How does a writer fade from public view? This year marks 60 years since the passing of Eric Walrond, a writer originally from Guyana who gained recognition during the Harlem Renaissance. He associated with notable figures like Countee Cullen and W.E.B. Du Bois and authored a book that was once celebrated as “the greatest collection of short stories in West Indian literature.” Yet, he eventually vanished from the cultural landscape.
That book, titled Tropic Death, presents a groundbreaking and counter-pastoral depiction of the Caribbean regions of his youth. Among its ten stories, four are set in the Panama Canal Zone, where his father had worked. This area was characterized by a strict caste system that upheld white supremacy amidst a diverse population of migrant and indentured laborers. Notably, this year also marks the centenary of the publication of Tropic Death.
Walrond was an “outsider twice removed.” His childhood experiences, which included moving from Guyana to Barbados and then to Colón, created a pattern of constant migration throughout his life. At the age of 20, after gaining journalistic experience with the Panama Star and Herald, he relocated to New York. There, he joined the editorial staff of Negro World, the flagship publication of Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association. However, he soon grew disillusioned with what he perceived as the publication’s focus on propaganda over artistic expression. As a West Indian, he felt disconnected from the distinctly African-American perspectives prevalent in Harlem.
Walrond believed it was his duty to document the “emotional history” of his origins, which led him to reject simplistic ideas of racial identity and instead embrace the diversity of regional experiences. Consequently, the characters in Tropic Death – ranging from farmers and sex workers to sailors and single mothers – represent a broad spectrum of Caribbean life, with their dialogue rendered phonetically in various vernaculars. This innovative approach was unprecedented in English-language Caribbean literature at the time.
The title Tropic Death suggests a focus on the grim and gothic. The vivid landscapes he describes are marked by supernatural elements, industrial change, and the inevitable decay of nature. Tragically, the characters frequently meet dire ends. Scholar Robert Bone notes that gothic literature often “turns the idyll inside out,” revealing the hidden nightmares beneath seemingly idyllic settings. Walrond’s inversion of the idyllic tropics challenges the racist stereotypes that portray the region as a lush paradise inhabited by indolent natives, a myth perpetuated by tourist literature serving corporate interests.
Walrond’s narratives confront this illusion, highlighting the underlying violence that supports it. For instance, a laborer is randomly shot by a drunken U.S. marine, while a young boy, diving for coins tossed by tourists, is brutally attacked by a shark. One of the most ironic deaths in the book is that of Bellon, a British plantation owner who finds an abandoned baby during a stormy night in rural Barbados. Condemning the “depraved” locals for their negligence, he reluctantly takes the child into a cabin for shelter, only to be discovered the next morning, lifeless and “utterly white and bloodless.” His racism blinded him to the reality that the child he attempted to save was actually a vampire bat.
Tropic Death earned Walrond a Guggenheim fellowship and garnered critical acclaim, yet not all of his contemporaries welcomed its release. Garvey labeled Walrond a “literary prostitute” for seeking validation from the white literary establishment. The Jamaican-American writer Claude McKay denounced him as a “rotten imposter,” accusing him of using “futuristic verbiage” as a facade for negative racial stereotypes. Furthermore, Walrond’s white supporter, Edna Worthley Underwood, advised him against writing a proposed book on the construction of the Panama Canal, suggesting he return to “his people” in the tropics.
Instead, Walrond journeyed to Europe, first to Paris and then to London, where he published several stories in prominent magazines, some of the earliest short fiction from a Caribbean author in the UK. When World War II erupted, he relocated to Bradford-on-Avon in Wiltshire, where he worked in a rubber factory. This marked the beginning of a peculiar exile from literary life. While he wrote some journalistic pieces during his time in Wiltshire, addressing issues such as racial discrimination and the arrival of the HMT Empire Windrush, he lived in obscurity as the only Black person in a predominantly white town, leading to a halt in his creative endeavors.
Walrond began to view himself as a failure. He linked his struggle to find a sense of “home” with his inability to produce art. “My quest for stability in a world in which nothing is stable,” he reflected, “has led me astray.” In 1952, referring to himself as a “depression casualty,” he entered Roundway Hospital, a facility for those with mental health issues, where he remained for five years. There, he experienced an unexpected sense of “brotherliness” that revitalized his creativity, allowing him to publish fiction in the hospital’s monthly magazine. However, after returning to London, his attempts to revive his literary career were unsuccessful. He passed away from a heart attack at the age of 67, and his death went largely unnoticed, leaving him buried in an unmarked grave.
In recent years, a modest yet important body of scholarly work has begun to reclaim Walrond’s legacy. Nonetheless, his contributions and life narrative warrant greater recognition within the broader public sphere. Tropic Death stands as a brilliant artistic accomplishment, and Walrond’s complete works reflect a unique perspective on our own unstable world, providing a powerful critique of the destructive impacts of colonial exploitation.
