Growing Up Black in Canada

Carolyn Bett was President, CEBET Bibliographies.

The aspects of Talbot’s book that deal with her growing up indicate that growing up black was practically identical with growing up white for a girl of the 1950s; for instance, both black and white struggled with hair — she to straighten hers, I to curl mine! The issue is our imperfect womanhood. The resolution in the 1960s was acceptance of ourselves as we are.

Talbot’s food seems to have varied little from standard WASP fare, expect for the addition of spices, and our freedom to eat watermelon quite openly. Her sense of being in a ghetto was experienced by anyone who lived “on the wrong side of the tracks” in terms of social status as much as race.

The facts of black history and geography are not related to Talbot’s personal story nor properly integrated into the fabric of her book. Even comments about her father’s experience seem remote from her own. The juxtaposition of dry fact with personal anecdote is often jarring. Doubtless there are experiences that could only have happened to a black person, but they are not focused. Talbot may have felt that a popular history of black Canadians needed to be written — but that is another book.

Talbot’s style varies from literary to colloquial to clichéd without sufficient reason for the change. The colloquial style does not work in this context, even to relate trivial details of personal life. Nowhere is the jarring variation more upsetting than in the poems. There are some fine lines, particularly in the poem to her great-grandmother (p.34). But when the poems falter, as they all do, they become quite painful.

Talbot is at her best in relating the personal anecdotes of her childhood. They are fun to read for a person of her generation, because of times remembered and shared values (I think of that illustrious symbol, the piano.) However, this volume needs focusing and severe editing to reach its potential.