Joan Cambridge

Joan Cambridge, also known as Joan Cambridge Mayfield,[1] is a Guyanese writer.[2]

Joan Cambridge
BornGuyana
Occupation
  • Journalist
  • Novelist
LanguageGuyanese Creole
SpouseJulian Mayfield, 1973–1984 (his death)

Beginning in the 1960s, Cambridge worked as a journalist,[3] including as a reporter and as women's page editor of the Guiana Graphic, which later became the Guyana Chronicle.[4] She also appeared on the radio for the BBC.[5][6]

Cambridge met her husband, the American actor, writer, and civil rights activist Julian Mayfield, when they were both working at the Guyanese Ministry of Information and Culture. They married in 1973, and a few years later the couple left Guyana and moved to Washington, D.C., spending time in Germany as well.[7][3] Mayfield died in 1984, in Washington.[1][8] Cambridge returned to Guyana after his death, moving to the remote Yukuriba Falls in the Upper Demerara-Berbice region.[9]

While Cambridge had worked on a novel in collaboration with her husband, titled Murder on the East Bank, it was never published. She also wrote an unpublished autobiographical novel, Show Me the Way to Stay Home.[7]

Her first novel, Clarise Cumberbatch Want to Go Home, was published in 1987.[2][10] It was written in a modified version of Guyanese Creole.[2] It is about a Guyanese immigrant woman who comes to New York in search of her husband, who faces difficulties fitting in with both Americans and Guyanese Expatriates.[11] It is considered a representative work of Guyanese literature,[12] part of a new wave of Guyanese women writers at the time.[13]

Cambridge's work has also been featured in Margaret Busby's 1992 anthology Daughters of Africa.[14]

During her years living in the United States, Cambridge became involved in the Black literary scene, counting Maya Angelou among her social circle.[9] Though she now lives in the Guyanese interior, she has continued to travel to and work in the United States, particularly New York and Washington.[15] In 2000, she participated in the Summer Institute fellows conference and D.C. Area Writing Project in Washington, D.C.,[16] and she has been involved with the Guyana Cultural Association of New York, including performing a reading at their symposium at Columbia University in 2004.[17]

Cambridge continues to be involved in activism in her country and internationally, including advocating in defense of her native language Guyanese Creole[18][19] and offering 100 acres of her land to resettle Haitians displaced by the 2010 earthquake.[20]

References
  1. Brooke, James (23 October 1984). "Julian Mayfield, 56, an Actor and Writer on Black Themes". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 1 September 2020.
  2. Cliff, Michelle (21 June 1987). "Clarise Cumberbatch Want to Go Home by Joan Cambridge (Ticknor & Fields: $15.95; 182 pp.)". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 1 September 2020.
  3. "Joan Cambridge". www.goodreads.com. Retrieved 1 September 2020.
  4. Waters, Robert Anthony; Daniels, Gordon Oliver (November 2010). "Striking for freedom? International intervention and the Guianese sugar workers' strike of 1964". Cold War History. 10 (4): 537–569. doi:10.1080/14682741003603102. ISSN 1468-2745.
  5. Williams, Hubert (8 November 2015). "The Exceptional George Barclay - Guyana's oldest journalist". Guyana Chronicle. Retrieved 1 September 2020.
  6. "Julian Mayfield photograph collection – NYPL Digital Collections". digitalcollections.nypl.org. Retrieved 1 September 2020.
  7. "Julian Mayfield papers". archives.nypl.org. The New York Public Library, Archives & Manuscripts. Retrieved 1 September 2020.
  8. "Julian Mayfield, Novelist and Actor, Dies at 56". Washington Post. 23 October 1984. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 1 September 2020.
  9. Cambridge-Mayfield, Joan (6 June 2014). "Letters to the Editor: Remembering Maya Angelou". Stabroek News. Retrieved 1 September 2020.
  10. Cambridge, Joan. (1988). Clarise Cumberbatch want to go home. London: Women's Press. ISBN 0-7043-4094-1. OCLC 732656271.
  11. "Fiction Book Review: Clarise Cumberbatch Want to Go Home by Joan Cambridge, Author Ticknor & Fields $15.45 (201p) ISBN 978-0-89919-403-5". PublishersWeekly.com. 1 March 1987. Retrieved 1 September 2020.
  12. Peake, Linda; D. Alissa Trotz (2014). Gender, ethnicity and place : women and identities in Guyana. ISBN 978-1-138-86730-7. OCLC 1065332013.
  13. "Guyana chronicle". ufdc.ufl.edu. 3 December 2006. Retrieved 1 September 2020.
  14. Busby, Margaret, ed. (1992). Daughters of Africa : an international anthology of words and writings by women of African descent from the Ancient Egyptian to the present. London. ISBN 0-09-922421-6. OCLC 30034116.
  15. Gikandi, Simon (2016). The novel in Africa and the Caribbean since 1950. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-062817-8. OCLC 951754483.
  16. "Letters from Yukuriba with Joan Cambridge..." Guyana Chronicle. 13 December 2015. Retrieved 1 September 2020.
  17. "Guyana Cultural Association of New York Inc. Newsletters". Issuu. October 2012. Retrieved 1 September 2020.
  18. "Student feedback". The Guyanese Languages Unit. 23 July 2017. Retrieved 1 September 2020.
  19. Cambridge, Joan (24 February 2019). "Letters to the Editor: Guyanese Creolese disrespected at International Mother Language Day event". Stabroek News. Retrieved 1 September 2020.
  20. Braithwaite, Barrington (6 August 2019). "Letters: The Haitians are an issue argued on innate racism". Guyana Chronicle. Retrieved 1 September 2020.
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