Derek Walcott 

Derek Alton Walcott(born January 23, 1930, Castries, Saint Lucia-died March 17, 2017, Cap Estate), West Indian poet and playwright noted for works that explore the Caribbean cultural experience. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1992. Walcott was educated at St. Mary's College in Saint Lucia and at the University of the West Indies in Jamaica.

Productions of his plays began in Saint Lucia, taught at Boston University. Walcott was best known for his poetry, beginning with In a Green Night: Poems 1948-1960 (1962). This book is typical of his early poetry in its celebration of the Caribbean landscape's natural beauty.   In his book-length poem Omeros (1990), he retells the dramas of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey in a 20th-century Caribbean setting.  Aging is a central theme in White Egrets (2010), a volume of new poems. Of Walcott's approximately 30 plays, the best-known are Dream on Monkey Mountain (produced 1967), a West Indian's quest to claim his identity and his heritage; Ti-Jean and His Brothers (1958), based on a West Indian folktale about brothers who seek to overpower the Devil; and Pantomime (1978), an exploration of colonial relationships through the Robinson Crusoe story.  

Britannica Academic, Encyclopædia Britannica, 14 Mar. 2018.

Jamaica Kincaid

Jamaica Kincaid, original name Elaine Potter Richardson original name Elaine Potter Richardson(born May 25, 1949, St. John's, Antigua), Caribbean American writer whose essays, stories, and novels are evocative portrayals of family relationships and her native Antigua. Kincaid settled in New York City when she left Antigua at age 16. In 1973 she took the name Jamaica Kincaid (partly because she wished the anonymity for her writing), and the following year she began regularly submitting articles to The New Yorker magazine, where she became a staff writer in 1976. Kincaid's writings for the magazine often chronicled Caribbean culture. 

In 1983 Kincaid's first book, At the Bottom of the River, a collection of short stories and reflections, was published. Setting a pattern for her later work, it mixed lyricism and anger. Annie John (1984) and Lucy (1990) were novels but were autobiographical in nature, as were most of Kincaid's subsequent works, with an emphasis on mother-daughter relationships. Kincaid's treatment of the themes of family relationships, personhood, and the taint of colonialism reached a fierce pitch in The Autobiography of My Mother (1996) and My Brother (1997), an account of the death from AIDS of Kincaid's younger brother Devon Drew. 

"Jamaica Kincaid." Britannica Academic, Encyclopædia Britannica, 28 Jan. 2016.

Aimé Césaire 

Aimé Césaire in full Aimé-Fernand-David Césaire in full Aimé-Fernand-David Césaire(born June 26, 1913, Basse-Pointe, Mart.-died April 17, 2008, Fort-de-France), Martinican poet, playwright, and politician, who was cofounder with Léopold Sédar Senghor of Negritude, an influential movement to restore the cultural identity of black Africans. Together with Senghor and others involved in the Negritude movement, Césaire was educated in Paris. In the early 1940s he returned to Martinique and engaged in political action supporting the decolonization of the French colonies of Africa. In 1945 he became mayor of Fort-de-France, the capital of Martinique, and he retained that position until 2001 (he was briefly out of office in 1983-84). In 1946 Césaire became a deputy for Martinique in the French National Assembly. Viewing the plight of the blacks as only one facet of the proletarian struggle, he joined the Communist Party (1946-56). He found that Surrealism, which freed him from the traditional forms of language, was the best expression for his convictions. He voiced his ardent rebellion in a French that was heavy with African imagery. In the fiery poems of Cahier d'un retour au pays natal (1939; Return to My Native Land) and Soleil cou-coupé (1948; "Cutthroat Sun"), he lashed out against the oppressors.  "Aimé Césaire." Britannica Academic, Encyclopædia Britannica, 18 Apr. 2008.