Peter Kempadoo

Last updated • 3 min readFrom Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia

Peter Kempadoo
Born1926
Guyana
Died24 August 2019 (aged 92)
London, England
Occupation(s)Writer and broadcaster
Notable workGuiana Boy (1960);
Old Thom's Harvest (1965)
ChildrenManganita, Kamala, Shamanee, Roshini, Malasula, Oonya, Sanjhevi, Valmiki, Anoushka

Peter "Lauchmonen" Kempadoo (1926 – 24 August 2019) was a writer and broadcaster from Guyana. He also worked as a development worker in the Caribbean, Africa and Asia. He moved in 1953 to the UK, where he built a career in print journalism as well as radio and television broadcasting, and published two novels, Guiana Boy in 1960 — the first novel by a Guyanese of Indian descent — and Old Thom's Harvest in 1965, before returning to Guyana in 1970. [1] He died in London, aged 92.

Contents

Biography

He was born on a sugar estate to James Kempadoo, aka Lauchmonen, and Priscilla Alemeloo Tambran, both Tamils. [2] Peter Kempadoo was educated first at St. Joseph Anglican School, then went on, at the age of 10, to attend Port Mourant Roman Catholic School. There he passed the Junior and Senior Cambridge examinations, before becoming a pupil-teacher at Port Mourant and, at 17, a certified teacher. [3] Moving in 1947 to Georgetown, he trained as a nurse at Georgetown Public Hospital, and reported on hospital matters for the Daily Argosy until he was invited to join the staff. [3]

Having married in 1952, Kempadoo migrated the following year with his family to England, where he worked for the BBC, [3] and the Central Office of Information. [1]

During this time he wrote his first novel, Guiana Boy. Published in 1960 (re-issued as Guyana Boy in 2002 by Peepal Tree Press), this was the first novel by a Guyanese of Indian descent. [3] It draws on his own life as the son of sugar workers to portray a world lacking in freedom, but where the workers struggle to maintain their identity as Madrassis in their rice plots, their fishing expeditions and in the feasts and festivities their ancestors brought from India. [4] The Caribbean Review of Books described the novel as "an intimate, clear-eyed portrait of Indo-Guyanese rural life", in which the author "channels the spirits of dignified misfits to dismantle the rigid hierarchies governing former plantation societies, all while honouring the polyglot traditions their descendants have elected to preserve." [5]

In addition to Guyana Boy, he was the author of another novel, Old Thom's Harvest (1965), which focuses on religious and ethnic practices in the life of a rural family. [6] Kempadoo's work has been anthologised in The Sun's Eye (ed. Anne Walmsley) and My Lovely Native Land (ed. A. J. Seymour). He has also co-authored with his wife a booklet entitled A–Z of Guyanese Words. [3]

In 1970, Kempadoo returned with his family to Guyana, where he produced local radio programmes such as Rural Life Guyana, We the People, Our Kind of Folk and Jarai (with Marc Matthews). [3] [7]

Kempadoo also lived for some years in Barbados, but was mainly based in the UK. [8]

In 2016, as part of activities held to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Guyana's independence, Kempadoo was honoured at the Jubilee Literary Festival at the University of Guyana. [9] In 2018 he was honoured with a Windrush Lifetime Service Award.

He died in London on 24 August 2019. [10]

Family life

Kempadoo married Rosemary Read in 1952 and Mayrose Abbensetts in 1992. He was the father of Manghanita, sexology professor Kamala, [11] Shamanee, photographer Roshini , [12] Malasula, Valmiki, novelist Oonya, Sanjhevi, and Anoushka. He lived in London, England.

Bibliography

Related Research Articles

Guyanese literature covers works including novels, poetry, plays and others written by people born or strongly-affiliated with Guyana. Formerly British Guiana, British language and style has an enduring impact on the writings from Guyana, which are done in English language and utilizing Guyanese Creole. Emigration has contributed to a large body of work relating the Guyanese diaspora experience.

Martin Wylde Carter was a Guyanese poet and political activist. Widely regarded as the greatest Guyanese poet, and one of the most important poets of the Caribbean region, Carter is best known for his poems of protest, resistance and revolution. He played an active role in Guyanese politics, particularly in the years leading up Independence in 1966 and those immediately following. He was famously imprisoned by the British government in Guyana in October 1953 under allegations of "spreading dissension", and again in June 1954 for taking part in a People's Progressive Party (PPP) procession. Shortly after being released from prison the first time, he published his best-known poetry collection, Poems of Resistance from British Guiana (1954).

Arthur James Seymour, or A. J. Seymour, was a Guyanese poet, essayist, memoirist, and founding editor of the literary journal Kyk-Over-Al.

Ian McDonald is a Caribbean-born poet and writer who describes himself as "Antiguan by ancestry, Trinidadian by birth, Guyanese by adoption, and West Indian by conviction." His ancestry on his father's side is Antiguan and Kittitian, and Trinidadian on his mother’s side. His only novel, The Humming-Bird Tree, first published in 1969, is considered a classic of Caribbean literature.

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.

Jan Rynveld Carew was a Guyana-born novelist, playwright, poet and educator, who lived at various times in The Netherlands, Mexico, England, France, Spain, Ghana, Jamaica, Canada and the United States.

