Health in Bethesda, Maryland, where he was receiving treatment.

Jamaica Kincaid (1949–)

Born Elaine Potter Richardson on May 25, 1949, in Antigua, Jamaica Kincaid was educated in the British colonial school system. Antigua gained self-governance in 1967 and became an independent Commonwealth country in 1981. Kincaid later moved to New York City, where she studied photography at the New York School for Social Research and began writing for magazines such as Ingenue and The New Yorker. Her work often reflects her disdain for English culture and the inability of native Antiguans to resist British cultural imperialism. In her book A Small Place (1988), Kincaid portrays Antigua as follows:

Antigua is a small place, a small island . . . . It was settled by Christopher Columbus in 1493. Not too long after, it was settled by human rubbish from Europe, who used enslaved but noble and exalted human beings from Africa . . . . to satisfy their desire for wealth and power, to feel better about their own miserable existence, so that they could be less lonely and empty—a European disease.

Besides A Small Place, Kincaid has authored several novels, including Annie John (1986); At the Bottom of the River (1992); The Autobiography of My Mother (1996); Lucy (1990); My Brother (1997); and, in collaboration with Eric Fischl, Annie, Gwen, Lilly, Pam and Tulip (1986). Kincaid's writing frequently explores women's relationships with other women and the impacts of colonialism and patriarchy on women's self-perception.

Li-Young Lee (1957–)

Li-Young Lee stands as a prominent poetic voice among the Chinese diaspora writing in America. His work often reflects a deep sense of loss, nostalgia, and a search for national or ethnic identity, which are common themes in diasporic literature. Born on August 19, 1957, in Jakarta, Indonesia, to Richard K. Y. Lee and Joice Yuan Jiaying, Lee has a significant family background. His mother is the granddaughter of Yuan Shikai, China's provisional president elected in 1912 during the country's shift from monarchy to republic. Before relocating to Indonesia, Lee’s father served as Mao Zedong’s personal physician. In 1959, the Lee family fled Indonesia due to President Sukarno's persecution of the Chinese population, for whom Lee’s father had been a medical advisor. After spending five years wandering through the Far East, the family finally immigrated to the United States and settled in Pennsylvania. Lee's first poetry collection, Rose, was published in 1986 and received widespread critical acclaim for its tender, fearful, and longing portrayals of his family, particularly his father. This collection earned him New York University’s Delmore Schwartz Memorial Poetry Award. His subsequent collection, The City in Which I Love You, published in 1990, was selected as the 1990 Lamont Poetry Selection by the Academy of American Poets. In addition to these works, Lee has authored a highly praised memoir, The Winged Seed (1995), which reads like an extended prose poem. His latest poetry collection is The Book of My Nights (2001).

Michael Ondaatje (1943–)

Michael Ondaatje was born on September 12, 1943, in Colombo, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), to Mervyn Ondaatje and Doris Gratiaen. He received his education at St. Thomas College in Colombo and later at Dulwich College in London, where he moved with his mother. Between 1962 and 1964, Ondaatje attended Bishop’s University in Lennoxville, Quebec, and completed his Bachelor of Arts degree at the University of Toronto in 1965. He earned a Master of Fine Arts degree from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, in 1967. Ondaatje taught at the University of Western Ontario in London from 1967 to 1971 and has been a faculty member of the English department at Glendon College, York University in Toronto, Ontario, since 1971.

Ondaatje, a novelist, critic, and poet, is most renowned for his 1992 novel, The English Patient. This book portrays the interactions of characters from various nationalities during the final days of World War II. It delves into the connections between past and present, individual and national identity, and how these relationships influence one’s sense of “home.” The novel was adapted into a globally acclaimed film in 1996. Ondaatje has received numerous accolades for his writing, including the Ralph Gustafson Award in 1965, the Epstein Award in 1966, the President’s Medal from the University of Ontario in 1967, and the Canadian Governor-General’s Award for Literature in both 1971 and 1980. He also won the Canada-Australia Prize in 1980 and the Booker Prize in 1992 for The English Patient. Ondaatje’s latest work is the novel Anil’s Ghost, set amidst the violent civil war in Sri Lanka.

