Jan Shinebourne
| Jan Lowe Shinebourne | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1947 (age 69–70) Berbice, Guyana |
| Occupation | Novelist, reporter, civil rights activist |
| Nationality | Guyanese |
| Education | Bachelor of Arts |
| Alma mater | Master of Arts University of London |
| Notable works | Timepiece |
Jan Lowe Shinebourne (born 1947), also published as Janice Shinebourne, is a Guyanese novelist who now lives in England. In a unique position to be able to provide an insight into multicultural Caribbean culture, Shinebourne's is a rare and distinctive voice : She grew up on a colonial sugar plantation and was deeply affected by the dramatic changes her country went through in its transition from a colony to independence. She wrote her early novels to record this experience.
Born in Canje, a plantation village within Berbice, Guyana, Shinebourne was educated at Berbice High School and started a BA degree at the University of Guyana but did not complete it there.In 1970, she married John Shinebourne and moved to London where she completed her degree and a Postgraduate Certificate in Educationn, then taught in several London colleges, then did an MA in English at the University of London and became involved in civil rights politics. In 2006, she moved from London to Sussex where she now lives.
While living there, Shinebourne did her postgraduate literary studies at the University of London and obtained her Bachelor of Arts in English. Moreover, she then began lecturing at colleges and universities and also became the co-editor of Southhall Review. She began writing in the mid-1960s, and in 1974 was a prize-winner in the National History and Arts Council Literary Competition. While living in England she developed a friendship with writer and publisher John La Rose, who introduced her to many people that would have an influence of her career. After living in London for 40 years, she made the move to Sussex, which is where she currently lives. Her works have been praised by Anne Jordan and Chris Searle for her literary value and political engagement.
Shinebourne is the author of novels, short stories, and essays. The major concern of her novels is to capture the colonial and postcolonial experience of the country of her birth, Guyana, so as to understand its problems and difficulties. Shinebourne has a rare voice in her writing style that distinguishes her from other authors.
In her first four books, Shinebourne has written about the place where she was born and spent her childhood – Rose Hall sugar estate in Berbice, Guyana. She was born there on 23 June 1947, the second of five children of her parents, Charles and Marion Lowe, when Guyana was not yet independent and still very much a British colony under the rule of the British government. She describes her early experiences at Rose Hall as extremely colonial. The estate was run along strict colonial lines whereby people were assigned their social status in terms of a pyramid structure of race and class. At the top were the minority white expatriates who ran the estate, they lived in exclusive quarters with all the facilities of running water, electricity, and modern conveniences in their luxurious homes, while at the bottom of the pyramid were the majority, i.e, the other races, including Africans and Indians who lived in squalid conditions, in inadequate housing without running water, electricity, and the amenities of modern life enjoyed by the expats. Shinebourne’s own family were not estate workers, her father ran a grocery but growing up on the estate, she witnessed first-hand the injustices and suffering of the workers which led her to write about the effects of colonialism in Guyana which she describes as a central theme in her early writing, especially her first three novels, Timepiece, The Last English Plantation, and Chinese Women. These novels portray colonial British Guiana as a formative influence.
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