The Secretary General of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), Dr. Carla Barnett says the regional body joins the people of Barbados in mourning the passing of Internationally acclaimed novelist and writer, George Lamming – the poet, teacher, and editor who died on Saturday.
In a statement on Sunday, the Secretary General said Lamming was more than a literary icon.
“He was an authentic Caribbean voice. In conferring the Community’s highest award, Order of the Caribbean Community (OCC), on Lamming in 2008, his citation noted that CARICOM was honoring “fifty-five years of extraordinary engagement with the responsibility of illuminating Caribbean identities, healing the wounds of erasure and fragmentation, envisioning possibilities, transcending inherited limitations and applauded his “intellectual energy, constancy of vision, and an unswerving dedication to the ideals of freedom and sovereignty.”
“Those words fully encapsulated his extraordinary contribution to the region he loved unreservedly and to which he dedicated his considerable skill. Our community is richer for his interventions and poorer for his loss.”
According to Barnett, Lamming has left a treasure trove of works that remain relevant and reflects the Caribbean condition.
“I extend deepest condolences to the family of Mr. Lamming and the Government and people of Barbados on the death of this true Caribbean icon.”
Lamming who was an important figure, not only in his native Barbados but across the Caribbean and the world, has been lauded by Prime Minister Mia Mottley.
In a statement on Saturday, Mottley said Lamming “without doubt, stood for decades at the apex of our island’s pantheon of writers. Indeed, George Lamming must be considered one of the most famous writers this region has produced.”
Throughout his career, Lamming taught at a boarding school in Trinidad, before emigrating to England, where he became a broadcaster with the BBC’s Colonial Service.
This was followed by positions that included, writer-in-residence and lecturer in the Creative Arts at the Mona Campus of the University of the West Indies, visiting professor at the University of Texas, the University of Pennsylvania and Brown University, and a lecturer in Denmark, Tanzania, and Australia.
The celebrated literary icon was known for works such as In the Castle of My Skin, The Emigrants, and Water with Berries.
His first novel, In the Castle of my Skin is widely celebrated as having been the first Caribbean novel to have won worldwide acclaim.
Lamming, who was 94, would have celebrated his 95th birthday on Wednesday.
CMC/
