Eric Walrond: The Critical Heritage

by Louis J. Parascandola (Editor), Carl A. Wade (Editor)

Overview

Eric Walrond (1898–1966), author of Tropic Death (1926), remains a seminal but elusive figure in Harlem Renaissance and Caribbean diasporic literature. Although this collection remains his only major text, Walrond was in fact quite prolific, penning several more fictions and journalistic writings. Born in British Guiana (Guyana), he endured a peripatetic existence, beleaguered at every turn by those colonial crises and conflicts that constitute the central concerns of his fiction and journalism.

Despite the enduring popularity of Tropic Death, there has been little sustained critical examination of Walrond’s achievement. In Eric Walrond: The Critical Heritage, Louis J. Parascandola and Carl A. Wade address this deficiency, fashioning the first critical anthology on Walrond. The ten essays in this volume employ a variety of literary, cultural and sociological approaches to illuminate the art and imagination of a writer celebrated as one of the most complex authors of the Harlem Renaissance. Included in the collection are two early commentaries by noted West Indian critic Kenneth Ramchand (his article is revised for this volume) and the late American scholar Robert Bone, as well as contributions by more contemporary voices. This comprehensive dissection of Walrond’s life and writings reveals an oeuvre that still has much to contribute to discussions about modern black literary and cultural studies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9789766402952
Publisher:	The University of the West Indies Press
Publication date:	11/30/2012
Pages:	246
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Louis J. Parascandola is Professor of English, Long Island University, Brooklyn, New York. His publications include “Look for Me All Around You”: Anglophone Caribbean Immigrants in the Harlem Renaissance, “Winds Can Wake up the Dead”: An Eric Walrond Reader and, with Carl A. Wade, In Search of Asylum: The Later Writings of Eric Walrond.

Carl A. Wade is former Senior Lecturer, Literatures in English, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, Barbados. He is co-editor, with Louis J. Parascandola, of In Search of Asylum: The Later Writings of Eric Walrond.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Selected Chronology of Eric Walrond xi

Introduction Carl A. Wade Louis J. Parascandola 1

Part 1 Pioneering Voices 17

1 The Writer Who Ran Away: Eric Walrond and Tropic Death Kenneth Ramchand 19

2 Eric Walrond: From Down Home: Origins of the Afro-American Short Story Robert Bone 35

Part 2 Modern Critical Views 55

3 "All Look Alike in Habana": Archaeologies of Blackness across Eric Walrond's Archipelago Michelle A. Stephens 57

4 Foreign Negro Flash Agents: Eric Walrond and the Discrepancies of Diaspora Louis Chude-Sokei 72

5 Genre, Gender and Eric Walrond's Equivocal Transnational Vision Rhonda Frederick 100

6 Eric Walrond and the Proletarian Arts Movement Michael Niblett 128

Part 3 Biographical Sketches 147

7 Eric Walrond and the Dynamics of White Patronage during the Harlem Renaissance Carl A. Wade Robert Bone Louis J. Parascandola 149

8 A Prism so Strange: The Biography of Eric Walrond James Davis 167

9 A West Indian Grows in Brooklyn: The Early American Experiences of Eric Walrond Louis J. Parascandola James Davis 188

10 Exile on Main Street: Eric Walrond and Garyeyism in Great Britain in the 1930s Carl Pedersen 202

Selected Bibliography and Works of Interest on Eric Walrond 215

Index 219

Contributors 231

Editorial Reviews

. . . a great work of literary reclamation, a storehouse of rare scholarly research exploring the cultural politics of the Harlem Renaissance (and its discontents) as illuminated by the troubling legacy of the enigmatic Caribbean-born writer. . . In the process . . . [Eric] Walrond is recuperated, rehabilitated and restored to the circuits of literary, cultural and sociological analysis.”

– Annie Paul, Senior Publications Officer, University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica

From the Publisher