Beverley Manley gives two thumbs up

Erin Hansen, Gleaner Writer

"It was quite an adventure," Barbara Blake Hannah - the first black television journalist to appear on Thames TV, BBC-TV and Channel 4 - recalled of her migration to England in the '60s.

"We went over there as bright-eyed innocents, we were bold and brassy."

At the launch for her new book, Growing Out: Black Hair and Black Pride at the Bob Marley Museum last Thursday, Blake Hannah gave a humorous anecdote of her first years in England with flatmate and guest speaker Beverley Manley, ex-wife of late Prime Minister Michael Manley.

Growing Out is the autobiographical story of Hannah Blake's experiences as a young woman in Jamaica, and what it was like migrating to Britain during the 'swinging '60s' at a time when black power, flower power and the anti-Vietnam war movement were high.

It was in Britain that Blake Hannah started to question her racial consciousness, leading her back home to Jamaica in search of her true identity. It was upon her return that she turned to the Rastafarian movement and teachings of Marcus Garvey.

"This book is dedicated to Amy Jacques Garvey," the author said at the launch.

"I came back to Jamaica on my black journey, not really knowing where to begin."

Blake Hannah found that beginning, when she saw an 80-year-old Jacques Garvey at a conference talking energetically about her late husband, Marcus Garvey.

"I didn't know who that was, but that experience made me want to know and set me on my journey."

"It's not an accident that this launch is taking place here at the Bob Marley Museum," Beverley Manley said, making strong comparisons between the revolutionary spirit of Bob Marley and that of Blake Hannah's.

"She talks about how free she is in the book, how liberated she is when she decided to give up everything and say, 'I'm coming home'. It's a precondition of liberation, it is no easy journey to undertake. Nonetheless, that journey must be undertaken."

Something to consider

Manley continued her speech by saying, "Human beings are more likely to be at peace with themselves when their sense of self rests as securely in their sense of past as it does in their experience of the present."

These words, Manley told the crowd, were something to consider while reading the book which, as Manley stated, tells the story of a search for self, of "an individual, a black woman who takes her journey."

Manley spoke of the father of Blake Hannah, the journalist Evon Blake. "He was a trailblazer himself," said Manley, "he was very clear of himself as a black intellectual."

Blake Hannah discussed the importance of her father's impact on her writing; a talent she claims was inherited from him. That inheritance also fanned the flames of her to desire to tell her story.

Blake Hannah told The Gleaner, the book was about going "back to the beginning."

The author noted that as a young woman, she had negative feelings about her own hair not fitting a certain prototype. She said her journey helped her to understand "natural was beautiful". And with that realisation, beauty really became about "self-awareness and knowing yourself".

For Blake Hannah, the years she spent as a journalist in England were key in coming to that discovery.

"The '60s were a good time to be in England, it was a time of 'black is beautiful' and barriers were being broken about race." That didn't mean there weren't hurdles to jump over, as Blake Hannah said 1968 was also a very racist time to be in England.

"I had to acquire my own black education," Blake Hannah said of her journey home to discover herself after a nine-year stint in England.

And as one of her oldest friends and former flatmate said, "When you really don't know who you are and you don't have the courage to find out what your true identity is, it stops you from being all that you can be."

Growing Out: Black Hair and Black Pride is published by Hansib Publications, UK, the soft-cover book was made available at Bookland in New Kingston last Saturday.