Early life and education Lawson Edward Brathwaite was born in the capital city of
Bridgetown,
Barbados, to Hilton and Beryl (Gill) Brathwaite. He began his secondary education in 1945 at
Harrison College in Bridgetown, and while there wrote essays on jazz for a school newspaper that he started, as well as contributing articles to the literary magazine
Bim. In 1949 he won the Barbados Island Scholarship to attend the
University of Cambridge, where he studied English and History. with whom he had a son, Michael. A full production of the play was later taken to
Accra.
Return to the Caribbean and the UK In 1962–63, Brathwaite crossed the waters again and found himself as resident tutor in the Department of Extra-Mural Studies in
St Lucia. Later in 1963, he made his journey to the
University of the West Indies (UWI),
Mona Campus in
Kingston, Jamaica, to teach in the history department. In 1966, he spearheaded, as co-founder and secretary, the organization of the
Caribbean Artists Movement (CAM) from
London, In 1971, Brathwaite launched
Savacou, a journal of CAM, at the University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona Campus in Kingston, Jamaica. That same year, he received the name Kamau from
Ngugi wa Thiong'o's grandmother at
Limuru,
Kenya, while on a City of
Nairobi Fellowship to the
University of Nairobi. His doctoral thesis from Sussex University on
The Development of Creole Society in Jamaica was published in 1971 by
Oxford University Press, and in 1973 he published what is generally considered his best work,
The Arrivants: A New World Trilogy, comprising three earlier volumes:
Rights of Passage (1967),
Masks (1968) and
Islands (1969). An exhaustive bibliography of his work, entitled
EKB: His Published Prose & Poetry, 1948–1986 was produced by his wife, Doris Monica Brathwaite, in 1986. In response to her death later that year, Brathwaite wrote
The Zea Mexican Diary: 7 September 1926 – 7 September 1986.
"Maroon years" and afterwards Kamau Brathwaite spent three self-financed "Maroon Years", 1997 to 2000, at "Cow Pasture", his now famous and, then, "post-hurricane" home in Barbados. In 1998, he married Beverly Reid, a Jamaican. In 1994, he was awarded the
Neustadt International Prize for Literature for his body of work, nominated by Ghanaian poet and author
Kofi Awoonor, edging out other nominees including;
Toni Morrison,
Norman Mailer, and
Chinua Achebe. In 2002 the University of Sussex presented Kamau Brathwaite with an honorary doctorate. In 2004, after his retirement from New York University, Brathwaite began chronicling a
Second Time of Salt, musing on what he deemed a "cultural lynching." In 2006, he was the sole person that year to be awarded a
Musgrave gold medal by the
Institute of Jamaica, with eight silver and bronze medals going to other recipients. In 2010, Brathwaite reported the theft of the medal, as well as other items from his New York City home in the previous four years. Brathwaite was Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature at New York University and resided in Cow Pasture, Barbados. He died aged 89 on 4 February 2020, and was accorded an official funeral on 21 February. ==Posthumous recognition and legacy==