Walcott, Derek

Derek Walcott was born in Castries on the Caribbean island of Saint Lucia. His father was a civil servant who painted and wrote poetry, his mother taught at a Methodist school. He mentions his mixed background in the poem "The Schooner Flight" in which he says that "I'm just a red nigger who love the sea,/I had a sound colonial education,/I have Dutch, nigger, and English in me,/and either I'm a nobody or I'm a nation."