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Vernella Fuller
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Category:
Literary Fiction
Publisher: Top Mountain Press
ISBN-10: 148021289X
Type: Fiction
Pages: 210
Copyright: December 2012
ISBN-13: 9781480212893
Price: $4.99 (eBook)
Set in England in the 1980s, Going Back Home is a powerful story of sibling love and rivalry, religious fundamentalism and alienation
Joy and Esmine were born in the UK to Jamaican immigrant parents.
Joy grew up to accept and be impassioned by her father's view that England could never be home for them. Both long to return to Jamaica.
Esmine, on the other hand, shares her mother's views that they have earned their position in England, and that England will always be their home.
Can the family survive the pressures of divided loyalties, distortion and displacement?
Excerpt
Joy stood in the sun, one arm on the bus shelter the other akimbo. It was hot for that time of the morning, the gentle breeze making no impact on the heat. At least three minibuses had passed, going in the opposite direction to Spanish Town, and providing constant amusement to Joy. A variety of limbs protruded from their windows; arms, heads, even whole bodies seemingly glued to where the doors should have been, as the buses sped past the petrol station and round the bend.
The smell of frying onions, waiting impatiently in pans for callaloo or ackee and salt-fish, made Joy regret that she had only had tea before leaving home. She inhaled deeply, breathing in the smells, the sights and sounds. There was so much to absorb. The hibiscus edges surrounding the white bungalows, their elegant canopies warding off the fiercest heat from the verandas. The big mango tree by the corner well laden with green fruits and the odd yellow one, half-hidden among the leaves; the coconut trees regal in the distance, the limes proudly rooted.
‘Yams, sweet potatoes, dasheen, callaloo, That’s what me a sell...yams, sweet potatoes...dasheen, callaloo...,’ a barefoot woman sang at the top of her voice as she passed with a basket on her head, her hands swinging by her side.
The radios, some blaring out RJR, others JBC, competed for preeminence. There was a hold-up on the Marcus Garvey Drive, Joy heard, the way they were headed. Somebody’s car had fallen into a pot-hole and had come out without one of its wheels. The heavy pounding of the reggae she adored serenaded her from the house behind her, rivalling the clash of pans, screams of mothers to children to sweep the yard, hurry up with this or that, cocooning Joy in an immense feeling of well-being.
Esmine stood underneath the bus shelter shifting about restlessly, squinting against the glare of the sun. She put on her sun-glasses, almost breaking them in her irritation. They slid down her sweaty nose. She grabbed them off and jammed them in the side of her bag. The constant dust was getting into her eyes. She dreaded the thought of the way her clothes must look. Her hair! She daren’t open her mouth for fear that one of the countless flies would go down her throat. And the noise. The radios, car horns, the clamour from kitchens and yards. She couldn’t understand why it had to be so loud
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