Memories, feelings: about how he\u2019d visited us, because it was all about the writing life. Truth-telling: <\/i>how <\/i>I construed it. Yes, excited I became because celebrated author E.R. Braithwaite would visit us: teacher-trainees as we were in the town of New Amsterdam, Guyana, in the Amazon basin. Really in 1966? Expanse of time, drawn out; time shrinking too, it seemed. And the novel To Sir With Love<\/i> (1959) was still making the headlines; and the movie would be made not long after that year. Starring Sidney Poitier, yes. I became obsessed with it (still in my late teens I was, a pupil-teacher, in the British tradition–D.H. Lawrence was one such). Recall: St. Patrick\u2019s Anglican School in the sugar-plantation Canje-Rose Hall district where I lived, and my own charges kept being before me. Pegasse and molasses smells in the air, as narrow iron barges, cane punts really, clanged: as they snaked along the canals across the coastal villages. I pulled stalks of cane from these punts as a child, regular pastime as it was; and the huge cane factory hummed, our school being adjacent to it; the factory\u2019s tall chimney belched out smoke to the illimitable sky.<\/p>\n
How really far away? Or far back in time? But now novelist E.R. Braithwaite was here: he, a famous writer; and I had my own aspirations, see. Yes, all he would tell us\u2013tell me–about the writing life. Colonial times and political upheaval, nationalism on the rise. No more colonialism! The Cuban-missile crisis lingered amidst Cold War angst. East-West rifts. Not yet North-South?<\/p>\n
I imagined how Braithwaite might have fared in his East End London classroom with kids who were, well, enfant terribles<\/i>. East End London was unique, as Braithwaite describes it in his novel. Verisimilitude, indeed. And new child psychology research I internalized as a teacher-trainee, the college instructors being mostly American-educated, some former headmasters and headmistresses. Yes, I was the youngest of the teacher-trainee batch; but my creative instincts were rife; maybe there were others like me too, eager to hear E.R. Braithwaite. Did we really call ourselves the \u201cAspirants\u201d?<\/p>\n
I read other Caribbean authors: V.S. Naipaul, George Lamming, Vic Reid, Derek Walcott, Sam Selvon; and local ones like poet Martin Carter and novelist Wilson Harris. But in E.R. Braithwaite I saw something else: new instincts of the writerly life? Not what we had in common? Civil-rights agitation and protests in America, ongoing. New temperaments against colonial rule. In the UK alarm grew over the likes of Enoch Powell. Yes, the Brixton Riots. Were the \u201cwinds of change\u201d really blowing? A genuine new world order was before us, see. And I was a Sandbach Parker gold-medal winning poet already: such was my sense as a creative writer!<\/p>\n
Did I think Braithwaite was privileged because he now lived in the \u201cmetropole,\u201d London? Not an \u201coutsider\u201d was he in England because of his minority race and colour? Braithwaite had come to the teaching profession almost by chance, fortuitously. He was really trained as an engineer; but an old Englishman he met at a bus stop urged him to try teaching as a career option. \u201cThe idea did not commend itself to me,\u201d Braithwaite recalled years later, as an octogenarian. \u201cI said that the people would not trust me with inanimate things, why would they trust me with their children?\u201d<\/p>\n
Braithwaite had grown up in Georgetown, some sixty miles from my own Canje district. But by sheer will or ambition he made his way by boat to London via New York. Much later when he received Guyana\u2019s Cacique Crown of Honour (2012), he languidly looked back: \u201cAs a kid I studied very hard. My friends wanted to be policemen and things like that, but I wanted to be different. I had no friends or acquaintances who were writers. I never thought of writing as a career. England was always used as a kind of \u2018Mecca\u2019 for us boys…a place where we could develop our own talents and skills.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now in my teacher-college 1966, he would tell us more. His impressions. Images all. Past and present combined. Metaphors of past days yoked. The present becoming more alive. And his own father was a gold-and-diamond miner, and his mother a homemaker, in Georgetown. But young Edward Ricardo Braithwaite was studious by nature: he entered a prestigious secondary school, Queen\u2019s College; and not long after he set his sights on the \u201cmother country,\u201d going there on a cargo ship. \u201cIt was a strange kid of voyage,\u201d he reminisced. \u201cLuckily, I had walked with several books because there was no conversation with the sailors\u2026they were too busy, so I spent time reading.\u201d<\/p>\n
Later, in London, he would come to new perceptions; as he said: \u201cIn British Guiana every white man he\u2019d encountered was of the privileged class. Now, \u201cI couldn\u2019t believe my eyes. I saw white men, bending and picking up cigarette butts and smoking them. \u201cAll the whites in British Guiana were in managerial positions. I never associated poverty with white persons.\u201d<\/p>\n
