Work

“He Had a Sympathetic Understanding of Everybody”: Remembering Sam Selvon — a Conversation with Ramabai Espinet

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: In this interview the writer Ramabai Espinet converses with Nalini Mohabir and Ronald Cummings about her encounters with Samuel Selvon and with his writing across the years. Her memories range from her girlhood in San Fernando to memorial gatherings for Selvon in the diaspora. Through these accounts she maps an understanding of Selvon as part of his literary generation and traces his unique place in Trinidadian letters. What emerges is a deeply sensitive portrait. This interview is a work of intergenerational memory that weaves together narratives of home and diaspora to offer readers a meaningful image of Selvon and his influence. It also advances a nuanced sense of the interconnected trajectories of Selvon and Espinet as two important writers of the diaspora.

Source: Anthurium A Caribbean Studies Journal

DOI: 10.33596/anth.537

Authors: Ramabai Espinet, Nalini Mohabir, Ronald Cummings

Institutions: University of Toronto, McMaster University, Concordia University

Language: English

Topic: Caribbean and African Literature and Culture

Subfield: Religious studies

Field: Arts and Humanities

Domain: Social Sciences

Open Access status: diamond

OpenAlex ID: W4414275596

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