The Autobiography of Alfred H. Mendes, 1897-1991

Alfred Hubert Mendes (1897–1991) was a member of the influential Beacon group of artists, writers and intellectuals in Trinidad in the 1930s. In common with other Beacon writers, including C.L.R. James and Ralph de Boissière, he set out to create a Trinidad-centred literature, and his extensive output of poetry, short stories, novels and journalism bears witness to his dedication to this goal. The sheer vitality of Mendes’s writing and the huge scope of his interests will attract both scholars and general readers keen to understand what life really was like in the early decades of the twentieth century. Whereas Mendes’s poems and short stories tellingly illustrate the stresses of social life under colonial rule, the journalism contains much thought-provoking discussion of the development of a national identity and political maturity through his intensive examination of Trinidad’s cultural life.