What more would E.R. Braithwaite tell us? Indeed, I would read Braithwaite\u2019s other books such as Paid Servant (<\/i>on being a social worker in London); Honorary White<\/i> (about experiences in apartheid in South Africa); A Kind of Homecoming,<\/i> and House of Straws<\/i> (more intimate personal experiences). But To Sir With Love<\/i> was special, because I too was a teacher, see, being in the \u201cnoble profession,\u201d as we deemed it. Before my charges at my local St Patrick\u2019s Anglican, I fantasized being Braithwaite. But my students were far unlike East End Londoners. Maybe just tame or mannered black-and-brown kids mine were, not rambunctious Londoners. Metropole and village were far apart. Polarities. Yet Braithwaite brought us closer.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Did I fantasize going abroad and facing similarly difficult students? Maybe one day I would teach in Canada? The tropical heat swirled. I wanted more. Braithwaite would tell us everything, about the literary life. About London\u2019s heady atmosphere, the centre of culture and learning. Empire, indeed. I\u2019d also read V.S. Naipaul\u2019s Miguel Street<\/i>s, and A<\/i> House for Mr Biswas: <\/i>all imprinted in me, giving me a more defined sense of place and racial context. Caribbean space, see.<\/p>\n
Braithwaite spoke in a relaxed manner. He would recall, later, that To Sir With Love<\/i> sold very well in England because his publishers had rushed to a second printing due to the demand. \u201cFor a long time I had the feeling that it was not real; for a while I would wake up and find I was dreaming. The newspapers were calling me for interviews. And the book seemed to have a life of its own\u2026it seemed to teach all the right points to people who had an interest in the lives of young people.\u201d<\/p>\n
Braithwaite\u2019s words resonated. Truth-telling, indeed. I glanced around at my fellow teacher-trainees: how were they taking the guest speaker in our hum-drum place, more than just a former school teacher in London. Listen well, I mutely said; as I wanted him to speak about the writer\u2019s craft. How complex or demanding?<\/p>\n
I fidgeted. How was Braithwaite taking us as teachers in the \u201ccolony\u201d? Overwrought I became because of my own expectations.<\/p>\n
How did he come to literature, though he was trained as a physicist and engineer? Did he sit in his cold bed-sitting room and stuck to his manual typewriter. A Hermes typewriter, not unlike my own? Did he write long-hand, as he tried shaping his narrative? How many drafts did he actually write of his celebrated novel?<\/p>\n
The mystery of the creative act kept being compelling, kept coming to me. Maybe he kept a journal. His mind-space. What was essential to being a writer as he \u201cyoked\u201d his Guyanese experience to his London life while also coping with being an outsider<\/i>. Memory and consciousness. Sugar cane days and East End London juxtaposed? Ah, did Braithwaite read the likes of Dickens and Jane Austen? A Cambridge man Braithwaite was, in the sciences. Not a litterateur<\/i>? How did he associate science with the arts?<\/p>\n
Did Braithwaite have inner demons he wanted to expunge? I forgot being a village school teacher and listened to him in rapt attention; I kept being transported to London. His literary success was now more than \u201ca pleasant dream,\u201d he would later say. And he would be appointed Guyana\u2019s Ambassador to the United Nations and Ambassador to Venezuela; he also became a university lecturer (New York University and Florida State University).<\/p>\n
Immediacy of how he coped in a Britain experiencing social turmoil, protests against immigration from the colonies grew. Fast-forward: \u201cThey are here because we had been there\u201d \u2013said Margaret Drabble says in her novel The Radiant Way<\/i>. And more peoples kept coming in droves to London after the Second World War to fill the need for labour. Different races, creeds, many to become genuine \u201clonely Londoners\u201d (Sam Selvon). Braithwaite reminisced about applying in various places for a job as an engineer; but his applications were rejected. \u201cIt was all linked to my perspective of whites as being honest; truth-telling.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added, \u201cI wasn\u2019t prepared to see them as ordinary people, so it was my fault. In growing up, I did not understand humanity; I saw people in terms of rich, poor, bright or stupid.\u201d Time beyond his naivety. Then he met the older man at the bus stop who told him to try teaching.<\/p>\n
Indeed, Braithwaite followed through with it. \u201cThe headmaster was kind and gracious,\u201d Braithwaite said. \u201cHe welcomed me, then he gave me a run-down of the kind of students I should expect to encounter. It was not that he was dissuading me; he was just preparing me for the students.\u201d About his first classroom experience? \u201cMy first day was a rough day; but I was determined. This was the first (job) opening of any sort that was presented to me, and I was not prepared to let anything or anyone interfere with it.\u201d And his students were of a working-class background, not far unlike those in the sugar-plantation district? How did Braithwaite assess the situation?<\/p>\n
