Eric D. Walrond
| Eric Derwent Walrond | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
18 December 1898 Georgetown, British Guiana |
| Died |
8 August 1966 London, United Kingdom |
| Resting place | Abney Park Cemetery, London |
| Occupation | writer |
| Citizenship | British subject |
| Alma mater | Columbia University |
| Literary movement | Harlem Renaissance |
Eric Derwent Walrond (18 December 1898 – 8 August 1966) was an Afro-Caribbean Harlem Renaissance writer and journalist. Born in Georgetown, Guyana (British Guiana), the son of a Barbadian mother and a Guyanese father, Walrond was well-travelled, moving early in life to live in Barbados, and then Panama, New York City, and eventually England. He made a lasting contribution to literature, his most famous book being Tropic Death, published in New York City in 1926 when he was 28; it remains in print today as a classic of its era.
In it are collected 10 stories, at least one of which had been previously published in small magazines. He had published other short stories prior to this, as well as a number of essays. The scholar Kenneth Ramchand described Walrond's book as a "blistering" work of the imagination; others described his work as "impressionistic" and "frequently telegraphic", reflecting his use of short sentences. The following extract from his short story "Subjection" illustrates his more lyrical narrative style:
Much of the dialogue between Walrond's characters is written in dialect, using the many different tongues loosely centred on the English language to portray the diversity of characters associated with the pan-Caribbean diaspora.
Eric Walrond was born in Georgetown, British Guiana, to a Barbadian mother and a Guyanese father. When Eric was aged eight, his father left, and he moved with his mother, Ruth, to live with relatives in Barbados, where he attended St. Stephen's Boys' School, before moving to Panama at the time when the Panama Canal was being constructed. Here Walrond completed his school education and became fluent in Spanish as well as English. Following training as a secretary and stenographer, he was employed as a clerk in the Health Department of the Canal Commission at Cristóbal, and as a reporter for the Panama Star-Herald newspaper. In 1918 he moved to New York, where he attended Columbia University, being tutored by Dorothy Scarborough. He was a member of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity.
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