Ways of Sunlight

by Sam Selvon

Paperback

Published February 1, 2024

About the author

Samuel Dickson Selvon was born in San Fernando in the south of Trinidad. His parents were East Indian: his father was a first-generation Christian immigrant from Madras and his mother's father was Scottish.He was educated at Naparima College, San Fernando, before leaving at the age of fifteen to work. He was a wireless operator with the Royal Naval Reserve from 1940 to 1945. Thereafter, he moved north to Port of Spain, and from 1945 to 1950, worked for the Trinidad Guardian as a reporter and for a time on its literary page. In this period, he began writing stories and descriptive pieces, mostly under a variety of pseudonyms such as Michael Wentworth, Esses, Ack-Ack, and Big Buffer. Selvon moved to London in the 1950s, and then in the late 1970s to Alberta, Canada, where he lived until his death from a heart attack on 16 April 1994 on a return trip to Trinidad.

Selvon is known for novels such as The Lonely Londoners (1956) and Moses Ascending (1975). His novel A Brighter Sun (1952), detailing the construction of the Churchill-Roosevelt Highway in Trinidad through the eyes of young Indian worker Tiger, was a popular choice on the CXC English Literature syllabus for many years. Other notable works include Ways of Sunlight (1957), Turn Again Tiger (1958) and Those Who Eat the Cascadura (1972). During the 1970s and early 1980s, Selvon converted several of his novels and stories into radio scripts, broadcast by the BBC, which were collected in Eldorado West One (Peepal Tree Press, 1988) and Highway in the Sun (Peepal Tree Press, 1991).

After moving to Canada, Selvon found a job teaching creative writing as a visiting professor at the University of Victoria. When that job ended, he took a job as a janitor at the University of Calgary in Alberta for a few months, before becoming writer-in-residence there. He was largely ignored by the Canadian literary establishment, with his works receiving no reviews during his residency.

The Lonely Londoners, as with most of his later work, focuses on the immigration of West Indians to Britain in the 1950s and tells, mostly in anecdotal form, the daily experience of settlers from the Caribbean. Selvon also illustrates the panoply of different "cities" that are lived in London, as with any major city, due to class and racial boundaries. In many ways, his books are the precursors to works such as Some Kind of Black by Diran Adebayo, White Teeth by Zadie Smith and The Buddha of Suburbia by Hanif Kureishi. Selvon explained: "When I wrote the novel that became The Lonely Londoners, I tried to recapture a certain quality in West Indian everyday life. I had in store a number of wonderful anecdotes and could put them into focus, but I had difficulty starting the novel in straight English. The people I wanted to describe were entertaining people indeed, but I could not really move. At that stage, I had written the narrative in English and most of the dialogues in dialect. Then I started both narrative and dialogue in dialect and the novel just shot along."

Selvon's papers are now at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas, Austin, USA. These consist of holograph manuscripts, typescripts, book proofs, manuscript notebooks, and correspondence. Drafts for six of his eleven novels are present, along with supporting correspondence and items relating to his career.

Reviews

[Rosalia · Rating 2 out of 5]

„Sometimes the way you think, you feel everybody else should think that way too. But it doesn’t work out that way at all.“
- es ist definitiv kein schlechtes Buch, aber überhaupt nicht das, was ich mir erhofft hatte in dem Moment - deshalb (sehr subjektive) 2 bis max. 3⭐️

[Angbeen · Rating 4 out of 5]

one of my favourite ever writers

[Jacquie J · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a book of short stories divided into two parts. Both parts set around the 1950s, the first stories take place in Trinidad and the second group in London. Each Trinidadian story rolls on into the next without pausing between anecdotes until the end of Part 1 and then Selvon tells his London stories in the same style, one unfolding into the next.

The Trinidad based stories include tales from a variety of settings in Trinidad (and one in Venezuela) but predominately they are about village life. Selvon conveys a strong sense of the poverty and isolation and often monotony of lives in these villages. Having said that, the richness of the vegetation, the juicy mangoes, the fish in the streams that he describes, creates the sense of a most beautiful place yet despite this the life of the ordinary person is clearly very tough. For me the Ways of Sunlight are the patches of amusement, pleasure or simply something different rippling across the scene of his characters.

