This past week I just finished Andrene Bonner’s novel Long Walk to Cherry Gardens and I highly recommend it her development of her male adolescent character named Roderick Brissett. Roderick is a teenager coming of age in the post-independence Jamaica. I recommend this novel for two reasons: one, it fulfills what William H. Ferris in a 1920 article in the Negro World newspaper about what novels should do: “novels which can powerfully envisage the struggles of an aspiring Negro in a hostile Anglo-Saxon civilization.” Roderick comes into his own identity and his manhood in a hostile Anglo-Saxon civilization that is still tethered to its colonial origins.
The second reason I recommend this novel is because it is an example of a young man who rejects what James Baldwin has called “the assumptions” he’s been given by a still heavily colonial society; he rejects the colonial assumptions society has given him to use education to better himself. Baldwin said this in his 1971 interview with Nikki Giovanni recently released by the Post Archive.
Roderick is a young man who seeks identity first by seeking to escape the duty of running his Aunt Hope’s shop. Aunt Hope discourages him from getting an education. Roderick learns the history of colonial history from a Rastaman and various characters. The education these characters give him, Roderick uses to move himself out of the subservient place his Aunt Hope is trying to keep him in. In my 2017 review of Marlon James’s novel A Brief History of Seven Killings published in the Caribbean Quarterly, I discuss the tragedy of his Kim-Marie Burgess character not developing because she is unable to use the knowledge of her history to develop herself.
Bonner’s Roderick is quite the opposite.
When he is told by the Rastaman, that “Education develops the intellect,” Roderick takes this to heart and uses class-conscious code switching to avoid being prosecuted by a police officer, and to avoid joining a drug dealing gang.
His friend Chloe Goodman encourages him to go to school and earn a scholarship. In his journey to do this, Roderick survives so much. Bonner’s italics indicate his thoughts such as those on page 8:
“A wonder why Aunty make sure Stephen and Nelton go a school every day but won’t make me go.”
Bonner’s writing of Jamaican patois is impeccable, she seamlessly goes in and out of patois to indicate dialogue and provide important cultural references for future generations to understand. My first published book is about the work of novelist Pauline Hopkins who wrote that the art form of the novel’s purpose is show “manners and customs” from generation to generation, and Bonner’s novel does exactly this.
Even though Roderick does not have a biological family to support him, he has an intellectual family to support him. His exchange with the older Maas Suraj character was important, who tells him: “you need to find a way to clear your mind so you can think critically, clearly and make good decisions. Meditation will help you.”
Roderick takes this advice to heart when he finds a way to go to school and to listen to his grandmother Tata’s advice. He also puts together the story of how his biological mother met his biological father by “thinking critically,” asking the right questions, and putting the pieces of the puzzle about who he is together.
The journey is incredible. I especially appreciated the influence of the Rastaman Lij on Roderick’s life and him giving him the popular book Black Power by Stokely Carmichael and Charles V. Hamilton. The colonial forces tragically take the life of Lij in ways that mirror its hostility to forces that teach young people to decolonize their minds. What was most significant was Roderick’s grandmother Tata’s counsel to leave the gang that he was enticed to join. This advice enables him to pursue his education. When I think of Roderick, I think of the ways that men like my father Anserd and men like the journalist Marcus Garvey came from humble beginnings to make a significant impact on the world. Because of constructive guidance like the guidance that Lij gave to Roderick.
This novel teaches the importance of mentorship for young men, and how these mentors allow our young people to think critically and use education to further their development. While hearing Nyabinghi drums, Roderick remembers his and Lij’s favorite Bible verse from Psalm 1:
Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful…But his delight is in the law of the Lord; and in his law doth he meditate day and night. And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.”
Roderick was this tree planted by nurturing rivers of water, despite being despised as a young man. He used his education to further himself by rejecting the assumptions colonial Jamaican society gave him. I highly recommend Long Walk to Cherry Gardens by Andrene Bonner.