Marlon James (novelist)

Marlon James at the 2015 National Book Festival

James was born in Kingston, Jamaica, to parents who were both in the Jamaican police: his mother (who gave him his first prose book, a collection of stories by O. Henry) became a detective and his father (from whom James took a love of Shakespeare and Coleridge) a lawyer.[5][6] James attended Kingston's prestigious Wolmer's Trust High School for Boys.[7] He is a 1991 graduate of the University of the West Indies, where he read Language and Literature. He left Jamaica to escape anti-gay violence and economic conditions that he felt would mean career stagnation,[8] later explaining: "Whether it was in a plane or a coffin, I knew I had to get out of Jamaica."[2] He received a master's degree in creative writing from Wilkes University in Pennsylvania (2006).[9]

James' first novel, John Crow's Devil (2005) – which was rejected 70 times before being accepted for publication[10] – tells the story of a biblical struggle in a remote Jamaican village in 1957.[11] His second novel, The Book of Night Women (2009), is about a slave woman's revolt in a Jamaican plantation in the early 19th century.[12] His 2014 novel, A Brief History of Seven Killings, explores several decades of Jamaican history and political instability through the perspectives of many narrators. It won the fiction category of the 2015 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature[13] and the 2015 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, having been the first book by a Jamaican author ever to be shortlisted.[14][15] He is the second Caribbean winner of the prize, following Trinidad-born V. S. Naipaul who won in 1971.[16] James's most recent work, Moon Witch, Spider King (2022) is the second in a planned fantasy series which began with Black Leopard, Red Wolf (2019).[17]

James has taught English and creative writing at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, since 2007.[18][19] He is also a faculty lecturer at St. Francis College's Low Residency MFA in Creative Writing.[4]

In February 2019, James gave the seventh annual Tolkien Lecture at Pembroke College, Oxford.[20]

In 2020, James began co-hosting with his editor Jake Morrissey a literary podcast called "Marlon and Jake Read Dead People" that explores, in a casual setting, the work of deceased authors.[21]

In 2021, James had begun writing his first television series for HBO and Channel 4 titled Get Millie Black.[22]

Themes in James's work span religion and the supernatural, sexuality, violence, and colonialism. Often, his novels display the struggle to find an identity, whether it be as a slave or a postcolonial inhabitant of Jamaica.

James's influences include authors as well as musicians. In his acceptance speech for the Man Booker Prize in 2015, he explained: "The reggae singers Bob Marley and Peter Tosh were the first to recognize that the voice coming out our mouths was a legitimate voice for fiction and for poetry."[33] In other words, these singers empowered other artists such as James to create. In his popular 2015 essay "From Jamaica to Minnesota to Myself", published in the New York Times Magazine, James describes reading Salman Rushdie's novel Shame (1983): "Its prose was so audacious, its reality so unhinged, that you didn't see at first how pointedly political and just plain furious it was. It made me realize that the present was something I could write my way out of."[2]

James has said that he re-read Ben Okri's 1991 novel The Famished Road while writing Black Leopard, Red Wolf: "Okri is such an influence on me. I've read Famished Road like four times."[29]

A lifelong fan of comics, James has cited comic characters such as "Hellboy" as an influence on his work, citing comics' ability to blend genres as an inspiration to his own approach to writing fiction.[34]

James's work carries a unique style, often referred to as disturbing, brutal, and violent, leading him to be compared in one review to Quentin Tarantino, who is known for his excessive use of violence in his films. James does not hold back in his graphic descriptions of sexual and violent acts, which contributes to the raw nature of his writing. "James does not set out to entertain, he does not want readers to be entertained by shocking events: he believes they should be rightly horrified…"[26] His work is challenging and lyrical, and he often uses Jamaican Patois in dialogue, and often uses multiple dialects for different characters. His style strays from traditional and expected Caribbean literature by "creating wild and risky new possibilities for thinking about the region's place in our contemporary reality."[27] James has stated that he commits offences in his writing that he would not allow his students to commit, "such as writing seven-page sentences."[26] James's writing has been compared to that of Toni Morrison, William Faulkner, and Gabriel García Márquez.

Reception of James's novels has been conflicted—the same elements that some critics find to be strengths, others believe are his weaknesses. The conflicting nature of how readers and reviewers respond stems from reactions to the often upfront brutality juxtaposed with the mechanical elements that James uses to tell his stories. One critic writes: "The linguistic and stylistic excess which dominates A Brief History of Seven Killings both elevates it and burdens it."[26] Another reviewer explained, "I have had conversations with fellow Caribbeanists and students in which they have used terms like 'orgiastic' and 'masturbatory' to describe James's writing."[27] When reviewing The Book of Night Women, another critic explains: "Rape, torture, murder and other dehumanizing acts propel the narrative, never failing to shock in both their depravity and their humanness. It is this complex intertwining that makes James’s book so disturbing and so eloquent."[25]

In 2013, James received a Silver Musgrave Medal from the Institute of Jamaica.[35]

In 2019, he was named one ofTime's 100 Most Influential People.[36][37] The same year, The Guardian,[38] Kirkus Reviews,[39] and Shelf Awareness[40] named Black Leopard, Red Wolf one of the best books of the year.

In 2022, Kirkus Reviews,[41] NPR,[42] Publishers Weekly[43] named Moon Witch, Spider King one of the best books of the year.

• Caribbean literature
• Postcolonial literature

• Battersby, Eileen. "Booker Winner Marlon James Tops Tarantino for Body Count". Contemporary Literary Criticism, edited by Lawrence J. Trudeau, vol. 405, Gale, 2017. Literature Resource Center
• Frank, Alex. "Marlon James on Winning the Man Booker Prize, Fictionalizing Bob Marley, and Why He Loves Kendrick Lamar", Vogue, 1 February 2017.
• Gifford, Sheryl. "(Re)Making Men, Representing the Caribbean Nation: Individuation in the Works of Fred D’Aguiar, Robert Antoni, and Marlon James." Diss. Florida Atlantic University, 2013. Print.
• Harrison, Sheri-Marie. "Excess in a Brief History of Seven Killings." Post45, 24 October 2015.
• James, Marlon. "From Jamaica to Minnesota to Myself", The New York Times, 10 March 2015.
• Machado Sáez, Elena (2015), "Writing the Reader: Literacy and Contradictory Pedagogies in Julia Alvarez, Michelle Cliff, and Marlon James", Market Aesthetics: The Purchase of the Past in Caribbean Diasporic Fiction, Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, ISBN 978-0-8139-3705-2.
• Ozuna, Ana. "Feminine Power: Women Contesting Plantocracy in The Book of Night Women", Journal of Pan African Studies, vol. 10, no. 3, 2017, pp. 132+. Literature Resource Center.
• Polk, James. "Spiritual Combat". Review of John Crow's Devil, by Marlon James. The New York Times, 13 November 2005: 54.
• Thomson, Ian. "God 'and Rum' on the Rocks". Review of John Crow's Devil, by Marlon James. The Independent, 28 October 2005: 21.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Marlon James (novelist).

• Paul Holdengraber, "Marlon James needs noise to write (and other revelations)" (interview), The Literary Hub, 10 August 2017.
• Joshua Jelly-Schapiro, "A Caribbean Literary Renaissance" (interview), NYR Daily, 1 March 2018.