoirs in this book, while not the major works of any of the writers concerned, might be as significant as their more ambitious work.... They are more direct, eye-opening tributes to the spirited resolve that underpins all literature, not just 'colonial' literature." [27]

On the publication of his 2021 book The Black and White Museum, Margaret Busby described Dennis as "[a] writer inspired by the idea and realities of Africa and the African diaspora, which he has explored in novels, short stories and travelogues, creating a unique body of work that deserves greater recognition", [20] while Maya Jaggi's review in The Guardian said that the collection "confirms Ferdinand Dennis as a flâneur and urban philosopher exploring territory he first began to map in his now classic novels." [28] Amidst other favourable critical attention, Gary Younge characterised Dennis as "an elegant writer, both in fiction and non-fiction, who deftly weaves the tales of the diaspora into his work", while Yvonne Brewster noted: "Dennis does not disappoint... Riveting sensitive snapshots of inner city London life." [20]

Bibliography

Novels
Non-fiction
As editor

Awards and recognition

Related Research Articles

Postcolonial literature is the literature by people from formerly colonized countries, originating from all continents except Antarctica. Postcolonial literature often addresses the problems and consequences of the decolonization of a country, especially questions relating to the political and cultural independence of formerly subjugated people, and themes such as racialism and colonialism. A range of literary theory has evolved around the subject. It addresses the role of literature in perpetuating and challenging what postcolonial critic Edward Said refers to as cultural imperialism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Buchi Emecheta</span> Nigerian writer (1944–2017)

Florence Onyebuchi "Buchi" Emecheta was a Nigerian-born novelist, based in the UK from 1962, who also wrote plays and an autobiography, as well as works for children. She was the author of more than 20 books, including Second Class Citizen (1974), The Bride Price (1976), The Slave Girl (1977) and The Joys of Motherhood (1979). Most of her early novels were published by Allison and Busby, where her editor was Margaret Busby.

Andrea Levy was an English author best known for the novels Small Island (2004) and The Long Song (2010). She was born in London to Jamaican parents, and her work explores topics related to British Jamaicans and how they negotiate racial, cultural and national identities.

Moyez G. Vassanji is a Canadian novelist and editor, who writes under the name M. G. Vassanji. Vassanji's work has been translated into several languages. As of 2020, he has published nine novels, as well as two short-fiction collections and two nonfiction books. Vassanji's writings, which have received considerable critical acclaim, often focus on issues of colonial history, migration, diaspora, citizenship, gender and ethnicity.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jamaica Kincaid</span> Antiguan-American novelist, essayist, gardener, and gardening writer

Jamaica Kincaid is an Antiguan-American novelist, essayist, gardener, and gardening writer. She was born in St. John's, Antigua. She lives in North Bennington, Vermont and is Professor of African and African American Studies in Residence at Harvard University during the academic year.

Courttia Newland is a British writer of Jamaican and Barbadian heritage.

Earl Wilbert Lovelace is a Trinidadian novelist, journalist, playwright, and short story writer. He is particularly recognized for his descriptive, dramatic fiction on Trinidadian culture: "Using Trinidadian dialect patterns and standard English, he probes the paradoxes often inherent in social change as well as the clash between rural and urban cultures." As Bernardine Evaristo notes, "Lovelace is unusual among celebrated Caribbean writers in that he has always lived in Trinidad. Most writers leave to find support for their literary endeavours elsewhere and this, arguably, shapes the literature, especially after long periods of exile. But Lovelace's fiction is deeply embedded in Trinidadian society and is written from the perspective of one whose ties to his homeland have never been broken."

