Hello to my fellow Grenadians in London!
My name is Brian Samuel and I’d like to tell you about my new and, if I say so myself, important book on Grenadian and Windrush history: ‘Song for my Father: A West Indian Journey’. The book contains original photographs, documents and diaries kept by my grandfather, father, and myself, spanning the period 1940 to 1975, recalling from personal experiences an important period in our collective journey.
I launched the book in April 2023, and I’m pleased to say that it is receiving extremely positive reviews, both at home and abroad:
- Trinidad & Tobago Newsday review: here.
- Amazon reader reviews: here.
- The Bubb Report, Grenada: here.
- Harrow Online review: here.
- Profile, TVJ Jamaica: here.
- Caribbean Magazine Plus: here.
My father, Darwin Fitzgerald ‘Gerry’ Samuel, was a most remarkable man: teacher, seeker, writer, diarist, renaissance man and lifelong nomad. In 1942, at the depths of World War Two, he took ship from his native Grenada, to go and work in the armaments industry in England, building Lancaster Bombers at the Metrovicks factory in Manchester, prime target of the Luftwaffe. He survived the war, qualified as a metalwork and technical drawing teacher, and married Scottish nurse Helen Hogan. A man on the up.
Pity it wasn’t to last. In a counter narrative to the depressingly familiar trope of the dead-beat dad, it was our Black Grenadian father who played the heroic single parent role, after our White British mother had abandoned the family. To say our father was unprepared is putting it mildly: he was in a state of shock. But despite his shock there was one thing he knew he’d never do: abandon his boys.
Our father took us on a rollicking ride: from the hills of Grenada to the arse end of London, to meeting President Lyndon Johnson in the White House, to Buckingham Palace and much more besides. Unlike most of the Windrush Generation, our journey didn’t end after we got off the boat in Liverpool – that was just the beginning.
When my father died in 1975, suddenly and shockingly, my world imploded. Death makes you search for answers to lingering questions; like: where’s our mother? Two weeks later, as my brother and I stood in front of her desk in Nassau, not a hint of recognition on her face, we realized we’d unearthed much more than we’d bargained for …
This has been a ten-year labour of love: a tribute to my father and to all the unsung fathers like him, who have mothered countless thousands of Caribbean men and women. The book is available from Amazon and Barnes and Noble, in paperback and Kindle.
I now live back home in Grenada (I used to have a British passport, but that’s another Windrush scandal), and will be coming to London in August. I would love to meet with my fellow Grenadians to discuss the book.
Best regards,
Brian
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