Going Home

By Milton Bruce

The great immigration debate that is currently raging puts the timeliness of this book on full display. Immigrants all over the world are leaving their lives and everything that they understand and cherish for a land that has refused to embrace them. Such is the reality of Willie, the protagonist who cannot catch a break in this land of the free.

This is the story of the immigrant, this is the story of loss and survival, and this is the story of all of us. The men who came here are all under the impression that somehow they were coming for a better life—they too are Willie. The men who gave up their jobs and professions only to come here and realize that credentials from Caribbean Islands were useless—they too are Willie. The men who always talked of going home, watching as the years rolled by as “home” continued to move further away from their collective memories—they too are Willie.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 27, 2018
• ISBN: 9781984567734

Milton Bruce

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Book preview

Contents

Foreword

Preface

Introduction

Chapter 1 Willie

Chapter 2 The Supermarket

Chapter 3 The Journey

Chapter 4 The Gathering

Chapter 5 The Affair

Chapter 6 The Funeral

Chapter 7 The Altercation

Chapter 8 Relationship

Chapter 9 The Destruction

Chapter 10 The Culture Clash

Chapter 11 Farewell

Bibliography

Dedication

For Angela, Abby, and J

my five grandchildren

my West Indian brothers

and sisters

who are laboring in this land

and would love to leave but cannot for

various circumstances. I trust that

one day, they will be able to fulfill

their dreams.

Foreword

The great immigration debate that is currently raging puts the timeliness of this book on full display. Immigrants all over the world are leaving their lives and everything that they understand and cherish for a land that has refused to embrace them. Such is the reality of Willie, the protagonist who cannot catch a break in this land of the free.

This story of the immigrant, this story of loss and survival, is the story of all of us. The men who came here all under the impression that somehow they were coming for a better life—they too are Willie. The men who gave up their jobs and professions only to come here and realize that credentials from Caribbean islands were useless—they too are Willie. The men who always talked of going home, watching as the years rolled by as home continued to move further away from their collective memories—they too are Willie.

To be black in a land that already rejects their own black people is a unique space that Caribbean people have tried to navigate since their arrival. The truth is that racism in America is naked, powerful, and institutionalized and Caribbean people are not exempt as much as we have tried to assimilate. We are black in a land burdened by a history that is heavy, brutal, and uncompromising, and the melody of the Caribbean accent will not, does not, protect you from the long arm of racism. Yes, you are foreign, but you are still above all—black. Many of us are left to be like Willie living in a perpetual state of longing, longing for this mythical place that we call home. After all, there must be a place where we are welcome and loved. The immigrant experience in a land where your existence is denied daily is unlike any other. I always wished Willie to make it home, but more than that, I wished that home would be as he remembered.

By Angela Bruce-Raeburn, MPA, MA, keynote speaker and opinion writer

She is currently the associate director for advocacy of the Global Health Advocacy Incubator. Prior to joining the Incubator, Angela worked for Oxfam America after the earthquake from 2010 to 2013.

Preface

The many truths revealed in these pages are sometimes blatant and at other times subtle but always a truth nonetheless.

Unless and until you have lived this (reality) experience, the printed word embodied in this work will be considered humorous and/or sad but probably fiction; it is a must read for higher education and employment in this country, a truthful and accurate read written by someone who lived the hypocrisy of a jaded system.

The system is designed to allow a few to succeed and many to gain a comfortable outlook, but most will become bitter, disillusioned, or embarrassed at their inability to make headway.

When we have lost the will to fight, we stay in the hope that our children will do better.

Sometimes we lose our children to the system.

Until we can give our own a leg up, this struggle will be a reality for generations to come.

Carol Sarauw

April 2014

Color is not a human or a personal reality,

it is a political reality.

—James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time

In a sense, if one conceives of racism as

a cell phone, then active malice is the ring

tone on its highest volume, while passive

indifference is the ring tone on vibrate. In

either case, whether loudly or silently: the

consequence is the same: a call is transmitted

a racial message is communicated.

—Michael Eric Dyson

Now Black Folks in General have woken up

to the idea that America is Racist.

—Anonymous

Introduction

Welcome to the Big Apple

Give me your tired, your poor, Your

huddled masses yearning to breathe free,"

—Emma Lazarus, The New Colossus (1883)

All is race; there is no other truth.

—Benjamin Disraeli, Tancred (1847)

The Jew has been taught––and too often accepts––the

Legend of Negro inferiority; and the Negro on the other

hand, has found nothing in his experience with Jews to

counteract the legend of Semite greed.

—James Baldwin, Notes of A Native Son

Willie lurched out of bed and stood up. He was still half asleep, and his thinking was fuzzy at best. His heart was pounding in his chest, and his legs were shaking. Then he heard the pounding again; this time, it was louder. What is that god-awful racket? he asked himself, shaking his head as he slowly slipped back onto the bed where he took a seat. He pulled his pajama shirt closer to his body; he was trembling and sweating. Then the thumping sound came again, making him jump to his feet. His brain told him the noise was coming from the door. Who the hell could that be? he mumbled to himself. He was fully awake now. He stuck his feet into his slippers and made his way to the door. The clock on the wall by the door told him it was 7:45 a.m. He prized the peephole open, and he saw a white man in a khaki uniform, the type that is worn by US Marshals. Willie asked, Who is it? Open the door, commanded the voice forcefully from the other side. Willie opened the door, and the white man, all six foot and three hundred pounds of him, framed the doorway. You Whitmore Johnson? the man in the uniform asked in a raspy guttural voice. Willie shook his head in the affirmative as the man pushed past him and entered the apartment.

