Back in the days, long long before hand-gripped devices, boys and young
men in Guyana and the West Indies loved climbing trees. And when British
Royalty visited the colonies, the old Pathé News camera crew were sure to
capture the plucky barefoot few perched in the trees, suggesting native
determination to catch a glimpse as the motorcade with shining outriders
went by.
In Georgetown boys and young men climbed the trees outside the famous
Bourda Green to get a non-paying view of Test Match cricket. You had to
get to the trees early to reserve your branch.
There were squabbles. Men carved their initials on a tree branch to claim
ownership. A dispute was once settled when a claimant sneaked back at
night and chopped down the tree limb of a rival. This led to confrontation,
and the involvement of the local constabulary who threatened to arrest
and charge somebody with acts of public property vandalism. At which
point the small crowd of onlookers dispersed and the disputants
disappeared.
There's no record that proceedings in the previous paragraph actually
took place, but they're not hard to imagine.
Guyana's E. R. Braithwaite ("To Sir, With Love") might have been a tree
climber. At the news of his passing (December 2016) that image seemed
somehow appropriate to describe a man in search of the uninhibited, clear
view; getting off the ground for the wider perspective.
Like many West Indians he entered England in the 1940's ̶ "grown up British
…we knew no other cultural pattern" ̶ where he joined the British RAF.
Later in post-war Britain he experienced racial prejudice on London streets,
trains and buses, and in the workplace.
He could have found a place to cotch, nail down new habits and routines;
then drawing on observations might have written books about the cramped
lives of lonely Londoners warming themselves in marginal places.
He could have taken advantage of affordable accommodation in academia
to turn out peer-pleasing books. Or turn with withering comic prose on
fellow Guianese back home, inventing a street named Miguel, with amazing
characters like the fellas arguing under the tree outside the Georgetown
cricket ground.
First published in 1959, "To Sir, With Love" might not now be a dust
covered source of pleasure on everyone's bookshelf. The latest edition (New
York, 2014) describes it as "the book that inspired the classic film" (released
in 1967), featuring the then immensely popular actor Sidney Poitier who
managed to take over the book's memory pages.
In the early 60s the opening lines, strange yet imaginable, drew you in:
"The crowded red double-decker bus inched its way through the snarl of
traffic in Aldgate. It was almost as if it was reluctant to get rid of the
overload of noisy, earth charwomen it had collected on its run through the
city ̶ thick-armed, bovine women, huge-breasted, with heavy bodies
irrevocably distorted by frequent childbearing."
[Sticking a pin here: when it comes to opening lines from our region
writers "To Sir, With Love" still can't beat "Miguel Street". And when it
comes to inspiring something new, the movie can't beat the Audio Book
(yet to be offered) of "Miguel Street".
Imagine getting in your car, all set for traffic jam or a long drive. Seat
belt. Then, audio disc first lines:
"About nine o'clock one morning a hearse and a motor-car stopped outside
Miss Hilton's house. A man and a woman got out of the car. They were both
middle-aged and dressed in black. While the man whispered to the two
men in the hearse, the woman was crying in a controlled and respectable
way."
Sounds retro '60s, yes. Vintage read and ride, though.]
Braithwaite became what his admirers like to describe as "multifaceted"
(diplomat, former Royal Air Force pilot, teacher). A man of "endless
journeyings" as Guyanese author Jan Carew (British Army veteran, scholar,
activist) might say. Men whose talent and lives seem upwardly unlimited,
not content to stay penned in one secure operating room.
"To Sir, With Love" sent back to readers in Guiana intimations of what to
expect if they trusted BBC voice amicability, and still wanted to make the
Windrush crossing.
The narrator opens on a note of cool outsider curiosity: "I smiled inwardly
at the essential naturalness of these folks". Soon he discovers he must tread
warily. Good conduct was not always its own reward. "We were to be men,
but without manhood."
The chapters roll forward but the writing eventually loses some of its
imaginative promise, slipping into a Record and Assess Vérité mode as
the narrator enters friendships and faces issues in and outside his school's
classrooms.
Braithwaite was reportably not altogether happy with the performance of
Sidney Poitier as the lead man in the movie. The book's Mark Thackeray is
a model of even-handed civility, learning more and more about his host's
"essential naturalness", until his mobility reaches the first tight corner
where he feels compelled to push back in anger.
Despite a captivating performance, it's entirely possible Poitier's easy
charm might not have been what every reader visualized, or what
Braithwaite had in mind for the book's narrator. (Had he been born and
working back then, the British actor David Oyelowo might have been
perfect for the role.)
In Jamaica, at the University of the West Indies, immediately after the
street demonstrations in 1968 over Professor Walter Rodney, the island and
the Mona campus were thrown into a ferment of identity course correction
and rebranding (leading in many cases to the distortion of individual lives,
and the flatlining of distended careers.)
The work of Professor Edward Kamau Brathwaite, the celebrated Barbadian
poet and scholar, was a major talking point during that period of regional
self-assessment.
Loyal lovers of his poetry urged sources to be careful, when galvanizing his
house of ideas, not to misspell his last name; and please don't confuse the
man's "vision" (the grounding of his Caribbean folk "nation language", its
Africa out roots) with the reputation of the other Edward Braithwaite from
Guyana.
"To Sir, With Love" played no part in the culture conversations of the 70s.
If mentioned at all, it struck readers as intellectually inconsequential.
Overachieving writers from Guyana are a thing of the past. Over recent
decades standards (reading and writing) have plummeted. Solid,
interesting work from writers ̶ the few not stuck in ethnic viscera and
mirror relations ̶ is difficult to find.
Though not on a top tier with Guyana's literary giants ̶ Edgar Mittelholzer
(1909 -1965), Wilson Harris (1926 – ) Jan Carew (1920-2012) ̶ E.R Braithwaite
shares shelf company with Roy Heath (1926-2008); writers of quiet challenge
and endurance who wrote from a station of not completely settled
residency elsewhere.
You have to give the man his props. That first novel, once described as a
"triumph of human empathy", helped Guianese and West Indian readers come
to grips with the ever-shifting ground of accommodation in the developed
world. It prepared us for the migrant experience, its high expectations and
risk; over land and sea; back then and even now.
Book Reviewed: "To Sir, With Love" : E. R. Braithwaite, Open Road
Integrated Media Inc., 2014
– Wyck Williams
FARJOURNEY CARIBBEAN 