The Antigonish
Review
Issue 121
Robert Edison Sandiford
Flight From Paradise
Island Wings by Cecil Foster. Harper Collins, 313 pp., hardcover,
$27.00.
During the 50s and 60s - after the Second World War, before independence
hundreds of Barbadians left their island home for countries like England,
the United States, Canada. They left in search of a better life they felt
they could not or would not achieve if they stayed in Barbados.
Some of these expatriates succeeded brilliantly in their quests, distinguishing
their country of birth (Barbados broke away peacefully from Britain in
1966) as much as themselves. Others were less fortunate. All faced hardships:
racism, joblessness, the cold comforts of an alien environment.
There were those who left behind families: little children, some barely
able to walk, babes in arms. This was not so unusual. Their parents were
to send for them once settled in their new homes.
But even if the hardships these expatriates faced have been amply chronicled
in works by, say, Barbadian-Canadian writer Austin Clarke, the story of
those "left behind" has not often been told.
Cecil Foster's Island Wings: A Memoir is one of those rare instances.
A member of those left behind by parents who migrated to England, the Toronto-based
writer offers an account of how he (and his two older brothers) dealt with
their abandonment. Or, perhaps, this book is about how he is still dealing
with it. He was less than two when his mother, following his father, left
him in the care of his paternal grandmother.
Although the author of three other novels (No Man in the House, Sleep
On, Beloved and Slammin'Tar) and two non-fiction books (A Place
Called Heaven: The Meaning of Being Black in Canada and Caribana: The
Greatest Celebration), Foster is only 45. His growing oeuvre aside,
it is rather early for a memoir; at least, for one that aims to sum up
the decisions and actions of a lifetime.
Yet Foster, after working through the trauma of his separation from his
parents and their eventual reunion 21 years later, has more questions
than answers, which doesn't seem to vex him at all - or, in fact, the
reader. Island Wings is more about how things happen, and how strange
it is the way they happen, much less about the whys and wherefores.
In his deliberately, plain, repertorial prose, Foster offers useful,
general observations (reflections might be too strong a word) on the way
things were during his childhood and still are today in Barbados. Then,
as now, government jobs were coveted, too many men were bullies ("their
claim to fame usually [corresponding] to how much they hurt people, whether
strangers or family"), class snobbery was reflected in the school system,
and poverty was a serious problem.
With his parents over and away, sending what little they could in pounds
and provisions until they couldn't anymore, life was truly a struggle
on Lodge Road in Christ Church. When he went to live with his matemal
grandmother, his circumstances improved but remained uncompromising. Foster
and his brothers, ever each other's keeper, were forced to become men
barely out of short pants.
Despite an inelegant rhetorical style and odd lapses (Barbados' population
was not a quarter of a million in 1966; Martinque's most famous poet was
Aimé Césaire) Foster manages to conjure a society, convey
its conventions. If a problem with his story is that he recounts it cautiously
from a distance - "I remember wearing my best school clothes..." instead
of "I was wearing my best school clothes..." - events and incidents nevertheless
pile up to form a whole, telling, poignant picture of coming of age during
a time of transformation and revolution in the Caribbean. He was both
privileged and challenged to be young and alive during the birth of his
nation. Chapter 6, New Roads and Politics, about his awakening to the
cultural and artistic possibilities of the world being formed around him,
is one of the more engaging ones.
As in his first novel, No Man in the House, education was the road to
salvation. After leaving Harrison College, he himself became a secondary
school teacher. He had shown an aptitude for composition from youth, so
taught English. Three months later, though, discouraged by his ineffectiveness,
he gave up the jeers of the classroom for the hustle of Reuters' (later
to become CANA'S) newsroom, signing on as a cub reporter and editor for
the wire service. Actually, the professions weren't far apart in his mind:
"I had always looked on journalism as a form of education ... in terms
of helping people become better citizens and aware of their circumstances......
Foster eventually landed at the Barbados Advocate, where a scandal
over one of his front page stories caused him to flee his job, the late
Prime Minister Tom Adams and the country - presumably for his life - to
his brother in Toronto. His account of the scandal is intriguing. It is
generally agreed by Barbadians there was something sinister about Adams
and his autocratic style of government.
Still, the facts, as presented, suggest he was as much a victim of his
own inexperience and enthusiasm. Foster doesn't support his side of the
story with enough verifiable evidence that he did not misquote one of
Adams' minister's in print. He also makes some erroneous assumptions,
particularly about parliamentary practices and the reaction of The
Nation newspaper's political analyst, Albert Brandford, to the affair.
It wasn't until he was 23 that Foster saw his parents again. It was,
predictably, an awkward occasion. He finds his mother, who studied nursing,
living in cramped conditions with five children, his father, once one
of Barbados' brightest musicians, virtually a broken man estranged from
his family. And, as he notes early in the book, "what words did you use
... to address parents with whom you had never had a conversation?"
That said, Foster avoids undue bitterness. Maybe this is because he has
done so well for himself in his adopted country. Whatever the reason,
his meeting with his mother generates some ofthe best writing in the book;
honest, immediate, tender, and, finally, sure: "The time hadjust slipped
by. We had explained, laughed, confided and blamed. We had gotten angry
at fate and circumstances. We had praised those who stepped in to fill
the voids in our lives." In his flight, and to his credit, Foster uses
his island wings not just to rise above fate and circumstances, but also
to embrace and forgive them if not forget their high cost.
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