- JUNIOR DOWIE/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
Michael Grant, visual communications consultant and writing tutor, has written a book about a Jamaica which those of his generation know little about.
Avia Ustanny, Gleaner Writer
VISUAL COMMUNICATIONS consultant Michael Grant might have a hard time explaining to Jamaicans of his generation the reason why, at age 37, he abandoned a blue chip career in New York to write fiction steeped in the early years of the Jamaica of the 20th century.
Grant, who recently launched his book, Daylight Come admits, "I had a very good career in advertising in the United States."
With a résumé that reads "Award-winning creative director, designer and writer; instructor and team leader", Grant boasts professional experience covering the application of a wide range of media. He could have continued to write his ticket for a good life in the Big Apple.
The graduate of the elite Annenberg School for Communication. University of Pennsylvania, and Yale University in the United States started out at the American Broadcasting Corporation, (ABC News), New York as a corporate relations intern, representing television network to government and business dignitaries in the corporate suite at the 1992 Democratic National Convention.
He then moved on to the Dow Jones Marketing Services Division, New York, as creative assistant, writing advertising copy for national campaigns for the Wall Street Journal and affiliated publications at Dow Jones Marketing Services Division. He combined his advertising career with labour as writing centre tutor at the State University of New York.
His return to Jamaica in 2004 - after leaving at age 26 to attend communications school in the United States - was done, he said, because "it was time to come home. I wanted to do more teaching.
"I want to raise the awareness of visual communication so that Jamaicans can become better consumers of what they see." He also wanted to write.
Back home and based in Kingston, the book Daylight Come took him three years to write all told, including time spent in doing research.
Grant, a self-confessed "cultural history buff" made good use of The Gleaner Archives in writing his first book - Daylight Come - the story of an orphan coming of age at a time of the second World War and who was in his late teens when the war started in 1939.
The orphan-turned man is an athlete who aspires to be in the Olympic games of 1940 or 1944, but the growing war and violence of the period suggests to him that this will not be possible. Still, he yearns to get out of Jamaica and see the world.
Schooled in a convent in Portland, he is more advanced academically than many of his age. He decides that he does not want to fight.
According to the author, the reality is that most Jamaicans who went to the war were used ingloriously for manual labour. The story of the orphan's quest for glory is the tale told in Daylight Come, but when he does all he can and returns to Jamaica in 1960 he is an alcoholic who has not lived up to the promise he felt he had. Working as banana clerk he begins a second quest for relevance.
Daylight Come, Michael Grant says, has nothing to do with a theme of male marginalisation, a concept which he insists was not relevant for the period in which he wrote because men were the ones holding the best jobs then. Its all about re-enacting history.
CUROSITY
Grant says: "I had a certain curiosity about what Jamaica was like when my parents were coming of age. Those of this generation have never really spoken about what it was like.
"My father was 16 when the war ended. The conflict was the crucible in which many people of my parent's generation grew up. The book was a tool to explore their views, the politics of the time, national affairs and issues of patriotism."
It is curious that Grant chose print to explore his tale when he spends much of his career creating visually.
He explains: "With words you have a bigger canvas.
"Ideas to not have to reflect reality precisely. You can round the story off. It is also a way to bring history to life again. In Daylight Come, Hitler is there and so is Bustamante. The trick is to make it all believable."
The written word, he says, is also a way of communicating with a wider audience than that which would purchase a history book. His book, he states, says a lot about how Jamaica became the place that it is now.
His next project will also be another book, though this time a work of art based on the lives of those who have charted change in Jamaica in the last century. It will be called 'The Change Makers' and will make use of beautiful black and white photos in collaboration with Peter Ferguson, photographer.
READ FOR FUN
The visual communications consultant, son of retired schoolteacher Daphne Grant and retired engineer and lecturer at the Jamaica School of Agriculture Joscelyn Grant spent many of his early years as Twickenham Park, St. Catherine, where, at home, he and his siblings "read the encyclopaedia for fun".
"I did not realise until later that here were people who do not have books as a part of their lives," Grant says.
LED BY IDEAS
His love of books and a fertile imagination, which wakes him in the night with ideas that need to be written down, led him naturally to his chosen occupations.
But, most important of all he says, is teaching which he continues to do. Since returning, he has taught summer courses in communication at the University of the West Indies. He will also be penning, soon, a textbook for visual communication.
There is never a boring moment, although he is single. His imagination and love for the creative are the reasons why world events and other challenges do not paralyse him in bed, he says. And, it's good to be home.
