Maggie Harris

This was one of Amazon’s 99p deal books and I had it on my wish list for Guyana for my World Challenge so I downloaded it last August. I’ve been putting it off because I was worried, unnecessarily as it turns out, that it might be a bit… well, dull I suppose. Maggie was born in Guyana (when it was still British Guiana) in 1954 to a mixed race father and a white Portuguese mother and this tells of her life in Guyana until 1971 when she came to England.

Unlike the book I read for Papua New Guinea, this book gives a perfect insight into Guyanese life, and sometimes Maggie uses dialect which isn’t difficult to understand, but helps to add to the cultural feel. The title comes from a bird, the Kiskadee, which is a brightly coloured chattering bird, native to parts of South America, including Guyana and could almost be an allusion to Maggie’s personality as a child – always chattering and busy.

Things were changing in Guyana, which gained its independence from the UK in 1966. Due to its very mixed past (as well as the indigenous population it was previously owned by the Dutch before being colonised by the British) it has a vibrant and diverse cultural feel to it. It was an exciting time to be growing up and during Maggie’s teenage years she was influenced by British and American pop artists including the Stones and the Beatles. Brought up a strict Catholic, she was often in trouble for wanting to party like any normal teenager! After independence, there was quite a lot of unrest in the country and two years after the death of her father, Maggie and her mother and sisters moved to England, and this is where the memoir ends. Overall it was very enjoyable.

3½/5… (meer)