Austin C(hesterfield) Clarke | Biography

Among West Indian Writers, Austin C. Clarke occupies a special position. While many other writers migrated to Great Britain and the United States, Clarke made Canada his adopted home and became the foremost recounter of the black West Indian immigrants' experience in Canada. Of his generation of West Indian novelists he is perhaps the most outspoken and bitter in depicting the experience of the poor black when confronted with the establishment, whether it is that of the white majority in Canada, the colonial expatriate, or the postcolonial ruling black middle class in Barbados. Clarke is perhaps better known for his Toronto novels and stories: the trilogy comprising The Meeting Point (1967), Storm of Fortune (1973), and The Bigger Light (1975); and his short-story collections When He Was Free and Young and He Used to Wear Silks (1971), When Women Rule (1985), and Nine Men Who Laughed (1986). However, he...
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