In 1962 he was awarded a Guyana scholarship to attend St John's College, Cambridge, where he studied Romance languages.

[5] He joined the Working People's Alliance (WPA) in Guyana in 1977 and became one of the leaders of the party, along with Walter Rodney, Clive Y. Thomas and Eusi Kwayana.

Roopnaraine also contributed a substantial "Introduction" to the Peepal Tree Press 2010 edition of Edgar Mittelholzer's Shadows Move Among Them.

[5] Roopnaraine's collection of essays, The Sky’s Wild Noise, won the non-fiction category of the 2013 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature.

[6] The judges commentated that "in the corpus of non-fiction prose in the Caribbean intellectual tradition, only José Martí and George Lamming rival the range of Roopnaraine’s capacities of response, depth of analysis and subtle and mordant style.