I am grateful for the memoir, “My Father is No Longer There” written by Anderson Reynolds and published by Jako Books in 2019. This text really made captivating reading and I appreciate it as much as a writer as I do as a reader.
This story is different, in the context of Saint Lucian prose writing because it is set in the Saint Lucian countryside and tells the story of an ordinary Saint Lucian family, of very modest means, battling some huge monsters to attain a decent standard of living for themselves. Here, Reynolds tells the story of his father who worked hard at various professions including that of a tailor, a beekeeper, a banana farmer and a migrant worker in order to provide for his family.
I say that the story is different because my first exposure to the Saint Lucian prose writing came through the novels of Garth Saint Omer. Most of Saint Omer’s novels are set in the colonial city of Castries and tell the stories of individuals entrapped within the dynamics of colour and class and the mores of that post- colonial Catholic city. It was all so complex for individuals of the brown and black class, trying to find their way.
What makes “My Father is No Longer There” a departure, is that it introduces the reader to that other Saint Lucia, to a rural family in the South, dealing with similar issues. Here we follow a hard-working family grappling with the practicalities of the farming industry for the sake of survival and in the desire for advancement, but this time within the religious strictures of the Seventh Day Adventist Religion.
Reynolds sets out to write about his father, who was tragically knocked over “while on his regular morning walk alongside the St. Jude’s Highway on the outskirts of Vieux Fort”. The persona is deeply wounded by the manner in which his father was killed. “How can I explain my father’s death? How can I explain this sorrow, this pain, this emptiness?” Although Reynolds does go on to explain the gruesome death, he also contrasts the demeaning spectacle of the old man lying down by the side of the road, with a chronicling of a life lived with pride, dignity and purpose.
I appreciate Reynolds’ technique here. The reflection upon the life of this father develops into a story of how an ordinary poor man, with a large family, fired by ambition, industriousness and steadfast Christian values, was able raise himself and his family to realise a decent standard of living. This is the framework and within this frame we also see how the persona/author himself and his siblings, having been imbued by the spirit of the father, were able to reach the highest rungs in their academic and professional fields of endeavor. Thus ultimately, the story expands from the focus on the father to a recall of the struggles of a family through the lens of the I narrator.
To some extent therefore, “My Father Is No Longer There” is also an autobiography. An alternative title of this book could be, “The Making of a Writer”. At one point the author pauses his storytelling and ponders, “Why do I write? I suspect I write because there are things inside me that beg for expression. Things that will not leave me alone until I sit and write them down.”
We learn so much about the author and his motivation for writing. We learn of a difficult childhood, an awkward and tumultuous adolescence, his record of “the most traumatic event of all [his] school days when in history class he learnt that he was the descendant of slaves and felt ‘a deep heart-wrenching shame.” This revelation of course made him more aware of the issues of race and colour on the island and how it impacted the social structure.
We also learn of his emotional estrangement from both of his parents. His father had migrated to England while his mother was pregnant with him, and subsequently, his mother left him, an eighteen-month-old baby, to join his father. For this reason, the mother-child bond had been severed. There had never been an emotional bond with the father “who had left his children in search of a better life for them.”
This piece of creative non-fiction, “My father Is No Longer There” is well written and it is real. Anderson takes us inside, unabashedly. He takes us inside of rural Saint Lucia, inside the home of his childhood, inside the struggle of a rural family, and indeed, inside his very own soul.
About Travis Weekes
Dr. Travis Weekes is an award-winning St. Lucian actor, poet, playwright, theatre director, and cultural critic. He is currently the theatre coordinator and lecturer at the Department of Creative and Festival Arts, University of the West Indies, St. Augustine. Dr. Weekes is the author of several books, including Take Me To Mon Repos (a play), Let There Be Jazz (poetry), Bodies, Memories and Spirits (folk culture commentary), and The Fight for Belle Vue and The Field of Power (two plays).
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