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, and Eric Walrond, 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.  Walrond engaged the enemy (of discrimination etc) on American soil in the early 20th Century. In this Part Four of our series, we move to another locale and another time period.

E. R. Braithwaite
As it was in the novel, ‘To Sir With Love’ (1959), so it was in the novels, ‘Paid Servant’ (1962), ‘A Kind of Homecoming’ (1962), ‘A Choice of Straws’ (1965), ‘Reluctant Neighbours’ (1972), and ‘Honorary White’ (1975) — E. R. Braithwaite’s poignant exploration of all forms of discrimination, especially social conditions of, and racial discrimination against, Black people.
Braithwaite’s frank and crisp use of language endeared the reader to the issues, catapulting many persons to action, improving their condition, righting wrongs. Some responses to his writing were, however, distasteful, especially the ban of his books in apartheid South Africa.
Braithwaite was also able to connect to the reader on another lever — his writing was a personal odyssey; a Black man living in a White-dominated world, not all of it bad, as he declared while he was a pilot in the Royal Air Force, for then the colour of his skin was not an issue.
“It had not mattered when I volunteered for aircrew service in 1940 …during flying training or when I received my wings…posted to a squadron…in hectic uncertainties of operational flying, of living and loving from day to day…” (‘To Sir With Love’)
By that same token, he had a rude awaking to discrimination while job hunting after demobilisation from the Royal Air Force in 1945, a place where he spent six exciting years, “living proudly in my Black skin, doing very satisfying things in it. This skin had always been good enough for me. Men had admired my prowess in it. Women of many colours had found it beautiful. Yet now my colour was far more important than anything I might be, or do.” (‘Honorary White’)
He took umbrage at this situation, because, as he admitted, “I had grown up British in every way. Myself, my parents and my parents’ parents, none of us knew or could know any other way of living, of thinking, of being;  we knew no other cultural pattern…As a boy, I was taught to appreciate English Literature…it was natural for me to identify myself with British heroes…” (‘To Sir With Love’)
Unable to get a job to suit his training in science and engineering technology, he was forced into teaching, at which he was a success. Those experiences Braithwaite recorded in the book, ‘To Sir With Love’, which was reissued more than forty times, translated into numerous other languages, studied in learning institutions worldwide and made into an evergreen, ever-popular movie of the same name.
After some nine years teaching, he was seconded from the London County Council’s Department of Education to the Department of Child Welfare to help deal with the post-war influx of immigrants.  This resulted in the book, ‘Paid Servant’.
His next book, ‘A Choice of Straws’, a novel, tells the story of a young factory worker caught in the mess of racial prejudice and the resulting violence.
In ‘A Kind of Homecoming’, Braithwaite reported on his visit to parts of Africa, his ancestral home. ‘Reluctant Neighbours’ takes place on a train while the author was sitting next to a White public-relations executive who reluctantly takes the only seat left on the train.
‘Honorary White: A Visit to South Africa’ documents the relationship between Blacks and Whites under the apartheid system, and the awakening of the Blacks.
Writer, teacher and diplomat, Edward Ricardo Braithwaite was born in 1922 in New Amsterdam, Berbice, British Guiana. New Amsterdam produced some exceptional writers, including Edgar Mittleholzer and Wilson Harris.
His early education was at Queen’s College in “warm, sunny Georgetown,” where he developed a ravenous hunger for learning and knowledge. The conditions were conducive to learning “in a large rambling wooden schoolhouse, light and cool within, surrounded by wide, tree-shaded lawns on which I romped with my fellows in vigorous contentment. I spent rich, happy days, filled with the excitement of learning, each new little achievement a personal adventure and a source of satisfaction to my interested parents.”
Braithwaite also attended City College, New York, Cambridge, and London Universities. In America, he stoutly defended his British sensibilities.
After serving in the R. A. F., he turned to teaching and social work. He also worked as a Communication Engineer in Aruba for Standard Oil Company.
In 1960, he was appointed Human Rights Officer for World Veterans Federation at the Federation’s Headquarters in Paris. He held the posts of Lecturer and Education Officer with UNESCO in the early 1960s. By the mid-1960s, he was Guyana’s Ambassador to the UN, and later elected President of the UN Council for South-West Africa.
He served as Guyana’s Ambassador to Venezuela from 1968 to 1969. In 1966, Braithwaite was in Guyana for the first Caribbean Writers and Artists Conference, along with Jan Carew, O. R. Dathorne, George Lamming and C. L. R. James and others.
Braithwaite is approaching his 90th year, his pen still itching to engage the enemy in a novel way.

WHAT’S HAPPENING:
•    In 2011, my two television programmes on literature will be produced,  with assistance from UNESCO. Both programmes, Oral Tradition and Between the Lines, are aired on the National Communications Network, Channel 11.
•    A UNESCO-sponsored, five-day creative writing workshop is set for August 2011. Limited places available; apply early. Please contact me for more information.
(To respond to this author, either call him on (592) 226-0065 or send him an email: oraltradition2002@yahoo.com)