Eric D. Walrond

Eric Derwent Walrond (December 18 1898 - August 8 1966) was an African-American Harlem Renaissance writer, who made a lasting contribution to literature; his work still being in print today as a classic of its era. He was well-travelled, being born in Georgetown, Guyana (British Guiana) the son of a Barbadian mother and a Guyanese father, moving early in life to live in Barbados, and then Panama, New York, and eventually England.

Eric Walrond's most famous book was "Tropic Death", published in New York City in 1926 when he was 28, in which he brought together ten 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,

:"A ram-shackle body, dark in the ungentle spots exposing it, jogged, reeled and fell at the tip of a white bludgeon. Forced a dent in the crisp caked earth. An isolated ear lay limp and juicy, like some exhausted leaf or flower, half joined to the tree whence it sprang. Only the sticky milk flooding it was crimson, crimsoning the dust and earth."

Much of the dialogue between Walrond's characters is written in dialect, using the many different tongues loosely centered on the English language to portray the diversity of characters associated with the Pan-Caribbean diaspora.

Education

When Eric Walrond was 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 Eric Walrond completed his school education and became fluent in Spanish as well as English. Following training as a secretary and stenographer, he was emplotyed as a clerk in the Health Department of the Canal Commission at Cristobal, 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.

Harlem Renaissance Writer

In New York Eric Walrond worked at first as hospital secretary, porter, and stenographer. His utopian sketch of a united Africa, "A Senator's Memoirs" (1921) won a prize sponsored by Marcus Garvey, and after working briefly for Garvey, he became a protégé of the National Urban League's director Charles S. Johnson. Here he was a contributor to, and business manager of, the Urban League's "Opportunity" magazine between 1925–27, which had been founded in 1923 to help bring to prominence African-American contributors to the arts and politics of the 1920s. He was also a contributor to "Smart Set", and "Vanity Fair" and Negro World. His short stories included "On Being Black" (1922), "On Being a Domestic" (1923), "Miss Kenny's Marriage"(1923), "The Stone Rebounds" (1923), "Vignettes of the Dusk" (1924), "The Black City" (1924), and "City Love" (1927) - the year that Duke Ellington began his career in New York and the Harlem Globetrotters were founded. In 1928-9 Eric Walrond was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship for Fiction.

Later Life in England

After a decade in America, Eric Walford left for England, where he met English writers and artists during the 1930s, including Winifred Holtby. In later life continued to employ his editorial skills from time to time, whilst working as an accountant.

At the age of 67 he collapsed on a street in central London and was pronounced dead on arrival at St. Bartholomew's Hospital. Following an autopsy he was buried at Abney Park Cemetery, Stoke Newington on 17th September 1966. After his death, which was in reduced circumstances, his early literary work has enjoyed wider recognition, as reflected in "Winds Can Wake up the Dead..." and "The Penguin Book of Caribbean Short Stories", both published in the last decade. At the time, however, his passing appears to have gone relatively unnoticed, although Arna Bontemps wrote of his death, from a fifth heart attack, in a letter to Langston Hughes, dated 1st September 1966.

Books
* Walrond, Eric. (1926). "Tropic Death". NY: Boni & Liveright

Further Reading
* Gable, Craig. "Ebony Rising: Short Fiction of the Greater Harlem Renaissance"
* Lewis, David Levering. "When Harlem Was in Vogue"
* Markham, E.A (1996). "The Penguin Book of Caribbean Short Stories"
* Parascandola, Louis J. (ed.) / Eric Walrond (1998). "Winds Can Wake Up the Dead: an Eric Walrond Reader". Wayne State University Press.