Guyanese Online

GUYANA: Looking back from the 50th Republic Jubilee

 YEARS OF HIGH HOPES: A Portrait of British Guiana, 1952–1956, from an American Family’s Letters Home

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The Letters of Marian and Howard Irwin

Edited and with an Introduction by Dorothy Irwin

The anniversary of Guyana’s 50th year as a republic is a natural time to look back and to reflect on how much has been accomplished and how much has changed since the wind-down of the not-so-distant colonial era. The startlingly detailed depiction of life in Georgetown, British Guiana (now Guyana), presented in Years of High Hopes casts light on a seminal period of the colony’s push toward nationhood.

Howard Irwin was the first of several Americans to arrive by way of a Fulbright grant at Queen’s College, where he taught biology. The letters and journal entries that make up this book were written by him and his wife, Marian Irwin, and sent to their parents in the U.S. during the three and a half years the couple lived in Georgetown. A candid, unofficial American perspective, the book presents news-making incidents as they punctuate everyday life in the capital and beyond.        Continue reading →