In the London section, the world of the characters is also hard – they struggle with the cold weather, bad housing, lack of money, which are all clearly described, and racism which is touched on more often by implication than overtly. However, I came away with a picture of young men full of energy, hope and initiative, finding ways to overcome difficulties including many of their own making. This set of stories was generally amusing, more so that the first section although the outcomes were often predictable.

I felt the sense of life in Trinidad and the sense of the Trinidadian life in London was well evoked and this was enhanced by the frequent use of Trinidadian dialect in both speech and in narration. I am not usually a great lover of short stories, so as much as my interest in Trinidad was aroused and as much as the escapades of youth in London amused me, the collection did not really draw me in … until I reached the end.

The final story, “My Girl and the City” which describes the narrator’s courting of his girlfriend, his love of London and his struggles with writing, is my favourite story in the book. There I found some beautifully expressive phrases:
“I heard my words echo in caverns of thought, as if they hung about like cigarette smoke in a still room …”
“…her skirt skylarking…” (in the wind)
“…the rain falling slantways and carefree and miserable.” – to give just a few examples.
I also enjoyed his references to dating in the “old days”. Selvon writes of taking the night bus “after seeing my girl home.” On another occasion, waiting for hours for his girlfriend, trying and failing to call her on a pay phone and eventually she turns up three hours late,
“She never expected that I would still be waiting, but she came on the offchance. I never expected that she would come, but I waited on the offchance.”
So the final story turned the book from a pleasant read to one full of appreciation, and has left me wanting to read “The Lonely Londoners”.

Thanks to Penguin Classics for the ARC

[ryanb · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am a big fan of short stories, probably because my attention span has been severely degraded by Instagram Reels. But also, I love the freedom it gives the author- we get small vignettes into a completely different (or sometimes not so different) life, without the burden of a full plot or development. They force the writer to be frugal, to give us little more than we need to know, which can sometimes be more powerful or thought provoking then a fully fleshed out novel.

'Ways of Sunlight' introduces us into two worlds: the less familiar in the form of the island of Trinidad, and the supposedly more familiar London, through the lens of the West Indian migrants who moved there following the Second World War. It explores themes of belonging, cultural and generational clashes, and social expectations, simultaneously entertaining and probing deeper thought. I love a writer who can evoke humour and pathos well, and Selvon definitely delivers in that regard. The unseriousness of 'Down the Main' or 'Working the Transport' is mixed in with the wholesomeness of 'Eraser's Dilemma' or 'Johnson and the Cascadura', alongside the forlorn nature of 'Gussy and the Boss' or 'Cane is Bitter', which I found particularly poignant- I've been having a bit of a crisis about the cost of social mobility, which was definitely roused by this story.

Even though I think I prefer the Trinidad section because its tone feels a little more serious and grounded, conceptually my favourite story was the last one: 'My Girl and the City'. It feels much more existential than the rest of the collection, and is certainly much denser (getting through it took me several tries, and I'd still need to read it again to properly understand it). However, I really like the idea of loving the little things about where you live, and it made me think about my own relationship with London, particularly now that I've gained free will and have begun to habitually sidquest.

[Elif O’Neil · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5

loved the london section better than the trinidad section but that’s only fair, felt like love letters to london :
‘how sometimes a surge of greatness could sweep over you when you see something’ - my girl and the city

[Charlotte Coen · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.6 ✨✨✨✨

not as good as the lonely londoners but uni did really like the trinidad section

i liked the secret characters that actually come back

i like how short they are while still being comprehensive

i like

[Abby Gordon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed reading this collection of short stories. My favourites were 'The Village Washer', 'Waiting for Aunty to Cough', and 'Brackley and the Bed'. The London section is definitely laugh-out-loud good - IYKYK.

[Riane · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoyed the second half quite a bit more than the first.

[Meg Marsh · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 and 1/2 stars

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overflowing with brilliant prose. Some of these stories I’d read before, but they lose nothing on the second go. “My Girl and the City” is just wonderful writing from beginning to end.