The Generational experience in Beryl Gilroy's Boy Sandwich

The Contrast in the Generations:

A Reading of Beryl Gilroy's Boy Sandwich

In Boy Sandwich, Beryl Gilroy centers her fiction on presenting the male Black British childhood experience. Her concentration on this experience proves extremely functional to her more expansive intentions in this novel. We recall that Gilroy immigrated to Britain as part of the post-war mass immigration of West Indians. She has remained in Britain ever since. Her attachments are dual; she is connected to the West Indian generation through her own heritage as a West Indian from Guyana. Her professional involvement as a schoolteacher in the British school system, coupled with her long standing residence in Britain, has created that direct connection to the Black British populations. This complex attachment to both West Indian generations and Black British generations is clearly evidenced in the three generational structure of her novel Boy Sandwich. Her narrator is Tyrone Grainger, the third generation British black. Both his parents and grandparents are West Indian, and are all residing in Britain. Tyrone is nineteen in the beginning of the novel, and has made a pledge to take a year break from Cambridge and assist his ailing father with settling his grandparents in their old age resident home. Through Tyrone we are able to get commentary on both of the preceding generations. Gilroy gets the avenue to contrast Tyrone's generation to both of the generations that have preceded him. The novel abounds in examples; this paper introduces three examples to illustrate Gilroy's contrast of the generations.

A first example is provided in the beginning of the novel when Tyrone's grandparents are being evicted from their home. This first scene provides an interesting contrast of the generations through the responses that they all have to the police and the vicious mob present. As they are leaving the home, Tyrone records the response of all the participants in the eviction. Important to us is the reaction of Tyrone's parents and grandparents:

We walked cautiously out of the house and entered the car, but before we could drive off a small group of militants encircled us, banging on the roof and rocking the car. Grandpa wet himself. My dad began to wheeze. The police waded in, using their truncheons liberally. My mum screamed. Grandma became hysterical.(3)

Tyrone manages to take control of the situation: "I accelerated to safety. A few yards away I stopped the car and reassured my family." (3) In this preliminary situation we can see Tyrone's confidence displayed. It is understandable the fear that his old grandparents feel, but we are shocked at the weakness of the father. His wheezing signifies his fear and powerlessness as typified by an immigrant status. Later down we are told that Tyrone's grandparents are in an old aged home because Tyrone's father is not fit enough to take care of them: "My father, who has been in the hospital himself with ulcers and asthma, is in tears. I feel so guilty. I'm there only son and I can't do better for this for them. They should be going home to live and die in peace among their own." (4) Tyrone is grappling with the debilitating effects of old age on both of his grandparents. Memories of his childhood are elucidated through an interesting method of time shifts between the past and the present. This interplay between yesterday and today, reflected in the larger cycle of youth and old age, becomes the method through which Gilroy is able to critique the prior generations.

It is also the method through which Gilroy is able to provide a contrast among the generations. A chief symbol becomes the grandparents' photo album, which is an excellent way through which Gilroy is able to give us details of both Tyrone's past and that of his grandparents:

All through my youth and in the early days of his retirement, he had talked to me about the times long since gone and had pointed out friends and family in the album to prove the more important points of argument and reason. It is the most treasured of his possessions-this album of pages overburdened with photographs.(5)

These remembrances are far from obtrusive; they are built into the realism of old age as a time for recollecting and remembering. The theme of old age is one that also preoccupies Gilroy as a novelist. Another incident that highlights the difference in the generations is in Tyrone's altercations with the police when he is twelve years old. Gilroy takes up the issue of SUS or stop and search, a popular method used by the police to terrorize Black British youth in the 1970's in Britain. A young policeman begins harassing Tyrone when he is on his way to school. This policeman is interestingly the same one who officiates at his grandparent's eviction in the beginning of the novel. Tyrone is scared and deliberately tries to make himself sick so he could avoid school. The below quote highlights one of their altercations: "The searching continued and I wilted before my peers. My difference was like a disease, and when the policeman taunted,

"Ok sunshine-or ram, or cock-see you tomorrow," I died in my twelve-year-old boots. What did my father mean? What was 'trash with power'? "I am not sunshine," I protested. "My name is Tyrone Grainger." You don't mean it, My Lippy! Now where did you get such a nice British name like that!" (48)

When he tells his father, the latter's response is one of acceptance and cowardice: "He turned on me. What are you fussing for? They search me as well. Not a day pass. They look for drugs. They're trash with power." (49). His grandfather is the one who takes matters into his hands by telephoning the West Indian Standing Conference, an organization formed to help Black British youth with the police malpractices. Tyrone is never harassed again. Tyrone recounts earlier in the narrative of the death of his brother who is 'accidentally' killed when a brick falls from a passing lorry. Although the driver is traced, nothing comes of the incident: "The police had no answers for us-only sympathy and words of consolation." (38). But the difference in the generations is clear.

Although Tyrone's grandfather goes to the above organization to help Tyrone, he is far from supporting aggression. He is obviously someone who has learnt to work within the system His girlfriend's near death in a fire feeds Tyrone's marked aggression. There is massive suffering, and twelve die. Gilroy is here alluding to the actual 1981 New Cross Massacre that occurred in Deptford. It is obvious that Tyrone's generation has come to lose faith in the system and in the police and they have resorted to rioting and aggression to signal their non-acceptance of this:

"You fought yesterday, Grandpa. On the streets of Nottinghill?" I ask with some bitterness. "Why do you think the young people are fighting today in Brixton, Bradford, Sheffield, Bristol, elsewhere?"
Without a moments hesitation he replies: "Because dey is lazy and wicked."
Vehemently he adds, "ask Herod. He say dey smoke ganja and burn incense and hide de scent of de ganja. Dey don't care to work. Dey care to beg and mug people. Dey get too much free food in de school and dey mannersable. Dey disrighteous. Dey never hungry like I was. Dey never know naked poorness."
"Grandpa," I reply. "You and Herod turn old and ugly with age. I am one of the young ones. Look at me and bow down in shame before me." I feel as if there is a merry-go-round ridden by ghouls in my head.
"You is different, Tyrone," he says. You is family, and you is we, me grandson. We put better t'ings inside you. Believe dat, Tyrone! Ask anybody."
I shake my head. "I am not a hologram. You are. Old age is the shadows. I am young. I am real. I know what I am. I'm glad that I am young and that the likes of Herod can't influence me."(93)

A third situation is in the definition of home to the three generations. Though there is preliminary dissent with Tyrone's grandfather, the two generations decide to return to their home in Guyana. This becomes financially possible through some earnings that Tyrone makes from selling an old painting of his grandmother's. Tyrone and his girlfriend Adijah decide to also accompany them, thinking that this would provide some answers to the meaning of home and belonging. In the West Indies, Tyrone recognizes how it heals his grandparents, removing their strange British silence and infusing them with new life. This is apparent when they hold a soiree for their friends: "The music revitalizes all of them and they talk into the twilight when one by one they are taken home by their relatives." (105) His parents also become alive; his father finds new strength in political discussions while his mother's working class stint in Britain has gained her popularity as the village hostess. But Tyrone realizes that he has been confused in thinking that the West Indies could be his home. Quite to the contrary, he decides to return to his true home-Britain. Tyrone's decision angers his father and mother, who cannot understand why he would care to return to the violence and discrimination. But his grandfather understands that Guyana is not Tyrone's home, and though it takes some time, he supports Tyrone's decision. The novel ends with Tyrone on a plane returning to what are his realities and his home-London. His grandfather sends him off with the statement: "Better de devil you know to the devil you don't."