The SHARLOW FOUNDATION FOR LITERATURE
The first goal
of the FOUNDATION is
to promote knowledge of the Caribbean region and its peoples through Literature.
Indeed, to pave the road for a future Renaissance which only literature and art
are known to have achieved.
For half the
millennium gone by, the history of the Caribbean has been mostly the history of
Imperial Europe, of African slavery, and of East Indian indentureship. The
peoples of the Caribbean, left in the painful process of forging the West Indian
identity, are quite obviously the most universal of all peoples, and so is the
context of their literature. An explicit purpose of the
FOUNDATION then, is to promote literature which celebrates the peoples of
the Caribbean and the diasporas.
In the words
of Sir Arthur Lewis and expanded by C.L.R. James in Party Politics in the
West Indies: “The duty of the Author in the
Caribbean is to return the peoples to themselves.”
The above quotation in the early sixties remains as
valid and persistent as the following: “If you do not
know where you came from, you cannot know where you are going.”
The two novels highlighted in this web site: WHEN GODS WERE SLAVES and THE PROMISE serve as a basis for contemporary literary thought and perspective.
An express goal of the FOUNDATION is to recognize, promote, and assist the author whose work aspires toward the above criteria. The FOUNDATION will also sponsor the SHARLOW LITERARY AWARD for best novel.
The SHARLOW FOUNDATION 2000.
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