\u201cUpon reflection, they were actually a product of their environment. They were big, they were tough, or at least they saw themselves as being tough, and they wanted me to see them as being tough, but after awhile they were just \u2018pussies.\u2019\u201d More about gaining the students\u2019 respect or acceptance of himself as their \u201cblack\u201d teacher, as described in his novel. \u201cThere was no overt disrespect\u2026everything was hinted at,\u201d Braithwaite mused. \u201cUnder no circumstances would I quit on them, because to quit would be to quit on teaching, and I liked the idea of being a teacher. I liked the idea of being called \u2018Sir\u2019, no matter how reluctantly it came out.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut the problem was that the idea of a black teacher did not appeal to them…but after awhile, the \u2018blackness\u2019 did not interfere with my teaching. I think they were eventually able to ignore my blackness in favour of my teaching.\u201d I kept waiting anxiously to hear about Braithwaite\u2019s writing life. Many years, as he reminisced: \u201c…there is something about teaching; it grips you. It grips you because each night I had to prepare something for the next day, which meant that each night was a period of discovery…There was never a dull moment.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
He stayed teaching for nine years; and when the time came to part with his students, he said: \u201cI felt a closeness to them, and as the time of my departure drew near, I found that the things that I disliked about them most were not so offensive after all. I saw myself in them. I saw some aspects of their behaviour as reflecting things that I had thought and done.\u201d When I became a college and university teacher in Canada, this would come to me, too.<\/p>\n
The students\u2019 farewell gift poignantly captured in the famous movie: a package they gave him marked \u201cTo Sir With Love.\u201d The package of cigarettes bearing his initials. \u201cI discovered later that they had visited WD&HO Wills (a cigarette manufacturer) and ordered the cigarettes, each initialled \u2018E.R.B\u2019.\u201d But as a non-smoker, Braithwaite merely kept the cigarettes. \u201cI wasn\u2019t a smoker in that sense, so I could occasionally look at them and remind myself of the days in that school,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
More about this novel\u2019s provenance Braithwaite would later say: \u201cI suppose that all of us at some point in our lives reflect on things past, and at one time in my life I thought of recording those good times and bad times. I was not a writer per se\u2026I wrote about my life up to that point, and when it was done, I was advised to get it published. So I wrapped the book up and took it to a publishing house in London.\u201d<\/p>\n
And, \u201cI wasn\u2019t greeted with any kind of welcoming. The publisher was not there, and one of his minions told me to leave the package on the desk and eventually somebody would read it. I later learned that through a series of accidental events, the book was taken home that very night and read, because the very next day, I had a phone call inviting me to go and meet the publisher. I became very friendly with my publisher.<\/p>\n
He later told me that it was evident when he read it that I was not a professional (author). But there was something about the book which he found intriguing and he knew that persons would find it interesting.\u201d<\/p>\n
About the novel\u2019s reception, Braithwaite said: \u201cIt sold very well in England because they rushed to a second printing\u201d; and, \u201cI had the feeling that it was not real…I was dreaming…the newspapers were calling me for interviews. And the book seemed to have a life of its own, particularly among academics. It seemed to teach all the right points to people who had an interest in the lives of young people.\u201d<\/p>\n
I kept flitting back to the past: wanting a lasting memory of Braithwaite in the sixties as integral to my own. Indeed, he would visit Guyana again and talked more about the writing life. Inner landscapes, always. But see, I inevitablt drifted back to my teacher-trainee days.<\/p>\n
Question-time after Braithwaite\u2019s address to us: as one older teacher-trainee thrust his hand up. \u201cAs a scientist, what do you know about the origin of the world?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n
Cosmology, is it? Nothing about the writer\u2019s life?<\/p>\n
I was too shy to ask my own burning question. Inwardly I seethed.<\/p>\n
Braithwaite seemed amused, or just intrigued. He smiled. The rest of us laughed. I figured Braithwaite looked at me. only. <\/i> New worlds, landscapes: about beginnings and endings.<\/p>\n
Braithwaite tried to answer the question about the origin of the world, as a scientist. Not as a writer, or prophet? Truth-telling, I surmised. As I too wondered about origins, provenance: there, on the edge of the world in Guyana, it seemed. Far from Canada. Always close.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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