Brathwaite was noted[7] for his studies of Black cultural life both in Africa and throughout the African diasporas of the world in works such as Folk Culture of the Slaves in Jamaica (1970); The Development of Creole Society in Jamaica, 1770–1820 (1971); Contradictory Omens (1974); Afternoon of the Status Crow (1982); and History of the Voice (1984), the publication of which established him as the authority of note on nation language.[8][9]
Brathwaite often made use of a combination of customized typefaces (some resembling dot matrix printing) and spelling, referred to as Sycorax video style.[10][11][12]
Lawson Edward Brathwaite was born in the capital city of Bridgetown, Barbados, to Hilton and Beryl (Gill) Brathwaite.[13] He began his secondary education in 1945 at Harrison College in Bridgetown, and while there wrote essays on jazz for a school newspaper that he started, as well as contributing articles to the literary magazine Bim.[14] In 1949 he won the Barbados Island Scholarship to attend the University of Cambridge, where he studied English and History.[14]
In 1953, Brathwaite received a B.A. honours degree in history from Pembroke College, Cambridge,[4][14] and he also began his association with the BBC's Caribbean Voices programme in London, where many of his poems and stories were broadcast.[14] In 1954 he received a Diploma of Education from Pembroke College, Cambridge.
The year 1955 found Brathwaite working as an education officer in the Gold Coast with the Ministry of Education. This saw him "witness Kwame Nkrumah coming to power and Ghana becoming the first African state to gain independence, which profoundly affected his sense of Caribbean culture and identity", and he was also able to study with the musicologist J. H. Kwabena Nketia.[15]
During his years in Ghana, Brathwaite's writing flowered, with Odale's Choice (a play) premiering at the Mfantsiman Secondary SchoolinCape Coast, in June 1962.[17] A full production of the play was later taken to Accra.
In 1962–63, Brathwaite crossed the waters again and found himself as resident tutor in the Department of Extra-Mural Studies in St Lucia. Later in 1963, he made his journey to the University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona Campus in Kingston, Jamaica, to teach in the history department.
In 1971 he launched Savacou, a journal of CAM, at the University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona Campus in Kingston, Jamaica. That same year, Brathwaite received the name Kamau from Ngugi wa Thiong'o's grandmother at Limuru, Kenya, while on a City of Nairobi Fellowship to the University of Nairobi.[15]
His doctoral thesis from Sussex University on The Development of Creole Society in Jamaica was published in 1971 by Oxford University Press, and in 1973 he published what is generally considered his best work, The Arrivants: A New World Trilogy, comprising three earlier volumes: Rights of Passage (1967), Masks (1968) and Islands (1969).[20] An exhaustive bibliography of his work, entitled EKB: His Published Prose & Poetry, 1948–1986 was produced by his wife, Doris Monica Brathwaite, in 1986.[21][22] In response to her death later that year, Brathwaite wrote The Zea Mexican Diary: 7 September 1926 – 7 September 1986.[20][22]
Brathwaite described the years from 1986 to 1990 as a "time of salt," in which he chronicled the death of his wife in 1986, the destruction of his archive in Irish Town, Jamaica, by Hurricane Gilbert in 1988, and his near-death experience as a result of a Kingston shooting in 1990.[23]
Kamau Brathwaite spent three self-financed "Maroon Years", 1997 to 2000, at "Cow Pasture", his now famous and, then, "post-hurricane" home in Barbados. In 1998 he married Beverly Reid, a Jamaican.[15]
In 1992 Brathwaite took up the position of Professor of Comparative Literature at New York University, subsequently dividing his residence between Barbados and New York.[24]
In 2002 the University of Sussex presented Kamau Brathwaite with an honorary doctorate.[26]
In 2004, after his retirement from New York University, Brathwaite began chronicling a Second Time of Salt, musing on what he deemed a "cultural lynching."[27]
In 2006, he was the sole person that year to be awarded a Musgrave gold medal by the Institute of Jamaica, with eight silver and bronze medals going to other recipients.[28][29][30] In 2010, Brathwaite reported the theft of the medal, as well as other items from his New York City home in the previous four years.[31][32][33]
Brathwaite was Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature at New York University and resided in Cow Pasture, Barbados.[34][35]
He died aged 89 on 4 February 2020, and was accorded an official funeral on 21 February.[36]
Shortly before his death, Brathwaite was offered and had accepted the Bocas Henry Swanzy Award for Distinguished Service to Caribbean Letters, presented annually at the NGC Bocas Lit Fest.[37] Announcing that the award, which recognises his contribution as a literary critic, literary activist, editor, and author on topics of Caribbean literature, as well as honouring the year of his 90th birthday, would be presented to his family in Barbados at a ceremony March, Bocas founder and director Marina Salandy-Brown said: "It now seems even more significant to honour him and, in this time of mourning, it is a small consolation to know that news of the award brought Prof Brathwaite pleasure in his final days."[38]
[Fr] Kamau Brathwaite, Le détonateur de visibilite / The Visibility Trigger, traduction par Maria-Francesca Mollica et Christine Pagnoulle, Louvain: Cahiers de Louvain, 1986.
[Es] Kamau Brathwaite, Los danzantes del tiempo: antología poética, selección, introducción y entrevista, Christopher Winks; versión en español Adriana González Mateos y Christopher Winks, México: Universidad Autónoma de la Ciudad de México, 2009.
[Es] Kamau Brathwaite, La unidad submarina: ensayos caribeños, Selección, estudio preliminar y entrevista de Florencia Bonfiglio, Buenos Aires: Katatay, 2010.
[It] Kamau Brathwaite, "Retamar", "Word-Making Man", "The New Year Midnight Poems", "Nest", "Calabash", "Song", cura e traduzione di Andrea Gazzoni, La Rivista dell'Arte, 2:2 (2012), 168–212.1
^ abMario Relich,
"Brathwaite, E. K. (Edward Kamau)", in Jeremy Noel-Tod, Ian Hamilton (eds), The Oxford Companion to Modern Poetry in English, Oxford University Press, Second edition 2013, pp. 67–68.
^Doris Monica Brathwaite, EKB: His Published Prose & Poetry, 1948–1986, Savacou Cooperative, 1986, ISBN978-9768006035.
