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Sharon Maas (born 1951) is a Guyanese-born novelist, who was educated in England, lived in India, and subsequently in Germany and in Sussex, United Kingdom. She is the author of The Sugar Planters Daughter.
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Sharon Maas (born 1951) is a Guyanese-born novelist, who was educated in England, lived in India, and subsequently in Germany and in Sussex, United Kingdom. She is the author of The Sugar Planters Daughter.
Maas was born in Georgetown, Guyana. She came from a prominently political family of Dutch, Amerindian and Afro-Caribbean descent. [1] Her mother was one of Guyana's earliest feminists, human rights activists and consumer advocates; [2] her father was Press Secretary to the Marxist opposition leader and later President of Guyana, Dr Cheddi Jagan. [3]
She was educated in Guyana and England. After leaving school she worked as a trainee reporter with the Guyana Graphic in Georgetown, Guyana. She later wrote feature articles for the Sunday Chronicle as a staff journalist. [4]
In 1973 she travelled overland to India via England, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. After two years in India she moved to Germany, where she married a German. She lived in Germany for over 40 years and in 2018 moved to Ireland.
She has written ten novels to date. Her first three novels, published by HarperCollins, focus substantially on their respective protagonists' coming-of-age experience and struggle to find their own, unique identity and place in life ("Bildungsroman"), and are chiefly set against Indian and Guyanese backgrounds. Her fourth book, Sons of Gods is a retelling of the Mahabharata. In 2014 she signed with the UK digital publisher Bookouture, which re-published Of Marriageable Age in May 2014 and several new works. Peacocks Dancing was republished as The Lost Daughter of India and The Speech of Angels was republished as The Orphan of India. Her work has been translated into German, Spanish, French, Danish, Hungarian and Polish.
Georgetown is the capital and largest city of Guyana. It is situated in Demerara-Mahaica, region 4, on the Atlantic Ocean coast, at the mouth of the Demerara River. It is nicknamed the "Garden City of the Caribbean." It is the retail, administrative, and financial services centre of the country, and the city accounts for a large portion of Guyana's GDP. The city recorded a population of 118,363 in the 2012 census.
The history of Guyana begins about 35,000 years ago with the arrival of humans coming from Eurasia. These migrants became the Carib and Arawak tribes, who met Alonso de Ojeda's first expedition from Spain in 1499 at the Essequibo River. In the ensuing colonial era, Guyana's government was defined by the successive policies of Spanish, French, Dutch, and British settlers.
Demerara is a historical region in the Guianas on the north coast of South America which is now part of the country of Guyana. It was a Dutch colony until 1815 and a county of British Guiana from 1838 to 1966. It was located about the lower courses of the Demerara River, and its main town was Georgetown.
Islam in Guyana is the third largest religion in the country after Christianity and Hinduism, respectively. According to the 2002 census, 7.3% of the country is Muslim. However, a Pew Research survey from 2010 estimates that 6.4% of the country is Muslim. Islam was first introduced to Guyana via slaves from West Africa, but was suppressed on plantations until Muslims of India, Pakistan and Afghanistan were brought to the country as indentured labor.
Afro-Guyanese people are generally descended from the enslaved people brought to Guyana from the coast of West Africa to work on sugar plantations during the era of the Atlantic slave trade. Coming from a wide array of backgrounds and enduring conditions that severely constrained their ability to preserve their respective cultural traditions contributed to the adoption of Christianity and the values of British colonists.
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.
Peter "Lauchmonen" Kempadoo 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. He died in London, aged 92.
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.
Ryhaan Shah is an Indo-Guyanese writer born in Berbice, Guyana. She is active in Guyanese public life as the President of the Guyanese Indian Heritage Association (GIHA).
Joyce Sparer Adler was an American critic, playwright, and teacher. She was a founding member of the faculty of the University of Guyana, writer of important critical analyses of Wilson Harris and Herman Melville, and 1988 president of the Melville Society.
Ian Michael Valz was a Guyanese playwright, award-winning filmmaker, and actor. On April 28, 2010 he died of cancer at St. Maarten Medical Center.
Alfred Athiel Thorne, LLD, MA, aka A.A. Thorne, was a popular elected statesman, incisive author, pioneer for educational access, and human rights advocate in British Guiana. In 1894, Dr. Thorne founded and oversaw the world's first co-educational private secondary school of its kind, providing quality educational access to talented students regardless of their gender, ethnicity, color, or socio-economic status. Called a "Hero of the People", Thorne subsequently served as a popularly-elected official for more than 50 years, working to unify the collective voices of working-class white British colonists, Indo-Guyanese, Afro-Guyanese, Chinese, Portuguese, and Aboriginal Amerindians communities across British Guyana. He served numerous roles at both the country-wide and city levels, including as Mayor of British Guiana's capital city, Georgetown. Thorne served many decades as an educator, writer and elected official in British Guiana, creating positive and lasting impact for generations by advocating for the core principles of educational access, workplace safety, freedom, and self-determination.
Doris Elrina Rogers was a Guyanese academic who specialised in fine arts. She was a professor at the University of Guyana from 1988 to her retirement in 2008, and a professor emeritus thereafter.
Plantation Peter's Hall was a plantation on the east bank of the River Demerara in Dutch Guiana and British Guiana. It was probably laid out in the mid-eighteenth century and by the early nineteenth century had over 200 slaves before that institution was abolished in the British Empire.
Valerie Muriel Rodway was a Guyanese composer of cultural and patriotic songs, inspired by the events leading up to Guyana's independence in 1966. She is best known for composing music to accompany Guyana national poetry, like Arise, Guyana, Kanaïma, and the Martin Carter's Guyanese Independence poem Let Freedom Awaken. For the next two decades, school children were taught the songs she and others composed to inspire patriotism and cultural affinity. She selected the poetry for her compositions based upon her principles and values, first developed among her parents and siblings.
The COVID-19 pandemic in Guyana is part of the worldwide pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2. The virus was confirmed to have reached Guyana on 11 March 2020. The first case was a woman who travelled from New York, a 52-year-old woman suffering from underlying health conditions, including diabetes and hypertension. The woman died at the Georgetown Public Hospital.
Deolatchmee Ramotar is a retired Guyanese accountant who was the First Lady of Guyana from 2011 to 2015. Her spouse, Donald Ramotar, was the 7th President of Guyana. They were married in 1974. They have three children, Lisaveta, Alvaro, and Alexei.
Joan Cambridge, also known as Joan Cambridge Mayfield, is a Guyanese writer.
Cécile Nobrega, née Burgan was a Guyanese-born British teacher, poet, playwright, composer and community activist. She led a 15-year campaign to establish a monument in Stockwell Memorial Gardens, Bronze Woman, the first public statue of a black woman to be on permanent display in England.
Lisa Punch is a Guyana-born American singer, songwriter, actress, and former radio presenter. She is known for being a contestant on the Rising Star ABC television show in 2014 and as the Miss Guyana in 2015. She is also the founder of the Prevention of Teenage Suicide-Guyana (POTS) organization.
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