The island and the world: kinship, friendship and living together in selected writings of Sam Selvon

Donnell, A. (2012) The island and the world: kinship, friendship and living together in selected writings of Sam Selvon. Journal of West Indian Literature, 20 (2). pp. 38-53. ISSN 0258-8501

Abstract/Summary

This article argues that the ethical force of Trinidadian Sam Selvon’s creative writings comes from the particular configuration of living together that he is interested in, both in his Trinidadian novels and his London ones. It reads examples of this living together alongside and in difference that emerges through his focus on the relations between neighbours, friends and lovers, rather than the kinship relations of family. It argues that his works thereby map horizontal zones of attachment and possible solidarities across groupings that reconfigure vertically inscribed genealogical paradigms of belonging to place and each other based on models of historical continuity and inheritance.