As a child, Carmen Barclay Subryan lived beside the beautiful Demerara River at Retrieve, Mackenzie, where the roots of her mother’s ancestors, the Allicocks, run deep into the history of the region. When the Demerara Bauxite Company forced the Allicock families to move, her family relocated to Wismar across the river. She attended Christianburg Scots School, where she later taught, Mackenzie High School, and Guyana Teachers College. In 1968, she immigrated to the USA to attend Howard University in Washington, D.C. There she received a B.A magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, an M.A., and in 1983, a Ph.D. degree, all in English. In 1974, she began teaching at Howard University, retiring in 2015 after 41 years there. She is the mother of two daughters and grandmother to two grandsons and one granddaughter.
Always interested in her roots, Carmen has penned three novels, Black–Water Women, Black–Water People, and Black–Water Children, based loosely on the Allicock family history. She has also authored three books of poetry: Reprise, Rachel’s Tears, and Sketches: People–Watching in the U S of A. In 2016, she published a book of short stories entitled Realities: Stories from our Times. In addition, she has written three booklets about the Linden area: “The Story of Christianburg”, “The Story of Wismar” and “The Story of Mackenzie”.
In May 2017, on her return from a six and a half month stay in Guyana, she began writing Stepping on Cracks: Reflections on my Homeland. After having her DNA analyzed in 2018, she began writing Finding My Roots and Other Stories, a series of ten short stories that she completed in 2019.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, she did extensive research for her latest book, Connecting with my African Roots, that yielded surprising and disturbing results. This controversial book she published in 2021.
An avid reader, Carmen is focusing on developing a love of reading in children and to this end she distributed copies of her book Black–Water People to high school students in the Linden area.
GUYANA UPDATE
the Demerara Bauxite Company mentioned in my profile, once the main employer in the country, started mining in 1916 and is now a minimal part of Guyana’s industries. It employs a few hundred workers and is owned by the Chinese. The Alumina Plant that started operating in 1961 closed in 1982 and its ruins stand on the bank of the Demerara River. Today, Guyana is all about oil and gas. In 2015, Exxon Mobil discovered huge reservoirs of oil and gas in the Essequibo region bordering Venezuela, signed contracts and began drilling. Other oil companies have joined in the drilling since more oil is being discovered. Venezuela, that has long claimed most of the oil-bearing land despite the fact that the ongoing dispute was settled decades ago by international arbitration and reaffirmed in 2007, is now flexing its muscles and has soldiers at the border while Guyana’s inadequate little army has soldiers there also. In February 2025, Venezuelan soldiers wounded some Guyanese soldiers. The situation is dire. Pray for Guyana.