Sam Selvon: The Everyman Among Intellectuals

Depiction of Sam Selvon against the backdrop of 1950s-era London, England

In the late 80s, one of the most influential Caribbean writers found himself working night shifts as a janitor to put food on the table. This moment in Sam Selvon’s life was not at the beginning of his story before all the accolades and success. Selvon also didn’t suffer some dramatic decline at the end of his career that led him here. This segment of Selvon’s life came in the middle of his literary career.

After decades of living in the United Kingdom, the publication of several successful novels, multiple university appointments and fellowships, the writer moved to Canada in 1978 and found himself unexpectedly short of opportunities and money. It wouldn’t take long for the University of Calgary to realise who they had cleaning their classrooms at night and Selvon was soon given a writer-in-residence position, but this moment in time still stands out for what it reveals about Selvon’s character.

Sam Selvon’s rough start in Canada would not be his first brush with underemployment and hardship. His most well-known novel, The Lonely Londoners, where the life and times of struggling Windrush-era Caribbean immigrants in England take centre stage was largely inspired by Selvon’s lived experiences. But handling hardships before one sees any great successes in life is something quite different from handling them after a string of successes. With a wife and children to support, Selvon’s solution was to take up whatever opportunities presented themselves, no matter how menial they appeared to be for a man of his standing. He did this, according to his literary peers and loved ones, with no qualms and a characteristic disregard for outward appearances and social status.

Canada in the 1970s. Photographer: City of Toronto Planning and Development Department ca. 1971, City of Toronto Archives

In a tribute to Sam Selvon, fellow Trinbagonian writer Earl Lovelace quotes Selvon as saying, “Me ain’t no intellectual, boy”. Despite all he meant then and now to the international literary scene and to Caribbean culture, Selvon’s custom was to downplay the intellectual and political significance of his works. Lovelace recounts the man being amused at critics’ attempts to dissect his writings and ascribe layers of hidden depths to them.

Selvon’s works show a desire to reflect the life and amplify the voice of the people he most identified with, not the intelligentsia but the everyman. One of the most important ways the writer has done this is through the representation of speech. To accurately reflect the voices of working-class Caribbean immigrants, Sam Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners published in 1956 uses Caribbean English-Creole dialects extensively for its narrative voice and is noted as being one of the first and most significant literary works to do so. Selvon’s characters are also typically from working and middle-class backgrounds and the stories they inhabit exist squarely within such spaces.

Pauline Henriques and Sam Selvon on BBC Caribbean Voices (1952)

Those who had the pleasure of encountering Samuel Dickson Selvon frequently speak of the man as down-to-earth, funny, and taking a keen and genuine interest in other people. He would spend the later years of his life based in Canada, making frequent trips to visit Trinidad, spending time with his family and friends still based on the island. Local legend has it that those who eat the cascadura fish will end their days in Trinidad. One of Selvon’s later novels, Those Who Eat the Cascadura (1972) revolved around this island tale. In eerie fulfilment of the local legend, Selvon would pass away during one of these trips back home in 1994, leaving behind a looming literary legacy and the impressions of a man immensely talented but always unpretentious.   

Sources

1. Play it Again Sam — Remembering Samuel Selvon, by Jeremy Taylor, Caribbean Beat Magazine Issue 11 (Autumn 1994)

2. Sam Selvon at 100 (1923–2023) | Icon, by Shireen Ali, Caribbean Beat Magazine Issue 179 (November/December 2023)

3. The Shunned Literary Genius of Samuel Selvon, Amanda Perry, The Walrus, 2024

4. Sam Selvon Collection, XXth Century, UNESCO

5. Sam Selvon, Peepal Tree Press

6. Samuel Selvon, Encylopedia Britannica