Fred D'Aguiar is a British-Guyanese poet, novelist, and playwright of Portuguese descent. He is currently Professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

Sir Theodore Wilson Harris was a Guyanese writer. He initially wrote poetry, but subsequently became a novelist and essayist. His writing style is often said to be abstract and densely metaphorical, and his subject matter wide-ranging. Harris is considered one of the most original and innovative voices in postwar literature in English.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Antoni</span> West Indian writer

Robert Antoni is a West Indian writer who was awarded the 1999 Aga Khan Prize for Fiction by The Paris Review for My Grandmother's Tale of How Crab-o Lost His Head. He is a Guggenheim Fellow for 2010 for his work on the historical novel As Flies to Whatless Boys.

David Dabydeen is a Guyanese-born broadcaster, novelist, poet and academic. He was formerly Guyana's Ambassador to UNESCO from 1997 to 2010 and the youngest Member of the UNESCO Executive Board (1993–1997), elected by the General Council of all Member States of UNESCO. He was appointed Guyana's Ambassador Plenipotentiary and Extraordinaire to China, from 2010 to 2015. He is one of the longest serving diplomats in the history of Guyana, most of his work done in a voluntary unpaid capacity.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">British African-Caribbean people</span> Residents of the United Kingdom

British African-Caribbean people are an ethnic group in the United Kingdom. They are British citizens whose ancestry originates from the Caribbean or they are nationals of the Caribbean who reside in the UK. There are some self-identified Afro-Caribbean people who are multi-racial. The most common and traditional use of the term African-Caribbean community is in reference to groups of residents continuing aspects of Caribbean culture, customs and traditions in the UK.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">George Lamming</span> Barbadian novelist, essayist and poet (1927–2022)

George William Lamming OCC was a Barbadian novelist, essayist, and poet. He first won critical acclaim for In the Castle of My Skin, his 1953 debut novel. He also held academic posts, including as a distinguished visiting professor at Duke University and a visiting professor in the Africana Studies Department of Brown University, and lectured extensively worldwide.

Alecia McKenzie is a Jamaican writer and journalist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elleke Boehmer</span>

Elleke Boehmer, FRSL, FRHistS is Professor of World Literature in English at the University of Oxford, and a Professorial Governing Body Fellow at Wolfson College. She is an acclaimed novelist and a founding figure in the field of Postcolonial Studies, internationally recognised for her research in colonial and postcolonial literature and theory. Her main areas of interest include the literature of empire and resistance to empire; sub-Saharan African and South Asian literatures; modernism; migration and diaspora; feminism, masculinity, and identity; nationalism; terrorism; J. M. Coetzee, Katherine Mansfield, and Nelson Mandela; and life writing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lindsay Barrett</span> Jamaican-born poet, novelist, essayist and journalist (born 1941)

Carlton Lindsay Barrett, also known as Eseoghene, is a Jamaican-born poet, novelist, essayist, playwright, journalist and photographer, whose work has interacted with the Caribbean Artists Movement in the UK, the Black Arts Movement in the US, and pan-Africanism in general. Leaving Jamaica in the early 1960s, he moved to Britain, where he freelanced as a broadcaster and journalist, also travelling and living elsewhere in Europe, before deciding to relocate to West Africa. Since the latter 1960s he has been based mainly in Nigeria, of which country he became a citizen in the mid-1980s, while continuing his connection to cultural ventures in the UK and US.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Leone Ross</span> British writer (born 1969)

Leone Ross FRSL is a British novelist, short story writer, editor, journalist and academic, who is of Jamaican and Scottish ancestry.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marlon James (novelist)</span> Jamaican novelist (born 1970)

Marlon James is a Jamaican writer. He is the author of five novels: John Crow's Devil (2005), The Book of Night Women (2009), A Brief History of Seven Killings (2014), which won him the 2015 Man Booker Prize, Black Leopard, Red Wolf (2019), and Moon Witch, Spider King (2022). Now living in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in the U.S., James teaches literature at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota. He is also a faculty lecturer at St. Francis College's Low Residency MFA in Creative Writing.

