LONG before ethnic politics struck Trinidad and Tobago, author Samuel Selvon promoted the ideals of shared communities.
In his 1952 novel “A Brighter Sun,” Selvon had the main character Tiger Baboolal settle in a cross-ethnic Barataria after his marriage as a teenager and become part of the cosmopolitan culture.
The T&T-born author captured the essence of community life in a colonial era when the Churchill-Roosevelt Highway was being constructed.
Selvon liberally used the local vernacular, being one of the first Trinidad and Tobago writers to do so.
May 20 marks the centenary birth anniversary of the author who spent his early years in San Fernando and attended Naparima College.
Prolific playwright Victor Edwards, head of the 12-year-old Iere Theatre Productions, is staging a dramatic adaptation of “A Brighter Sun” on the weekend of the anniversary, appropriately at Naparima Bowl.
Actually, the script was written several years ago by Devindra Dookie and Pearl Eintou-Springer, with inputs from Selvon.
The play was last aired in 2013.
For many years, “A Brighter Sun” was on the curriculum for English Literature students.
Selvon, whose works include the landmark “The Lonely Londoners,” died in 1994, but his extensive bibliography defines a skilled and incisive writer.
He is credited with capturing the West Indian lifestyle in his writings.
He once said that those he wrote about were “entertaining people indeed” and that the use of dialect helped to tell the respective stories.
Edwards, who has done plays on Dr. Eric Williams, V.S. Naipaul, Sundar Popo, and others, acknowledges Selvon’s unique place in literary history.
The staging of the play is being done simultaneously with a memorial service at Selvon’s gravesite and a dinner function at Naparima College, at which outstanding thespians would be honoured.
Selvon’s proficiency was doubtlessly enhanced by his vibrant life, which included several years in England and Canada, with teaching stints and writing deals in both places.
He was the sixth of seven children to a Christian Tamil Indian immigrant from Madras and a Christian Anglo-Indian.
His maternal grandfather and grandmother were Scottish and Indian respectively.
The staging of “A Brighter Sun” keeps alive the memory of one of Trinidad and Tobago’s most accomplished authors.
