Growing Up Stupid Under the Union Jack
|
|
|
First published in 1980, Austin Clarke’s memoir of his education in 1940s Barbados is, on the surface, an uncomplicated and affable tale of a colonial boyhood. But captured in its pages – and typified by that splendid title – is a laser-sharp portrait of the stratifications and petty tyrannies of the colonial system and the daily idiocies brought about by imposing a structure of English rules and attitudes on a small Caribbean island.
Clarke’s book opens with his admission, as a scholarship boy, into the prestigious Combermere School, an establishment which prepared boys for careers in the Civil Service or the Law with a strict regime of Latin and French, Pythagoras’ theorem and flogging. In his wonderfully vivid account of wartime Barbados, Clarke exposed the faultlines of colonial Bajan life. Black and white, shortage and abundance, the poor in their shacks and the Governor in his mansion; the tensions of the imperial system are ever-present. Barbados is a society pulled between its imperial ties and the lure of consumerist ‘Amurca’.
The book ends with the boys sitting the Senior Cambridge Overseas Examination, a terrifying ordeal that determined a boy’s life: sending him forward into a lucrative job or pitching him back into the poverty of his village. Growing Up Stupid Under the Union Jack is packed with sharply observed characters and written with a joyous and sprightly conversational rhythm. It is both a wry and perceptive critique of the colonial system and a sharply observed account of childhood.
Signal Books Ltd, 36 Minster Road, Oxford, OX4 1LY, England. Ian Randle Publishers, 11 Cunningham Avenue, Box 686, Kingston 6, Jamaica.
- Product information
- by Austin Clarke
- Star rating
- Publisher
- Signal Books/Ian Randle Publishers
- Product number
- ISBN 1 902669 70 3/ 976 637 108 3
Join over 30,000 people just like you. Get e-mail updates about new content, action alerts, contests, and more!
Voices from the margins:
Multimedia: video, podcasts, and more.
- Poetry Slam in Zimbabwe
- The House of Hunger poetry slam held in Zimbabwe in 2006, and organised by the Pamberi Trust, showcased young artists performing inspirational work on issues from corporate power to child soldiers. The video features four of the poets.
Published by Pambazuka News.
- Iranian women speak out
- 3 March 2007, London. Women's rights activists marched through the English capital last week to celebrate International Women's Day with a protest against the misogyny of the Islamic regime in Iran and the threat of invasion by the US. Hear the voices of Iranian feminists Azar and Leila Parnian and the sounds of the demonstration as it passed through the heart of the city. Click here to learn more about the campaign.
Produced by Heidi Bachram.
- Raised Voices audio:
- Benny from West Papua on Corporate Power
- Vinayan from India on agriculture