Salman Rushdie (1947–)

Born on June 19, 1947, in Bombay, India, to a wealthy Muslim family, Ahmed Salman Rushdie was raised in a liberal environment that valued education. His father, Anis Ahmed Rushdie, was a Cambridge-educated businessman, and his mother, Negin, was a teacher from Aligarh, India. They had migrated from Kashmir before Rushdie was born. Growing up, Rushdie enjoyed Western comic books, Disney movies, and Bombay films. By the age of ten, he knew he wanted to be a writer. At thirteen, he attended Rugby School in England and later enrolled at King’s College, Cambridge in 1965. He graduated in 1968 with a master’s degree in history. After graduation, Rushdie moved to Karachi, Pakistan, where his family had relocated in 1964.

In Karachi, Rushdie worked as an advertising copywriter by day and wrote fiction at night. His first major literary success was the novel Midnight’s Children, which won the prestigious Booker Prize in 1981 and earned him international fame. This novel combines personal experience with historical events, tracing Indian history from 1910 to 1976. His 1983 novel, Shame, a satire on the Pakistani elite, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1984. In 1988, Rushdie published his most famous work, The Satanic Verses. The book was deemed “blasphemous” by many governments, leading to worldwide protests from Muslims. Iran’s spiritual leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa, sentencing Rushdie to death, forcing him into hiding. The Iranian government rescinded the fatwa in 1998.

Rushdie has continued to explore themes of history, culture, religion, and identity in his writing. In 1990, he published Haroun and the Sea of Stories and, in 1994, released East, West, a collection of short stories. His more recent works include The Ground Beneath Her Feet (1991) and the novel Fury (2000).

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (1942–)

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak stands as a prominent figure in postcolonial literary theory. Born on February 24, 1942, in Calcutta, West Bengal, she earned a Bachelor of Arts in English from the University of Calcutta. She then pursued further education at Cornell University, where she obtained both her master's degree and Ph.D. in comparative literature. Under the mentorship of Paul de Man, a leading scholar in deconstructionist theory, Spivak's academic journey took flight. Her career gained significant momentum after she translated Jacques Derrida’s Of Grammatology (1976) into English and penned its preface. Besides her work on Derrida, Spivak has written several critical texts and edited numerous essay collections, including In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics (1987), Outside in the Teaching Machine (1993), and A Critique of Post-Colonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing Present (1999). Spivak has participated in numerous interviews discussing her views on Postcolonialism and education, which tend to be more accessible than her often criticized “unreadable” written works.

Derek Walcott (1930–)

Derek Walcott, born on January 23, 1930, in St. Lucia—a former British colony in the Windward Islands of the Lesser Antilles—received his education through the British school system while living the life of a poor colonial. With an English father and an African mother, Walcott’s diverse racial background gives him a unique insight into postcolonial culture. Already an established poet, he began writing drama after graduating from the University College of the West Indies. Walcott’s work merges Caribbean, African, and Latino influences with European literary traditions to articulate the complexities of the postcolonial experience. Though some critics argue he leans too heavily on Western literary frameworks, his themes often address the injustices of racism, colonial oppression, and the quest for a coherent and stable identity. More recently, Walcott, who has been a faculty member at Boston University since 1981, has delved into the theme of exile in his writings. When awarded the Nobel Prize in 1992, the Swedish Academy commended his contributions to Caribbean theater and praised his book-length poem, Omeros (1990), which reimagines Homer’s Odyssey through a Caribbean lens, using local characters to explore colonial history. Walcott’s extensive poetry collections include The Castaway, and Other Poems (1965), The Bounty (1997), and Tiepolo’s Hound (2000). Some of his notable plays are Henri Christophe: A Chronicle in Seven Scenes (1950), Dream on Monkey Mountain (1967), and Viva Detroit (1990).