He held an envelope in which had a check stapled to it. Willie realized it was his, that he had paid his rent with. Immediately, he wondered if the check had bounced. But I know that I have enough money in the bank to cover it, he reassured himself. So what could be the problem?

Pointing to the check, the marshal informed Willie that the owner of the building was not prepared to accept his checks anymore and wanted him to pay in cash or money order, and as of now, the rent is late, just like that. He passed the envelope and the check to Willie, who opened the envelope and took out a piece of paper that had a bold heading that read Eviction Notice, with a Brooklyn Court stamp on it. He read it, and in essence, it compelled him to go to court now to show cause—in their legal lingo—why he should not be evicted from his apartment. Willie did not understand what was going on, but at the same time, he was not about to challenge the marshal who was not very talkative. The few queries from Willie just got him a very succinct reply of I’m just doing my job, buddy, or You will have to take that up with management, sir. Which was it, buddy or sir? thought Willie.

He then instructed Willie to leave the apartment. You need to hurry up to get to court on time, sir, he told Willie. All that he was allowed to do was to have a bath and dress. In the meantime, the marshal commenced changing the lock on the door. Willie knew what was taking place was above the law, but to whom could he complain? And here it took money to complain. Since he came, he had been staying with his cousin who cautioned him about the ability to pay the rent before he took the apartment. What was the reason for this? Willie asked himself as he took a bath, and then it dawned on him that this situation was obviously an act of retaliation. The apartment building, situated on Clarkson Avenue, had started to become decrepit, prompting him to start complaining to the owners quite regularly either by phone calls or letters about the deteriorating condition of the place. He recalled when he first came here to live, the building was not bad; it was livable. There was a doorman, an elevator operator, and a laundry assistant. Then after the white people began moving out, their apartments were taken up by black people, and the place made a sudden and dramatic change. The doorman disappeared, followed very shortly by the elevator operator, then the laundry assistant. The building degenerated into disrepair. Come wintertime, there was sporadic heat, and sometimes the place got so cold that you could see the walls in the apartment sweat.

The problems worsened when Con Edison, the gas and light people, started sending notices to the tenants in the building informing them that there will be no lights in the corridors or use of the elevator or washing machines and driers because the owner of the building has failed to pay the electrical bill for over six months. Finally, they made good on their promise and disconnected the electricity, leaving them without the necessary services. This had prompted Willie, when he was paying his last month’s rent with this same returned check, to enclose Con Edison notices plus a letter with a few choice remarks of his own telling the owner, in essence, that it was nice to know that he could be late in payment just like everyone else. With the return of his check, delivered by this marshal, he realized that the Jew was pissed off that a black man could dare to talk up for his rights. He probably deemed me an uppity nigger, thought Willie, and since he had the power and clout through his money, he decided that he would teach Willie a lesson, which was Don’t try to humiliate rich white people.

Willie and the marshal left at the same time, he having finished changing the lock on the door. There would be no work today, Willie knew that. He had gotten a gig as an industrial food salesman for a company operating out of Brooklyn. He

Reviews for Going Home

[jenn.s · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Riveting, exciting and eye opening. Intricate attention to details. Fleshed out characters, each unique and layered with realistic actions and reactions. Well constructed and planned out plot with an ideal pacing throughout. All this combines with a well written novel you will not want to put down. Even my "I'd rather watch the movie." Non-reader type son picked up this book and refused to return it until he read the whole thing. "I really liked how it was written and how detailed the scenes were. I could picture them easily in my mind. Best book ever."

[knfmn · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Good book overall. I'm in love with the survivalist books lately and this seemed like a reasonable next read. It's nice to read a survival book that isn't full of religious nuts after a steady diet of books by Rawles. Looking forward to the next book in this series.

[jaynee_9 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Easily one of the worst books I've read in a long time. I got 80% of the way through it and had to put it down. Poorly written, this steaming pile is actually book 1 of a trilogy. How that ever got approved I'll never know. The author must be somebody's kid at the publishing house. That's the only way I can envision this ridiculously bad book was not only published but also made into an audiobook, which was similarly bad. While listening to the audiobook I couldn't tell if it was just the narrator that was awful, or the book. Then I realized it was both. Avoid this book like the plague, or buy it with plans to use it for making fires when things go awry and we're all in survivalist mode.

[cafcaflt · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This first in series book seems obvious that the writer is fairly new to fiction. However, the story is great! It is believable and got me hooked into eventually reading the entire series as well as getting about a dozen other people to read it.

[mshooker · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

[Going Home] by A. American was an interesting post apocalyptic, survivalist story. It showed the main character, Morgan, as an everyman who only wanted to get home to his family. The problem was that he was stranded far away when something stopped everything from working. Luckily for him he was prepared for the worst.I love this type of story although I am not of the survivalist mindset but the author makes his characters out to be just normal people who want to survive and do the right thing. I would hope that those are really the mentality of most people. Almost everyone in this book who gets killed was on the wrong side of humanity.This book was not overtly political but rather quite humanistic.