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| Austin Clarke |
| 奧斯丁•克拉克 |
| 圖片來源： |
| 主要文類：Others |
| 資料提供者：Kate Liu劉紀雯 |
| 關鍵字詞：Carribean-Canadian
Caribbean diaspora |
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 Brief Biography
Interview
His Barbadian-Canadian identity
Themes and Patterns of his work
Works
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Brief
Biography
Clarke-- born
in Barbados in 1934. Left for Toronto in 1955, a year-long
stay in Barbados in 1975.'
Austin
Clark was born in Barbados in 1934 and came to Canada
to attend university in 1955. He has had a varied and
distinguished career as a broadcaster, civil rights leader, and
professor. He has published seven novels - including the
"Toronto Trilogy", five short-story collections, including
"when he was Free and Young and Used to Wear Silks", "When Women Rule",
and, more recently, "There Are No Elders - and two memoirs, "Growing Up
Stupid Under the Union Jack" and "A Passage Back Home". The
Origin of Waves is his eighth novel. Austin
Clarke: A Biography by Stella Algoo-Baksh was published in
1994 and "The Austin Clark Reader", selected writings, in
1996. Austin Clark lives in Toronto.
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Interview
about his cultural and identity and "Griff!"
- on
immigrants and his cultural identity: (OS interview: Hutcheon)
Isn't it a
fact that there are many Canadians who are also in and out of
low-paying jobs, because they may lack motivation or formal
education? Who or what, then, is responsible for the tragic
ending?
68 [The
protagonist in "Canadian Experience"], as you see from the flashback,
from the discussion between his father and himself. I would
say that the immigrant to some extent must bear some responsibility for
his plight in this country, but I must also say that the extent to
which an immigrant fails or is perceived to be a failure, to my mind,
is determined by the decency of the environment in which he finds
himself.
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His
Barbadian-Canadian identity
It took me considerable
time to decide to be a Canadian citizen—from 1955 until 1981—and at
that time I was not going through any anxiousness of duality; I just
was not Canadian; I was Barbadian. That is not to say that,
now that I am Barbadian by nature—the best of me is Barbadian; the best
of my memories are Barbadian. …the problems of duality arise
each time there is a threat to my stability, each time there is a slur
on a whole group of persons with whom I could easily identify, each
time there is a slur on a larger group of persons with whom I
politically have to identify.Hutcheon
p. 69
"In Barbados,
I breathe in the smell of the soil, I taste the scandals of the
landscape. The mud through which I trample and the sand that
pours through my fingers are the roots and ruins I spoke about, ... It
does tend to make my tentative accomplishments in this country empty,
and at the same time, over-important and inflated."
Clarkes speaks about a lack of what he calls ruins and roots in the
imigrants' life, and how that has left them like Eliot's hollow men,
whose voices are reduced to meaningless whispering.
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Themes
and Patterns of his work
In many of his short
stories and novels, Clarkes has dealt extensively with
the lack of roots and ruins in the lives of immigrants
in Canada, and the consequent damage to the psychological and emotional
health of these men and women.
(Harney 131)
the
overall pattern of his work the choice of topics shifts
from peasant poverty in Barbados, in the earliest fiction, thence to
immigrant experiences in Canada, and finally, the probing analysis of
Canadian and Caribbean nationhood. ( Brown
p. 8; see list of his work
)
the
wife in "Griff"
the wife was aware of the destructiveness in the character of the
husband; but she was painted with a veneer of English gentility, part
of which meant that you do not wash your linen in public. She
understood that she had a certain, strange loyalty to this man, and
that he had to be presented, so far as her reaction to his
idiosyncrasies was concerned, in a positive manner. (Hutcheon p. 95)
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Works
- Peasant
poverty in Barbados: The Surviviors of the
Crossing
Amongst Thistles and Thorns
- Autobiography:
Growing Up Stupid Under the Union Jack
- Toronto
Trilogy: The Meeting Point, Storm
of Fortune, The Bigger Light
- Short
Stories about Toronto:
When He Was Free and Young and He Used to Wear Silks
When Women Rule Nine
Men Who Laughed
In This City
There Are No Elders
- Novel
about going back to Barbados:
The Prime Minister A
Passage Back Home
- Recent
Publications
The Austin Clarke Reader
The Origin of Waves, 1997, McClelland
& Stewart Inc. ISBN 0-7710-2127-5
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