Revisiting Return in Selvon’s Writing

Circuits of Caribbean migrations, built on the imprint of slavery, the plantation and indentureship have much to contribute to our understanding of diasporic return—in terms of complicated relations to land, ancestors, as well as moments of crises and liberation. This article explores the significance of the return clause in indenture contracts in relation to the context of Samuel Selvon’s work. At various points in his fictional as well as non-fictional writing, Selvon suggests links between the collapse of the British Empire, the birth of the new Indian nation-state, and swirling processes of migration. I map these lines of thinking across his essay written for the Royal Geographical Society (1955); his opening address at the East Indians in the Caribbean Conference (1979); his novel An Island is a World (1955), and his play “Home Sweet India” (c1950s). All four pieces are in conversation with the residues of return, its demands for recognition, its psychological orientations, and its re-workings of geographic belonging.