The Forgotten Home Child

Finished August 25

The Forgotten Home Child by Genevieve Graham

This novel is structured as the story of a woman in her nineties, telling her story to her granddaughter and great grandson. The grandmother Winny was a British home child, brought to Canada through Barnardos. As the book opens she has just moved in with her granddaughter Chrissie and her great-grandson Jamie from a seniors home. Prior to that she had lived for years with her daughter Susan who died. One of the things that Winny brought with her was the small wooden trunk she brought with her from England, and that started the conversation that she gradually has with her family. 

Winny's family came to London from Ireland when she was young, and consisted of her, four younger brothers, and her parents. When her father died in an accident, her mother struggled, and Winny found herself unable to stay with the family when her mother took on another man. 

Struggling on the streets of London, she was befriended by Mary another girl her age and became part of a small group of children who resorted to theft to feed themselves. When the children are caught, Winny and Mary eventually find themselves in Barkingside Girls' Village, a Barnardo facility where the girls are taught useful skills so they can find gainful employment. While there, Winny befriended another young girl, Charlotte who had been left there by her mother until she could get her feet on the ground. The boys, Jack (Mary's brother), and brothers Edward and Colin were taken elsewhere and we discover what happened to them as the novel unfolds. 

Like many children in England at that time, they became one of the many sent overseas to Canada. Some children were welcomed into homes, but many were indentured servants and many of those led hard lives under sometimes abusive masters. 

Winny was made to feel ashamed of her origins as a home child, and thus never revealed this part of her past to her family until now. 

Graham has done a lot of research for this novel, and all of the experiences the children in her book have are real experiences that home children had. By personifying this experience, Graham brings history to life for her readers. 

I was totally caught up in the story, needing to know what happened to each of the children, and understand the repercussions of their experiences. 

An enlightening and entertaining read. 

The Swinging Bridge

Finished August 23
The Swinging Bridge by Ramabai Espinet

This book really took me into another culture that I was unfamiliar with. The main character here is Mona a film researcher who lives in Montreal, but grew up in Trinidad.
Her memories of her childhood are mixed, with moments of happiness and others of suffering and limitations. One of her worst memories is of her father in a drunken rage threatening to kill her brother when he was only nine years old. She also remembers cruel punishments from him for his perceptions of her unacceptable behaviour.
In the present-day, her brother Kello, who lives in Toronto, is dying and wants Mona to go back to Trinidad and purchase the family property that her father sold years before. As she talks to her brother, and visits the home of her youth, she must confront these memories, but also learn more about her family, her parents, her grandparents, and her great-grandparents.
The reader learns along with her, discovering the origins of the Indians who live in the Caribbean, and specifically in Trinidad, brought there as indentured workers following the end of the slavery of those from Africa. There is a hierarchy that has developed there, with the white people at the top and the black people at the bottom, with the brown people in the middle. In her family's history, whenever the women ventured to have relationships that ventured beyond their own people, they were punished and set back on the path that was preferred by the men in their lives. But the history survived, and Mona digs through it, finding the real story of her great-grandmother who came alone from India, losing a lover along the way, and finding a new, but restricted life in her new country.
She finds these stories are not singular, but common, and still happening. She watches her cousin Bess, who still lives in Trinidad deal with the sexism and racism that still influences the life she lives there.
This book was shortlisted for the 2004 Commonwealth Writers' Prize in the Best First Book category and longlisted for the 2005 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. The author is a Canadian who grew up in Trinidad, which strongly influenced this book. There is a biography and interview at the back of my edition of the book.
I really enjoyed learning about Trinidad and its history and culture, and appreciated the glossary that was included as many of the terms were new to me. The characters speak in the local patois, which helps to bring the story to life in its setting.