Beryl Gilroy – författare

Beryl Gilroy transports the reader back to the Guyanese village of her childhood over sixty years ago to meet such characters as Mr Dewsbury the Dog Doctor, Mama Darlin' the village midwife and Mr Cumberbatch the Chief Mourner. It was a time when "children did not have open access to the world of adults and childhood had not yet disappeared", and perhaps for this reason, the men and women who pass through these stories have a mystery and singularity which are as unforgettable for the reader as they were for the child.Beryl Gilroy brings back to life a whole, rich Afro-Guyanese village community, where there were old people who had been slaves as children and Africa was not forgotten."Beryl Gilroy is an artist. She wields her pen the way an artist wields a paintbrush. A few firm lines, a few quick strokes, a touch of color here, a splash of color there, precise shading elsewhere, and presto! A portrait in miniature. Gilroy's vignettes in her collection entitled Sunlight on Sweet Water, do indeed dance like sunlight on the sweet water of the Caribbean or sunlight reflected from Guiana's numerous waterways. They are pithy portraits of persons, places, objects, and events which allow the Caribbean reader to revel in nostalgia and permit the non-Caribbean a peek into that part of the region that is not dressed up to lure tourists. These short pieces reveal the heart and soul of the area and remind the world that the Caribbean, travel brochures to the contrary, is not just a playground for the idle and not-so-idle rich. The Caribbean is home to those persons who have traveled out, and to those who have remained to keep the hearth burning and the heart alive and well." Phyllis Briggs-Emanuel, The Caribbean WriterBeryl Gilroy came to London over fifty years ago from Guyana. She wrote six novels, two autobiographical books and was a pioneering teacher and psychotherapist. Sadly, she died in 2000 at the age of 76.

After false starts in teaching and social work, Melda Hayley finds her mission in fostering the damaged children of the first generation of black settlers in a deeply racist Britain. But though Melda finds daily uplift in her work, her inner life starts to come apart. Her brother Arnie has married a white woman and his defection from the family and the distress Melda witnesses in the children she fosters causes her own buried wounds to weep. Melda confronts the cruelties she has suffered as the 'outside child' at the hands of her stepmother. But though the past drives Melda towards breakdown, she finds strengths there too, especially in the memories of the loving, supporting women of the yards. And there is Pa who, in his new material security in the USA, discovers a gentle caring side and teaches his family to sing in praise of love and children.Beryl Gilroy came to London over fifty years ago from Guyana. She wrote six novels, two autobiographical books and was a pioneering teacher and psychotherapist. Sadly, she died in 2000 at the age of 76.

As a young man of twenty, Thomas Inkle sets out for Barbados to inspect the family sugar estates. On the way he is shipwrecked on a small West Indian island inhabited by Carib Indians. He alone escapes as his shipmates are slaughtered, and is rescued by Yarico, a Carib woman who takes him as, 'an ideal, strange and obliging lover.' So begins an erotic encounter, explored with poetic, imaginative intensity, which has a profound effect on both.Amongst the Caribs, Inkle is a mere child, whose survival depends entirely on Yarico's favour and protection. But when he is rescued and taken with Yarico to the slave island of Barbados, she is entirely at his mercy.Inkle and Yarico is loosely based on a 'true' story which became a much repeated popular narrative in the 17th and 18th centuries. Beryl Gilroy reinterprets its mythic dimensions from both a woman's and a black perspective, but above all she engages the reader in the psychological truths of her characters' experiences.As an old man, Inkle recalls the Carib's stories as being like 'fresh dreams, newly washed, newly woven and true to the daily lives of the community'. Inkle and Yarico has the same magic and pertinence. As a narrative of deep historical insight into the commodification and abuse of humanity, Gilroy lays the past bare as a text for the present.Beryl Gilroy came to London over fifty years ago from Guyana. She wrote six novels, two autobiographical books and was a pioneering teacher and psychotherapist. Sadly, she died in 2000 at the age of 76.