IN KEEPING with UNESCO’s proclamation designating 2011 as ‘International Year of People of African Descent’, we now embark on a series of articles highlighting Guyanese Writers of African Descent who have made significant contribution to our literature. There are many pitfalls and shortcomings associated with listing, grouping and categorising; straightway, I apologise for omissions or any other deficiencies.  Of course, I may stumble here, and, of course, I would depend on your support in supplying necessary information so we are all the wiser in the end.
So far, we have looked at Ivan Van Sertima, N. E. Cameron, Eric Walrond, ER Braithwaite and OR Dathorne, getting a feel from whence we came, how we have evolved within new constraints, and how we have had to struggle, and are still struggling, to enjoy inherent human rights.
This continuous battle was, and still is, fought on many fronts, with various instruments of engagement, chief amongst them the pen.
We now look at a woman who was prolific writer, authoring educational books for children to counter “Eurocentric books foisted upon children in order to set their places in the slurry at the base of the pyramid of achievement.” And her adult books, novels and historical fiction were the “rewriting wrongs imposed on the black man by correcting the ills of historical misrepresentation.”

Beryl Gilroy
Writer, educator, ethno-psychologist, Beryl Gilroy was born on August 30, 1924, at Springlands, on the upper Corentyne in the county of Berbice. She grew up feasting on the folklore of Guyana and neighbouring Suriname, absorbing the sayings and names of medicinal plants; absorbing the characteristics of the Corentyne River which divides the two countries, all of which, according to Jessica and Eric Huntley, she transformed into prose and poetry.
That informal schooling stood her in good stead. Entering the Teachers’ Training College as a teenager in 1943, she graduated with a First Class Diploma in 1945.
That period seemed to be a turning pointing in Gilroy’s life, as, like a divine vision visited upon her, there was no turning back. Very early, she was recognised as a gifted teacher and was elevated to to the position of head of the infant section at Broad Street Government School.
She “contributed to a weekly educational column which teachers read, and new ideas infiltrated our schools” because teaching at that time in British Guiana “allowed teachers to be innovative’.
Gilroy also lectured on the UNICEF’s nutrition programme before the itch to further her education steered her overseas. That move and choice of destination was easy, as the period was characterised by mass post-war migration, especially to Britain.
However, arriving in London in 1951, her initial contact with the ‘Motherland’ was difficult, as she was unable to land a job to match her training until two years later. But Gilroy was never idle, and tried her hand at journalism, and as a therapist, a publisher’s reader and a book reviewer for the BBC Caribbean Service. All of these things she occupied herself with came in handy in her career as a writer.
In 1953, she gained an advance diploma in child development, and taught at the Inner London Educational Authority schools until 1956, when she acquired a Bachelor of Science degree in psychology.
Soon after, she was elevated to the position of deputy head-teacher at Beckford Infants’ School.
In 1969, she created history by becoming London’s first Black head-teacher.
If that was a crown to her career in education, then the book, ‘Black Teacher’ describing her early experience as a black teacher in London was another feather in her headdress.
Gilroy did not sit on her laurels. She kept elevating herself, going on to acquire an M.A. and a PhD. in ethno-psychology. 
Gilroy’s momentum was sustained with a little help from friends, all writers, all authoring books of their experience in Britain. First and foremost on that list was E. R. Braithwaite, also from Berbice, here in Guyana, who wrote that ever-popular novel, ‘To Sir With Love’.
Sources of inspiration were also George Lamming author of ‘The Emigrants’; Samuel Selvon, author of ‘The Lonely Londoners’; and Leila Berg, whom she described as “a prolific writer of the period, and a champion of children’s rights.”
Gilroy went to great lengths to acknowledge the help of Andrew Salkey, who was a constant source of encouragement to emerging writers, especially women writers, in a period that was characterised by the slighting of the contribution and value of women. “Women,” she wrote, “were peripheral creatures.”
For her contribution to education and for her writing, the Institute of Education made her a Fellow, and the University of North London conferred on her an honorary doctorate. To be honoured in one’s lifetime is a privilege, constraining the glorified to greater responsibility and larger service to humanity.
Many of her books heap honour on her head. ‘In For A Penny’ (1978) won the Greater London Council Creative Writing Ethnic Minority Prize; ‘Frangipani House’ (1986) won the Greater London Council Black Literature Competition in 1985, submitted as manuscript; and ‘Stedman and Joanna’ (1991) was given a Special Prize for Historical Fiction by The Guyana Prize for Literature in 1992.
And it all began in a little village in a little-known country. The village of Springlands gave her a religion, family, place of identity, and personal identity represented by her given names — Beryl, a precious stone, and Agatha after Agatha Christie, “a thriller writer whom my aunt had been reading.”
It was here she learned to think, she said, “… [for]my grandparents always forbade me to see with other people’s eyes, hear with their ears or think their thoughts.”
And it was also here she started to write, and to write for profit. “I wrote stories, poems, mini-books in longhand, and bartered them to my cousins in return for various objects.”

WHAT’S HAPPENING:
•    All are invited to Guyana’s first street book fair to celebrate our 41st anniversary as a Republic. This mini book fair is set for Friday, February 18, 2011, in the avenue opposite the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport, on Main Street, Georgetown, and will be opened to the public between 0900h and 1700h. Come see one tent full of books reflecting the ‘International Year for People of African Descent’; see the books that were entered in the Guyana Prize for Literature over the past two decades displayed by the University of Guyana Library; see a tent full of educational material produced by NCERD; see a tent full of children’s literature displayed by the Guyana Book Foundation; see a tent full of books like ‘To Sir With Love’, written by a Guyanese displayed by the National Library and more…
(To respond to this author, either call him on (592) 226-0065 or send him an email: oraltradition2002@yahoo.com)