13 Facts About Merle Hodge

Merle Hodge was born on 1944 and is a Trinidadian novelist and literary critic.

Merle Hodge's 1970 novel Crick Crack, Monkey is a classic of West Indian literature, and Hodge is acknowledged as the first black Caribbean woman to have published a major work of fiction.

Merle Hodge was born in 1944, in Curepe, Trinidad, the daughter of an immigration officer.

Merle Hodge received both her elementary and high-school education in Trinidad, and as a student of Bishop Anstey High School, she won the Trinidad and Tobago Girls' Island Scholarship in 1962.

Merle Hodge spent much time in France and Denmark but visited many other countries in both Eastern and Western Europe.

Merle Hodge then received a lecturing position in the French Department at the University of the West Indies, Jamaica.

In 1979 Maurice Bishop became prime minister of Grenada, and Merle Hodge went there to work with the Bishop regime.

Merle Hodge was appointed director of the development of curriculum, and it was her job to develop and install a socialist education programme.

Merle Hodge had to leave Grenada in 1983 because of the execution of Bishop and the resulting US invasion.

Merle Hodge is currently working in Women and Development Studies at the University of the West Indies in Trinidad.

Merle Hodge has written three novels: Crick Crack, Monkey, For The Life of Laetitia, published more than two decades later, in 1993, and One Day, One Day, Congotay.

Tee recounts the various dilemmas in her life in such a way that it is often difficult to separate the voice of the child, experiencing, from the voice of the woman, reminiscing; in this manner, Merle Hodge broadens the scope of the text considerably.

Merle Hodge has published various essays concerning life in the Caribbean and the life and works of Leon Damas, including a translation of Damas's 1937 collection of poetry, Pigments.