George (The Teenage Years)

Gilly

Jan 2021 · Austin Macauley Publishers

About this ebook

This is an introduction of George to the masses. He is the representative of a whole lost generation (lost to the government and the British public) who have recently been in the news as the revelation of who they are comes out.
George tells the story of an 11-year-old Windrush boy who arrived in England from the island of Jamaica in 1965. The story is narrated in third-person and speaks of the boy’s first experience of being in a cold country, the absence of an introduction to his new family, the difficulties he faces as a new boy in a new school, the struggles to find his place, his resistance in conforming to stereotypical expectations and his fights to maintain the self-pride and independence he learnt from his early years in Jamaica.
As George progresses through the school and struggles to assimilate, he moves from being the outsider to become a cultural educator and a facilitator of his peers and brings together the different groups within his association. However, he has difficulty reconciling his family and church life with his secular associates. Through the boy’s eyes, the narrator depicts how it was at that time for the West Indian immigrant community in London and the group of unnoticed children whom they brought from the islands, how they mixed and associated with each other, their embryonic family and the indigenous population.

About the author

The author, Gilly, moved from the Island of Jamaica at the age of eleven, grew up, married and lived in South London until he moved to Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, where he has been with his wife and two daughters for more than thirty years. He says that he is a musician who plays more than one instrument badly but a good singer, and an active member of several community and church choirs.