Edwina Melville (1926–1993) was a Guyanese writer, teacher, politician and advocate of the first-nation Wapishana peoples of the Southern Rupununi, Guyana.
Edwina Melville | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 1926 Mahaicony, Guyana |
| Died | 1993 (aged 66–67) Guyana |
| Nationality | Guyanese |
| Occupation(s) | Writer and politician |
Early life
editEdwina Gordon was born at Spooner Plantation in Mahaicony. She grew up in Georgetown and was educated at Bishop's High School.[1] Her first connection to the Rupununi savannah came when visiting her brother, who was working for the Rupununi Development Company based at the Wariwau Outstation.[2] Melville then settled in Lethem, in Rupununi, after her marriage to Charles Melville[3] in 1950 and had five children: twins Charles and Tondeley, followed by Edward, Don and Wayne.
Melville was employed as a schoolteacher, shop-holder and as a confidential secretary to the District Commissioner of Lethem.[4] Her dedication to representing the peoples of the Rupununi later took political form when she was elected to parliament in 1985 for the People's National Congress representing District 9.[5]
Works
editMelville's stories and accounts of living in the Rupununi were published in the important West Indian little magazine Kyk-Over-Al edited by A. J. Seymour out of Guyana.[6] Four of Melville's short stories, rendering life in the hinterland, were sent to Henry Swanzy in London from where they were subsequently broadcast to the West Indies on the BBC's Caribbean Voices radio programme between 1953 and 1955.[7] Three of her stories submitted to Blackwood's Magazine in Edinburgh were also published in the mid-century: "The Waiting Land" in 1955, "Waphishana Village" in 1957 and "The Girl in Green", which was awarded second prize in the Blackwood Prize Competition of 1964, in 1965.[8]
Melville's piece on "The Wapishana Indians" was anthologised in My Lovely Native Land An Anthology of Guyana in 1971,[9] and a number of her poems were included in A. J. Seymour's A Treasury of Guianese Poetry (1980).
In keeping with other Anglophone Caribbean women writers of the mid-century who did not migrate and whose work was not published by metropolitan publishing houses, Melville's writings remain almost unknown.
Melville's illustrated book This is the Rupununi: A Simple Story Book of the Savannah Lands of the Rupununi District, British Guiana, was published by the Guyana Information Service in 1956. In Michael Swan's 1958 travelogue, The Marches of El Dorado, Swan recounts his meeting with Edwina, then in her twenties, and the views she shared, "She was strongly against the civilising of the Indians, feeling that their happiness lay in the preservation of their tribal ways and traditions."[10] Petamber Persaud makes reference to Melville's work collecting anthropological and ethno-botanical material relating to Amerindian myths and legends, much of which was lost during the Rupununi Uprising of 1969.
References
edit- ^ Biographical note in A. J. Seymour and Elma Seymour (eds), My Lovely Native Land An Anthology of Guyana (Longman Caribbean, 1971).
- ^ See "Edwina Melville 1926 -1993" by Petamber Persaud, Sunday Chronicle (30 March 2008), p. IV.
- ^ See note 2 in Anne Spry Rush's Bonds of Empire: West Indians and Britishness from Victoria to Decolonization (2011).
- ^ See Petamber Persaud (2008) as in note 3.
- ^ Narain, Frank A., "Historical Information", Parliament of Guyana, 15 January 2007, p. 86.
- ^ See for example, "Poem" and "The Wapishana Indians in the Rupununi Savannah" by Edwina Melville in Kyk-Over-Al 5.17 (1953).
- ^ Broadcast scripts are held at the BBC Written Archives in Caversham, UK.: "Fishing in the Rupununi Savannahs British Guiana" (09.08.1953), "Memories of Atkinson Field, the US Air Base in British Guiana" (28.03.1954), "The Voice" (20.06.1954) and "Tikersh-Din, The Fire Tiger" (18.09.1955).
- ^ "The Waiting Land", Blackwood's Magazine, 1955, no. 1680, pp. 340–352; "Waphishana Village", Blackwood's Magazine, 1957, no. 1696, pp. 155-168 and "The Girl in Green", Blackwood's Magazine, 1965, no. 1791, pp. 1–8.
- ^ ed A.J. Seymour and Elma Seymour (Longman Caribbean, 1971), pp. 74–83.
- ^ Michael Swan, The Marches of El Dorado (Penguin Books, 1958), p. 170.