Jan Rynveld Carew (24 September 1920 – 6 December 2012) was a novelist, playwright, poet, and teacher born in Guyana. He lived in several countries, including the Netherlands, Mexico, the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Ghana, Jamaica, Canada, and the United States.

Carew’s works, which varied in style and covered many different topics, made him an important intellectual in the Caribbean region. His poetry and first two novels, Black Midas and The Wild Coast (both published in 1958 by Secker & Warburg in London), were important contributions to Caribbean literature. These works helped Caribbean literature address its history under colonial rule and express a desire for independence.

Carew worked with Guyana’s late President Cheddi Jagan to help Guyana gain independence from Britain. He also contributed to the Black Power movement in Britain and North America by writing articles, publishing newspapers, and creating radio and television programs. His research challenged traditional historical views about the conquest of the Americas. He believed that rethinking Christopher Columbus’s role in history—without the myths often attached to him—was essential to rebuilding a stronger Caribbean identity.

Biography

Jan Rynveld Carew was born on September 24, 1920, in Agricola, a coastal village also known as Rome, in British Guiana, a British colony in South America that is now called Guyana. He was the middle child and only son of Ethel Robertson and Alan Carew. From 1924 to 1926, the Carew family lived in the United States, but in 1926, Jan and his older sister Cicely returned to Guyana after his younger sister Sheila was kidnapped in New York. Sheila was found and reunited with her family in 1927. Jan’s father lived in the United States and Canada at times, working with the Canadian Pacific Railway and traveling across North America from Halifax to Vancouver. These experiences influenced Jan’s imagination.

From 1926 to 1938, Jan studied in Guyana. He first attended Agricola Wesleyan School, then a Catholic elementary school, and later Berbice High School, a Canadian Scottish Presbyterian school in New Amsterdam. He passed the Senior Cambridge Examination in 1938.

After finishing school in 1939, Jan worked part-time as a teacher at Berbice High School for Girls. However, he was called to join the British Army when World War II began in Europe. He served in the Coast Artillery Regiment until 1943. From 1943 to 1944, he worked as a customs officer in Georgetown. During this time, he published his first text in the Christmas Annual and focused on painting and drawing. From 1944 to 1945, he worked at the Price Controls Office in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad.

Jan felt he was part of the Caribbean, which included the island nations, coastal countries, and regions such as Guyana, Surinam, and Cayenne. He believed the Caribbean way of life was shaped by a mix of cultures, including Amerindian, African, European, and Asian influences.

At age 25, Jan moved to the United States, where he studied science at Howard University and Western Reserve University (now Case Western Reserve University) from 1945 to 1948, but he did not graduate. Later, he studied at Charles University in Prague (1948–1950) and Sorbonne University in Paris.

Throughout his life, Jan lived in many places, including the Netherlands, Mexico, the UK, France, Spain, Ghana, Canada, and the United States. In 1951, while in the Netherlands, he edited a multilingual poetry magazine called De Kim. In the UK, he worked with actor Laurence Olivier and edited the Kensington Post in 1953. He also worked with the BBC as a broadcaster and writer and taught about race relations at the University of London. He was the first editor of Magnet News, a publication focused on Black issues, launched in London in 1965.

Jan remained connected to the Caribbean and served as director of culture in British Guiana under the Jagan administration in 1962. He supported Dr. Cheddi Jagan and the People’s Progressive Party.

Between 1962 and 1966, Jan lived in Jamaica with his wife, Sylvia Wynter, before moving to Canada and later settling in the United States. During this time, he edited African Review in 1965 and became publisher of Cotopax, a literary magazine, in 1969. He taught at several universities, including Princeton, Rutgers, Illinois Wesleyan, Hampshire College, Northwestern, and Lincoln Universities, and was an Emeritus Professor of African American Studies at Northwestern University.

Jan Carew died at his home in Louisville, Kentucky, at age 92. He was survived by his wife, Dr. Joy Gleason, his daughters Lisa St Aubin de Terán and Shantoba Eliza Carew, and his son, David Christopher Carew.

His memoir, Potaro Dreams: My Youth in Guyana, was published after his death in 2014. The book covers his life from birth in 1920 until 1939, when he joined World War II. He described the book as a way to understand his life.

Activism

Carew was an early leader in the study of Pan-African history and culture. He worked with many important people, including W. E. B. Du Bois, Paul Robeson, Langston Hughes, Malcolm X, Kwame Nkrumah, Shirley Graham Du Bois, Maurice Bishop, Cheikh Anta Diop, Edward Scobie, John Henrik Clarke, Tsegaye Medhin Gabre, Sterling D. Plumpp, and Ivan Van Sertima.

In his book Grenada: The Hour Will Strike Again (1985), written two years after the United States invaded Grenada, Carew found and shared information about the country’s sources of independence. The book looked not only at the struggles of African people who were captured and brought to the island but also at the long history of resistance by Grenada’s original people.

As Eusi Kwayana noted, Carew cared about protecting nature before it became popular. He suggested to the government of Guyana that international groups help protect one million acres of forestland in Guyana. This idea led to a law in Guyana’s legal system that set aside about 360,000 hectares of tropical rainforest for research. The law aimed to help Guyana and the world learn ways to use forest resources wisely and protect the variety of life in the rainforest.

Selected literary works

Carew wrote novels, short stories, plays, personal stories, and other non-fiction books, as well as books for children. He is most famous for his first novel, Black Midas (1958). He wrote reviews, articles, short stories, and essays for many magazines and newspapers, including John O'London's Weekly, Time and Tide, ArtReview, New England Review, Bread Loaf Quarterly, The New York Times, Saturday Review, New Statesman, African Review, The Listener, Journal of African Civilizations, Black Press Review, New Deliberations, Journal of the Association of Caribbean Studies, Black American Literature Forum, Pacific Quarterly, and Race & Class. His many works include: