Sam Selvon

Samuel "Sam" Selvon (May 20, 1923 –April 16, 1994) was a Trinidad-born writer.

Sam Selvon in 1952

Quotes

• People didn’t know what part of the world I came from and that was something that I felt ought to be corrected. Those days in England—in the fifties and so on—the only country in the Caribbean people spoke about was Jamaica. You never heard them talking about places like Barbados, Trinidad, Tobago and so on…
  • On wanting to set his first novel in Trinidad in "Oldtalk": An Interview with Sam Selvon' (1990)

• I’d rather stay in ignorance. Mark you, it may be true that I am repeating something that has been said before, but in the actual creation it wasn’t so to me, because in my ignorance I didn’t know. So I think that ignorance helps a lot. When you know that somebody has done something before, it hampers you.
  • On trying to avoid the work of other writers that might be similar to him in "Oldtalk": An Interview with Sam Selvon' (1990)

• I grew up in Trinidad speaking the way Trinidadians talk. That remained with me throughout all my years living abroad. I found that it was so much easier for me to express myself if I could use the Trinidadian form of the language rather than trying to speak “proper English”, as it’s called…
  • On his language choice in the book Critical Perspectives on Sam Selvon

• The American language is almost, in its way, a kind of experimental form, too, with the English language…
  • On how American literature may differ from English literature in the book Critical Perspectives on Sam Selvon