This year marks seventy years since the 1953 publication of George Lamming’s In the Castle of My Skin. In our March 27-April 3, 2023 Twitter residency, Alfrena Jamie Pierre (@AlfrenaJamiePi) reflects on Lamming’s classic novel, described by Bruce King and others as one of the foundational texts of anglophone Caribbean Literature. In her praise of Lamming’s work at his memorial service on July 1, 2022, Mia Amor Mottley, Prime Minister of Barbados, argued that “In the Castle of My Skin said so much for each and every Barbadian and Caribbean person.” In this residency, Pierre reexamines this novel for the issues it addresses regarding notions of Caribbean being. She explores “The God Question” as presented by Lamming and broaches the topic of Christianity’s relevance for examining Caribbean lived reality. Pierre frames her interrogations of the novel through the theorizations of various scholars, including those of Lamming himself.
Bio
Alfrena Jamie Pierre ( @AlfrenaJamiePi ) is a PhD Candidate in Literatures in English at The University of the West Indies (UWI) St. Augustine Campus in Trinidad and Tobago. Her research interests include representations of Christianity in literature, the work of George Lamming, Caribbean poetics, identity and trauma. She has presented academic papers on Lamming’s oeuvre at local, regional and international conferences and has also published on Lamming’s work.
Her tribute to Lamming appears in the UWI, Cave Hill Campus’s CHILL News 60th Anniversary edition (March 2023). https://sta.uwi.edu/uwitoday/archive/july_2022/article2.asp
You can also read tributes to George Lamming by Aaron Kamugisha, Curdella Forbes and Honor Ford Smith in the most recent issue of JWIL (Vol. 31 No. 1). https://www.jwilonline.org/current-issue/
