12 Facts About Selwyn Cudjoe

Selwyn Cudjoe was born on 1 December 1943 and is a Trinidadian academic, scholar, historian, essayist and editor who is Professor of Africana Studies at Wellesley College.

Selwyn Cudjoe was the Margaret E Deffenbaugh and LeRoy T Carlson Professor in Comparative Literature and the Marion Butler McClean Professor in the History of Ideas at Wellesley.

Selwyn Reginald Cudjoe was born in Tacarigua, Trinidad and Tobago, like several generations of his family, growing up on a sugar estate on which ancestors of his had worked.

Selwyn Cudjoe's parents were Lionel R and Carmen Rose Cudjoe; his great-grandfather, Jonathon Cudjoe, was born in Tacarigua in 1833, the last year of formal slavery, and his great-grandmother, Amelia, was born in the same village in 1837.

Selwyn Cudjoe attended Tacarigua EC School, before migrating to the US in 1964, at the age of 21.

Selwyn Cudjoe has taught at Ithaca College and at Cornell, Harvard, Brandeis, Fordham, and Ohio universities, before joining the Wellesley College faculty in 1986.

Selwyn Cudjoe has been a lecturer at Auburn State Prison and taught at Bedford-Stuyvesant Youth-In-Action.

Selwyn Cudjoe has served as a director of the Central Bank of Trinidad and Tobago and as the president of the National Association for the Empowerment of African People.

Selwyn Cudjoe has written a volume essential to a full understanding of the history of Trinidad.

Selwyn Cudjoe has edited a number of titles, including Caribbean Women Writers, an anthology of essays collected from the first international conference on Caribbean women writers, which he organised at Wellesley College in 1988, and, most recently, Narratives of Amerindians in Trinidad and Tobago; or, Becoming Trinbagonian, "a fascinating compendium of key documents on the narration of the Amerindian presence in Trinidad".

Selwyn Cudjoe writes a weekly column in the TnT Mirror, and his work has appeared in many other publications, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Boston Globe, International Herald Tribune, Baltimore Sun, Amsterdam News, Trinidad and Tobago Review, Callaloo, New Left Review, Harvard Educational Review, Essence, Trinidad Guardian and Trinidad Express.

Selwyn Cudjoe has written several documentaries, including Tacarigua: A Village in Trinidad and Caribbean Women Writers, and hosted programmes for Trinidad and Tobago Television.