Si­mon Lee

Al­though fond­ly re­gard­ed (or ig­nored) as one of those be­night­ed spots some­where "be­hine Gord's back" in the in­con­se­quen­tial "bush", the pub­li­ca­tion of Vi­vian Jack's To­co–"tales told through the eyes of a small boy grow­ing up in the coun­try­side...in the 1930s and 40s"–puts this north coast fish­ing vil­lage right back in the head­lines.

Most read­ers will as­so­ciate To­co with the Olympic javelin gold medal­list Keshorn Wal­cott; some lo­cals will al­so re­call Windies fast bowler Mervyn Dil­lon. An­thro­pol­o­gists will re­mem­ber Melville Her­skovits' sem­i­nal 1947 study Trinidad Vil­lage, based on re­search car­ried out in To­co in 1939 along with the field record­ings of mu­sic re­leased as the al­bum Pe­ter Was a Fish­er­man.

Syn­er­gis­ti­cal­ly Jack's child­hood mem­oir over­laps the same pe­ri­od as Her­skovits' ethno­graph­ic re­search and it would cer­tain­ly be fas­ci­nat­ing to com­pare the two texts with their out­sider/ in­sid­er per­spec­tives.

But first we must give Mr Jack his jack­et and it would be re­miss of this re­view­er who be­gan his own writ­ing ca­reer in the same Fea­tures De­part­ment of the Trinidad Guardian where Jack be­gan work­ing life as an of­fice boy in 1945, not to con­grat­u­late him on join­ing the con­tin­gent of Caribbean writ­ers who have all paid their dues to "the jamette of St Vin­cent Street."

Mere­ly read on to see why Vi­vian Jack de­served­ly finds a place among Edgar Mit­tel­holz­er, Sam Selvon, Ismith Khan, Derek Wal­cott, Earl Lovelace, Kevin Baldeosingh, Ray­mond Ram­char­i­tar and Lisa Allen-Agos­ti­ni–all past and some present TG em­ploy­ees.

Jack ex­plains he "want­ed to doc­u­ment the unique and in­valu­able ex­pe­ri­ence I had grow­ing up in To­co" and helps all prospec­tive re­view­ers/ re­searchers with the au­tho­r­i­al in­for­ma­tion that his r�cit d'en­fance, or child­hood mem­oir, "is a mix­ture of facts, sto­ries, and ex­pe­ri­ences seen through the eyes of the au­thor from the time he was five un­til he was four­teen."

While one can spec­u­late that it may have been Jack's ex­pe­ri­ence of mi­gra­tion (first to Eng­land, then Amer­i­ca) which prompt­ed him to start writ­ing back in 1972 (tem­po­ral and ge­o­graph­ic dis­tance fram­ing nos­tal­gia; lived ex­pe­ri­ence in the de­vel­oped world catalysing recog­ni­tion of the world­view in­stilled by be­ing raised in an "un­der-de­vel­oped' yet close rur­al com­mu­ni­ty) it is ev­i­dent that the com­plet­ed book is a valu­able ad­di­tion not on­ly to the genre of child­hood writ­ing but al­so as an au­then­tic oral his­to­ry. With its wealth of so­cio-cul­tur­al de­tail, To­co is just the kind of in­sid­er text which will ap­peal to post­grad­u­ate cul­tur­al an­thro­pol­o­gists, Cul­tur­al Stud­ies re­searchers and stu­dents of the Oral Tra­di­tion.

What dif­fer­en­ti­ates Jack's child­hood mem­oir from oth­er bil­dungsro­man like Lam­ming's In the Cas­tle of My Skin, Michael An­tho­ny's Green Days by the Riv­er or the r�cits d'en­fance of the An­til­lean Cre­olists Chamoi­seau and Con­fi­ant or Haiti's Dany La­fer­riere, is that it is re­al­ly "oral­i­ture" rather than a lit­er­ary prod­uct. Jack's Cre­ole voice and lan­guage per­me­ate and car­ry the text. Whether this is in­ten­tion­al or a for­tu­itous lapse in edit­ing, it def­i­nite­ly en­hances the in­tegri­ty of this oral doc­u­ment.

Jack's time­line spans the nine years from 1934-1943, a pe­ri­od dur­ing which the then British colony ex­pe­ri­enced Great De­pres­sion pover­ty and Labour un­rest fol­lowed by the on­set of the Sec­ond World War and the ar­rival of the Yan­kees. Far from the oil­fields, Jack makes no men­tion of Uri­ah But­ler but the Amer­i­can sol­diers sta­tioned at Galera are a re­al pres­ence for the young pro­tag­o­nist Gabriel and the To­co vil­lagers; "Some of the luck­i­est sol­diers in the Unit­ed States Army, who were as­signed to do a job where the odds of Hitler's bombers might not find them were min­i­mal, even­tu­al­ly turned the vil­lagers against them be­cause of their moral con­duct."

Al­though Gabriel's ear­li­est rec­ol­lec­tions are of a bar­rack room where "Pri­va­cy was prac­ti­cal­ly nonex­is­tent as the di­vid­ing par­ti­tions did not reach the ceil­ing; the kitchen was just a cov­ered sec­tion run­ning along the full length of the build­ing with no floor­ing boards, which of­ten flood­ed when it rained heav­i­ly", pover­ty rarely im­pinges on young Gabriel's con­scious­ness. He's far too busy at­tempt­ing to bal­ance cu­rios­i­ty and ad­ven­ture with avoid­ing licks or the var­i­ous jumbies con­jured up by the su­per­sti­tions of his small com­mu­ni­ty.

It is pre­cise­ly Gabriel's child­ish cu­rios­i­ty and sense of won­der which pro­vides the de­tailed in­for­ma­tion and re­con­struct­ed mem­o­ry which turns a child­hood mem­oir in­to a valu­able so­cio-cul­tur­al doc­u­ment. From an­nu­al high­lights like Christ­mas Car­ni­val and crick­et fete match­es, to bush med­i­cine, Bap­tist cer­e­monies and the mun­dane rou­tines of dai­ly life (wash­ing clothes in the riv­er, home cook­ing, tot­ing wa­ter, tapia house con­struc­tion) Jack pro­vides the kind of de­tailed ob­ser­va­tion wor­thy of a cul­tur­al his­to­ri­an. His ac­counts of com­mu­ni­ty events like wakes with their at­ten­dant rit­u­als are ex­cel­lent source ma­te­r­i­al for those re­search­ing folk­lore, song and dance.

Any­one wish­ing to catch a wild bird or a man­i­cou will find the nec­es­sary ex­per­tise in Jack's small mas­ter­piece along with his evoca­tive il­lus­tra­tions and in­for­ma­tive di­a­grams.

To­co book will be as wel­come in a child's li­brary as in the Na­tion­al Archives.