Mohamed Ismith Khan, better known as Ismith Khan, was a Trinidad and Tobago-born American author and educator. He is best known for his novel The Jumbie Bird, a semi-autobiographical work which blends Indian and Afro-Caribbean mythology and experience to explore the creation of a new Indo-Caribbean identity.

Amon Saba Saakana, formerly known as Sebastian Clarke, is a Trinidad-born writer, journalist, lecturer, filmmaker and publisher, who migrated to Britain in 1965. In the 1970s, he founded the publishing imprint Karnak House in London. As an author, his books encompass poetry, fiction, literary criticism, and works on cultural and historical topics.

References

  1. ↑ Aatkar, Sofia, "Ferdinand Dennis", The Literary Encyclopedia, 17 October 2016.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Ferdinand Dennis" Archived 18 May 2015 at the Wayback Machine , British Council, Literature Matters.
  3. 1 2 Ferdinand Dennis, "My father's island", The Guardian , 10 June 2000.
  4. 1 2 Ferdinand Dennis author page, HarperCollins.
  5. ↑ "Postmark Notting Hill: Running Down The Hill", Marxism Today, September 1988, p. 9.
  6. 1 2 Ferdinand Dennis at LinkedIn.
  7. ↑ Handsworth Alternative Scheme.
  8. ↑ Ferdinand Dennis, "Birmingham: Blades of Frustration" (from Beyond the Frontlines), in Kwesi Owusu (ed.), Black British Culture and Society: A Text Reader, p. 195.
  9. ↑ "Mr Ferdinand Dennis", Wingate Scholarships.
  10. ↑ Patsy Hickman, "Following the Writer's Flame", National Association of Writers in Education (NAWE).
  11. ↑ Conference Contributors, NAWE, 2010.
  12. ↑ "After Dread and Anger", BBC Radio 4.
  13. ↑ "Back To Africa", Radio Listings.
  14. ↑ "Dear Mr. Ferdinand Dennis...", English 10: Writing Portfolio, Catholic Memorial High School, 2006–2007.
  15. ↑ "Work Talk", Radio Listings.
  16. ↑ Ferdinand Dennis, "The choice of a new generation...", The Guardian, 19 August 2000.
  17. ↑ Ferdinand Dennis page, Granta.
  18. ↑ F. Dennis (1999), "The Black and White Museum", Critical Quarterly, 41: 28–34. doi: 10.1111/1467-8705.00259. Wiley Online Library, 24 January 2003.
  19. ↑ "IC3: the Penguin book of new black writing in Britain", WorldCat.
  20. 1 2 3 "The Black and White Museum". HopeRoad.
  21. ↑ "Mary Hoffman, David Donachie, Philip Womack and Ferdinand Dennis elected to the Management Committee", The Society of Authors, 2017.
  22. ↑ Katherine Cowdrey, "Dennis, Hoffman and Womack join SoA management committee", The Bookseller , 17 October 2017.
  23. 1 2 "The Last Blues Dance" [ permanent dead link ], Kentake Page.
  24. ↑ A. L. McLeod, Review of Duppy Conqueror, World Literature Today, 22 June 1999. The Free Library.
  25. ↑ "Paradise, Jamaica", Times Higher Education, 29 June 1998.
  26. ↑ Rachel Halliburton, "The road out of Paradise", The Independent, 19 September 1998.
  27. ↑ Robert Winder, "The longest journey. Post-imperial writing is suffused by a sense of exile and loss. But what the authors have most in common is the pursuit of individual freedom...", New Statesman, 13 March 2000.
  28. ↑ Jaggi, Maya (17 December 2021). "Book of the day | The Black and White Museum by Ferdinand Dennis review – city snapshots". The Guardian.
  29. ↑ Shaffi, Sarah; Knight, Lucy (12 July 2022). "Adjoa Andoh, Russell T Davies and Michaela Coel elected to Royal Society of Literature". The Guardian. ISSN   0261-3077 . Retrieved 23 June 2023.

Further reading

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.