Book 8 – Another Re-Read

I choose my next book as it caught my eye as I put my last book (The Red Towers of Granada)  back on its shelf. It is a book that I have  read before and has been sitting in my bookcase for  a while.

I choose ‘Paid Servant’ by E. R. Braithwaite . (188 pages paperback)

This was not really the book I was looking for … I was hoping to find its prequel (To Sir, With Love) but that seems to have disappeared at the moment 😦 .  To Sir, with Love is a book about Mr Braithwaite’s struggle to get a job as a school teacher; how despite his qualifications he is turned down as soon as they realise he is not white and how in the end he is given a chance to teach in the East End of London.

Paid Servant is an auto-biographical book describing Mr Braithwaite’s life in  late 1950’s  when he was seconded to ‘London County Council Department of Child Welfare’ department from ‘ London County Council Department of Education’.

In the book he talks about how difficult it is to find a family to foster any  child let alone one that had a racial label attached to it. He talks about how important these ‘labels’ appear to be to his colleagues and how they seem to be based purely on skin colour such as half -African  rather than half-white or even half-Irish or half-French.

He describes the heart break of children living in a home waiting for a ‘Mummy and Daddy’ to go home with. He also talks about the general day to day prejudice that existed where a job card advertised at the Labour Exchange (the job centre) could have the initials ‘NC’  written on it meaning ‘No Coloureds’

I enjoy the way this book is written and how much we have, hopefully, moved forward in the following 50/60 years .

I will carry on hunting in the house for ‘To Sir, With Love’ his earlier work and if it has disappeared I will have to replace it as it too is an excellent book.

My current totals for my Reading Challenges are:

52 Books in 52 Weeks ……….. 8 books ……… 44 Left

Read It Again, Sam ……………. 4 book ……….. 12 Left

Dusty Mini Challenge …………5 books ………. 1 Left until my next award