Clarke can be categorized according to two distinct literary heritages: he is both a Caribbean writer and a Canadian writer.

As a native of Barbados, which is part of the Caribbean, Clarke is grouped within this larger regional literary tradition. Because the Caribbean was colonized by Spain, France, Great Britain, and the Netherlands, the literature which has emerged from the island nations occupying it has been written in several different languages, corresponding to the language of the nation by which each island was colonized. Because the Spanish, who originally colonized the area, completely destroyed the people and culture native to the region, there is no record of the oral traditions which would have characterized the pre-Columbian era of Caribbean history. It was not until the 1920s that writers of the French- and Spanish-speaking Caribbean began to formulate a distinct literature emerging from black West Indian culture...