Kamau Brathwaite

Edward Kamau Brathwaite is one of the most prominent figures in the canon of Caribbean literature. A renowned educator and scholar, Brathwaite is best known as a poet and noted for his explorations of black cultural life both in Africa and the African diasporas throughout the world. In 2006, he was awarded the prestigious Griffin Poetry Prize for Born to Slow Horses, his 22nd book of verse. Among his numerous honors, the celebrated poet has received Cuba’s Casa de Las Américas Literary Prize for poetry, the Cholmondeley Award in 1970, Guggenheim and Fulbright fellowships in 1983, and the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 1994.

Brathwaite was born in Barbados in 1930. He attended Harrison College, and in 1949 he won the Barbados Island Scholarship to Cambridge University in England, where, at Pembroke College, he received a B.A. in history and a certificate in education. In 1942, he had founded Bim, the West Indian literary magazine where he published many of his early works. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Sussex in the U.K. in 1968. He is co-founder of the Caribbean Artists’ Movement and served as an editor of its literary magazine Savacou. Since 1979, he has served on the board of directors of UNESCO’s History of Mankind project and was also cultural adviser to the government of Barbados from 1975 to 1979 and again in 1990.

Brathwaite’s poetry is infused with African and European influences and “explores the root of the West Indian soul.” Earlier titles include Rights of Passage, Masks, and Islands; other notable books are Black & Blues; Other Exiles; Mother Poem, Sun Poem; X/Self; Middle Passages; Ancestors; and Roots, a nonfiction work that reflects upon Caribbean culture and history. His book The Zea Mexican Diary (1992), dedicated to his wife, was The Village Voice Book of the Year.

During his career as a poet and an academic, he has worked in the Ministry of Education in Ghana and taught at the University of the West Indies, Southern Illinois University, the University of Nairobi, Boston University, Holy Cross College, Yale University and was a visiting fellow at Harvard University. Brathwaite is currently a professor of comparative literature at New York University.