Featured in the next cycle of Exclusively Independent, is Caribbean Chemistry by Christopher Vanier, from Kingston University Press. Here's a few words from Christopher, describing how he came to writing his book.
I bore in mind two warnings when I started writing my memoir. The first came from a famous American novelist who was asked how young graduates should go about becoming published writers. “It’s simple,” she said. “There’s only one imperative: don’t smoke! That way, you will increase your chances of living a long life. And perhaps, in the latter part of that long, eventful life you will find an interesting jewel to relate, a story based on experience.”
I satisfied this criterion, since I waited until retirement before beginning my memoir about life in the Caribbean fifty years ago. But later, my son – journalist – tried to steer me away from autobiography. He pointed out that I was not a famous (or infamous) politician, that I had never killed anyone, and that I had not even been to prison. Who would want to read about a happy life? I decided to ignore this.
I picked up my pen and set down on paper the mischief that a growing boy gets up to on a small island. I discovered that what I had lived as games and excitement were really dangerous escapades, from fighting with monkeys to breaking out of boarding school at night, to getting lost on the slopes of a volcano, to rocketing down a sugar cane chute, to assaulting vehicles, to being thoroughly caned, and finally to making serious explosives. Were it not for a warm and understanding family environment, plus a dollop of luck, I might not have survived.
Looked at from another angle, my book is a voyage of discovery about growing-up in a small, exotic community, shut off from most of the world, a tiny speck in the Caribbean ocean. The encircling island shores are at the same time a wall of protection and a prison. My young protagonist thought that the world was against him, hiding its secrets, whereas the real secrets were inside him – his search for identity. His skin reflects the diversity of the region: neither black nor white but brown, in a world where the debate about colour is ever-present. He learns that he has inherited Carib blood from Guyana, but on his island the Amerindians were brutally exterminated by the colonists three centuries earlier. Which ethnic group should he cleave to? He also has French blood in him, but unfortunately French is the subject he dislikes most in school. There remains a mixture of English and Danish genes going back to the usurping colonisers, and some African heritage, from the slaves who painfully replaced the rebellious Caribs. He is rooted in the sun-drenched tropics, knowing only St. Kitts-Nevis, Antigua, and Barbados, but the books which shape his mind are all about wintry England and America, places that he has never seen and of which he sometimes doubts the existence.
As he reaches his teens, the challenges become more intense. The colonial system in the Caribbean is breaking down and the sugar industry is coming to its end. His father, a lawyer working for the planters, is embroiled in labour strife, and as politics turn black he will soon lose his job. His tries to push his children out into the wider world. But how can his son escape from his island jail if his family does not have the resources to pay for him? And where should he go? And, above all, why? The protagonist has a foretaste of exile when he unexpectedly wins a Lincoln essay contest that takes him to Washington and confronts him with American racial politics, quite different from those on his island.
At any point, from examination intrigues with his friends, to his personal struggle over religion, to his passionate sexual blossoming, his future may take a different direction. Behind the conflicts, I hope that this book radiates the warmth of Caribbean life that I felt. It is a hymn to the emigrant, or why young people leave their beloved countries and families for the unknown.
Christopher
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