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Dorothy Irwin chronicles Guyana’s colonial past through her parents’ eyes
“Years of High Hopes” is the first book by US-Based Guyanese Dorothy Irwin which captures the experiences of her parents, both citizens of the United States, living in Guyana during the 1950s.
Although born in Georgetown, British Guiana (now Guyana) the author was raised in the US and currently lives in Brooklyn, New York. Irwin wrote the book using letters and diary entries written by her parents, Howard and Marian Irwin, between 1952 to 1956.
Both parents were college graduates who moved to British Guiana. Irwin’s father taught biology at Queen’s College, which was a boys’ school at the time, while his wife Marian was comfortable being a housewife.
At the book’s launch held on Tuesday at the Georgetown Club, Donald Trotman read his review of the literary work and explained that the book could be divided into four conveniently understandable categories – autobiography, biography, history, social and political.
He said that the letters relate the experiences in British Guiana of a couple, from apparently wealthy American families, who came to live in an underdeveloped tropical country where the amenities for comfortable living were not as readily available as those to which they were accustomed.
The front cover of the book: “Years of High Hopes: A portrait of British Guiana, 1952 to 1956 from an American family’s letters home”
According to Trotman, the experiences recorded in the letter were graphic and detailed, extending to events outside of the home, capturing the feeling and spirit of the ‘Guianese’ people and objectively observing the social, political and economic conditions of the still colonised country.
He identified Irwin’s mother as the central character of the book, since it is to her readers will keep returning when the vitality of narrative has to be sustained. “It is to her that we look for a searching account of the nuances, attitudes and mannerisms of Georgetown middle class society, more particularly the genteel ladies of the city’s superficial social and cultural elite. And it is to Marian that we must return to get a bird’s eye view of an objective observer of the political and economic landscape of British Guiana in the nineteen fifties.”
Trotman said that Irwin’s experience and expertise acquired in her career in the publishing industry in the US, has enabled her to compose the collection of letters which comprise the book, in a way that makes it seem as though she was living through the experiences recorded by her parents.
He said that the book ends appropriately and effectively with a nostalgic epilogue recollecting Irwin’s return to Guyana in 1994 with her father. He said that the concluding piece evidences a physical and extrasensory connection by the author with a place which she could not have recognised from memory, since she was only five months when she was last here.
However, Trotman said that Irwin’s emotional intelligence lets her know that it was and will continue to be a part of her being and place to which she belongs, wherever she may happen to be.
Dorothy Irwin has spent her career in the publishing industry first as a project manager for design studios and editorial packagers producing educational books, then as copy chief for magazines such as ‘Saveur’, ‘Bon Appetit’ and ‘His Old House.’ The initial copies of the book which were brought to Guyana have almost sold out.
An additional shipment will be arriving shortly and persons interested in purchasing a copy can make contact with Mr Terry Fletcher on 227-2571 or 687-1205.
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