In Praise of Love and Children

After false starts in teaching and social work, Melda Hayley finds her mission in fostering the damaged children of her fellow black settlers in a deeply racist Britain in the 1950s.
But though Melda finds daily uplift in her work, her inner life starts to come apart. Her brother Arnie has married a white woman and his defection from the family and the distress Melda witnesses amongst the children she fosters causes her repressed memories to surface and her own 'buried wounds to weep'.
Melda confronts the cruelties she has suffered as an 'outside child' at the hands of her stepmother. But though the past drives Melda towards breakdown, she finds strengths there too, especially in the memories of the loving, supporting women of the 'yards' of rural Guyana. Then there is Pa who, in his new material security in the USA, discovers a gentle caring side and teaches his children to sing 'in praise of love and children.

Beryl Gilroy, a native of Guyana, was known as a teacher, writer, academic and psychotherapist throughout her distinguished career. Author of Black Teacher, Frangipani House, Boy Sandwich, Sunlight on Sweet Water, Gather the Faces, Inkle & Yarico, and The Green Grass Tango, Gilroy was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of London and an honorary fellowship by the Institute of Education. Gilroy died in 2001.