Edgar Austin Mittelholzer was a Guyanese novelist, the earliest novelist from the West Indian region to establish himself in Europe and gain a significant European readership. Mittelholzer, who earned his living almost exclusively by writing fiction, is considered the first professional novelist to come out of the English-speaking Caribbean. His novels include characters and situations from a variety of places within the Caribbean, and range in time from the early period of European settlement to the 20th century. They feature a cross-section of ethnic groups and social classes, dealing with subjects of historical, political, psychological, and moral interest. Mittelholzer is "certainly the most prolific novelist to be produced by the Caribbean". Mittelholzer committed suicide in England in 1965.

Jan Lowe Shinebourne, also published as Janice Shinebourne, is a Guyanese novelist who now lives in England. In a unique position to be able to provide an insight into multicultural Caribbean culture, Shinebourne's is a rare and distinctive voice : She grew up on a colonial sugar plantation and was deeply affected by the dramatic changes her country went through in its transition from a colony to independence. She wrote her early novels to record this experience.

Clem Seecharan is a Guyanese writer and historian of the Indo-Caribbean experience, and of West Indies cricket. He was born in Guyana and has been based in England since 1986.

Michael Arthur Gilkes was a Caribbean literary critic, dramatist, poet, filmmaker and university lecturer. He was involved in theatre for more than 40 years, as a director, actor and playwright, winning the Guyana Prize for Drama in 1992 and 2006, as well as the Guyana Prize for Best Book of Poetry in 2002. He was also respected for his insight into and writings on the work of Wilson Harris.

Marc Matthews is a Guyanese writer, actor, broadcaster and producer.

Oonya Kempadoo is a novelist who was born in the United Kingdom of Guyanese parentage, her father being the writer Peter Kempadoo. She is the author of three well received novels: Buxton Spice (1998); Tide Running (2001); All Decent Animals (2013). She is a winner of the Casa de las Americas Literary Prize.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Denis Williams</span> Guyanese painter, writer and archaeologist (1923–1998)

Denis Williams was a Guyanese painter, author and archaeologist.

The National Library of Guyana is the legal deposit and copyright library for Guyana. Unlike many national libraries, it is also a public lending library and the headquarters of Guyana's public library service, with branches extending throughout the country. Founded in 1909, the National Library of Guyana is situated on the corner of Church Street and Main Street in central Georgetown. In 2007, the library recorded a collection of 397,893 books and a total of 22,058 members. Its collection includes the papers of A. J. Seymour and Ian McDonald.

Citizens or residents of the United Kingdom whose origins lie in Guyana are a part of the country's British Caribbean community. Guyana was a former British colony, British Guiana, responsible for moving large numbers of Africans and Indians for labor in the sugar industry. British Guyanese are notable for their contributions to literature and music.

Roshini Kempadoo is a British photographer, media artist, and academic. For more than 20 years she has been a lecturer and researcher in photography, digital media production, and cultural studies in a variety of educational institutions, and is currently a professor in Photography and Visual Culture at the University of Westminster.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Edwina Melville</span> Guyanese writer and activist (1926–1993)

Edwina Melville (1926–1993) was a Guyanese writer, teacher, politician and advocate of the first-nation Wapishana peoples of the Southern Rupununi, Guyana.

Egbert Martin, writing under the alias Leo, was a 19th-century Guyanese poet.

Kamala Kempadoo is a British-Guyanese author and sexology professor who lives in Barbados and Canada. She has written multiple books about sex work and sex trafficking and won awards from the Caribbean Studies Association and the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality for her distinguished and lifetime achievement in the sexology field.

References

  1. 1 2 Vibert C. Cambridge, Chapter 8, "The 1970s: “Making the Small Man a Real Man", Musical Life in Guyana: History and Politics of Controlling Creativity, University Press of Mississippi, 2015.
  2. Herdeck, Donald (1979). Caribbean Writers. Washington, D.C.: Three Continents Press. p. 121. ISBN   9780914478744 . Retrieved 17 April 2011.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Petamber Persaud, "Peter Kempadoo – Preserving our literary heritage", Kyk-Over-Al, 18 March 2006. (Source: Interview with Peter Kempadoo on Monday 13 March 2006, Guyana Chronicle , Georgetown, Guyana.)
  4. Pirbhai, Mariam (2009). Mythologies of Migration, Vocabularies of Indenture. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. p. 106. ISBN   978-0-8020-9964-8 . Retrieved 17 April 2011.
  5. Stephen Narain, "Patois canticles" (interview with Oonya Kempadoo), The Caribbean Review of Books, August 2015.
  6. Jill E. Albada-Jelgersma, "Kempadoo, Peter (Lauchmonen)", in Daniel Balderston, Mike Gonzalez, Ana M. Lopez (eds), Encyclopedia of Contemporary Latin American and Caribbean Cultures, Routledge, 2000, p. 811.
  7. Rakesh Rampertab, "Women Singers & Musicians of Grove", Horizons, Issue 4, 2009, p. 43.
  8. Peter Kempadoo Profile at Peepal Tree Press. Retrieved 5 February 2022.
  9. "Peter Kempadoo Honoured At Jubilee Literary Festival". YouTube, 16 May 2016. Retrieved 5 February 2022.
  10. Sutherland, Laurel (29 August 2019). "Celebrated Guyanese writer Peter Kempadoo passes away". Stabroek News. Retrieved 17 July 2020.
  11. "York University professor recognized for work in sexology — Ron Fanfair". 6 July 2019. Archived from the original on 6 July 2019. Retrieved 1 April 2022.
  12. Nalini Mohabir, "An Interview with Roshini Kempadoo", exPLUSultra, Vol. 2, December 2010.