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Jamila Gavin was born in 1941 in India “in the foothills of the Himalayas”. Her father was Indian and her mother English, and her earliest memories are of travelling by sea between England and India. She came, with her family, to live permanently in England when she was twelve years old. Although she trained as a pianist and worked on music programmes for the BBC, she has become an author of books for children and young people. Her first book, The Magic Orange Tree, was published in 1979 and has been followed by a number of prize-winning publications. Coram Boy won the Whitbread Children’s Book Award in 2000; The Wheel of Surya was the runner up for the 1993 Guardian Newspaper Children’s Fiction Award. Jamila Gavin’s writing often explores issues of class and racism, historical themes and children’s identity and place in society.
Jamila Gavin has described her writing and the motivation for doing it very well herself.

“It wasn’t until I married and then had children that I turned to writing. Although I had always loved writing for fun, one day, I decided I would try and get published. The reason was, I realised that there were very few books which reflected, not only my mirror image but the wonderfully diverse and ethnically mixed country Britain had become, as gradually her Empire gave way to being a Commonwealth of Nations.

As a child of India and England, and having lived in both countries, my richest source of inspiration and ideas was my own life. But it is not the glamour of childhood or the privilege of any particular background which makes a writer. It is the curious eye, the listening ear and the desire to communicate – and, of course, the imagination to make whatever you like of all those things”

Again,

“In the late 1960s and early 1970s I began to realise how much racism there was. I read a newspaper story about a class in which the black children drew themselves as white in their self-portraits. It made me realise there were not enough stories about ‘black’ children – which for me, meant any non-whites.

Then my own children were born and I began to realise that there was nothing that really reflected them in the books we had. Unlike me, they see themselves as very multicultural”.

In an interesting interview with ACHUKA, Jamila Gavin has described the process of writing and the research she does when developing a new historical theme. She expresses her frustration that her books, and those of other authors, are often compartmentalised (for children, for teens, multicultural) and the potential wider audience put off by this categorising process. In talking about the writing of Coram Boy, she says “there was no compunction on me, by either my editors or myself, to be dutiful and include a black character in line with my multicultural credentials. It just shows that it is a natural part of the way I see the world”.

“If you are of mixed race – especially a mixture of colour and culture such as mine – you are supposed to be emotionally mixed up too, living in a confusion of ‘Who am I? What am I? Where do I really belong?’ Of all the things in my life that I have felt confused about, that is not one of them. On the contrary, I know who I am, and why I am, and am immensely proud of my Indian-British heritage. It has enriched me and it enriches my children.”

Teachers Notes on Resources

Jamila Gavin has published an extensive list of books for children and teenagers.

The Surya Trilogy : The Wheel of Surya, The Eye of the Horse and The Track of the Wind ,is her fictional account of Partition. She has said that her father was the model for Grandpa Chatterji and “he is the only identifiable person in my family that I’ve written about”.

Useful website sources include:
www.achuka.co.uk/guests/jamilaint
This contains a long interview with Jamila Gavin, in 2000, much of which focuses on the writing and research for Coram Boy.

http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/childrenandteens
Contains the profile of Jamila Gavin written by Julia Eccleshare for the Guardian, titled “A life in writing: stories of multiple attachments”.

www.jubileebooks.co.uk
Contains a brief profile of the author.


www.peters-books.co.uk
Contains a profile written by the author herself.

http://kotn.ntu.ac.uk/daisy/author
Contains an interview of Jamila Gavin by children, from the Cheltenham Festival of Literature,1999.

Channel 4 Learning has featured Jamila Gavin in its Bookbox ‘Popular Authors’ series. These programmes could be invaluable for follow-up work.


Teaching Ideas:

Autobiography: Jamila Gavin, Out of India, Hodder, 2002 (first published by Pavilion Books, 1997)

Out of India is an autobiographical account of Jamila Gavin’s childhood. The text is rich with poetic imagery, quite demanding for junior children but it should be accessible to independent readers. There are nine chapters, a brief guide to the key events of Indian independence and a glossary.

As autobiography, this book is written in first person, past tense. It is written as a recount of her experiences and is (very loosely) chronological. However, Gavin begins the books with a chapter describing her habit of embellishing her experiences of India, in conversations with English children, on her return trips to England. Titled ‘Boasting’, she uses this section to confront stereotypes about India right at the start of the book.

The book as a whole describes her life in both countries, the journeys made and milestones reached. It also reflects on the meanings of being Anglo-Indian, and the larger historic contexts of her childhood – the war, the Blitz, Indian Independence and Partition. Clearly, some of the information-based descriptions of these historic events are based on knowledge acquired by Jamila Gavin after the end of her childhood.

Chapter 1, ‘Boasting’ tells of the questions Jamila Gavin would be asked by English children in the playground, and her responses.

Possible teaching points:
Discuss why she starts her autobiography this way (not chronologically, but with myths about India). Outline the characteristics of autobiography.
Collect examples from p 1-4 of the use of 1st, 2nd and 3rd person.


Chapter 2, ‘Mother, Father, Brother and Me’, introduces her parents and grandparents and the Indian context, including Gandhi. It describes the physical context of her early life and her relationship with her brother.

Possible teaching points:
Read p12-17. Discuss names and their significance to our sense of identity. Why did her father reclaim his Indian family name? Talk about her mother’s family names – the derivation of common British surnames.
Discuss the import of words from other languages into English, particularly from India. Brainstorm or list for the children – see if they know or can guess their origin. Check in an etymological dictionary.
Focus on page 28-29 – images of water. Discuss her use of unusual and graphic verbs and adverbs to build up a sequence of powerful images (verbs include: pouring, belching, flung, glinting, spewed, sheeting)


Chapter 3, ‘First Voyage’, describes the trip to England made in 1944, including the train and boat journeys, her initial impressions of England at war, meeting her English grandparents and the preparations for returning to India.

Possible teaching points:
Explain that Jamila travelled back and forth between India and England. Read p26-32 and 34-38. List the similarities and differences in mundane aspects of everyday life.


Chapter 4 ‘The beginning of the end of an Empire’, briefly describes the political situation in India in 1945 and her mother’s decision to leave again.
Chapter 5, ‘The Second Voyage to England’, describes the journey and life in London. This chapter includes reflections on prejudice and some vivid character descriptions of people she met.

Possible teaching points:
Read pp44-47 & 58-73, memories of train journeys. Compare the journeys and her descriptive language. Model write a description of a journey after collecting images, verbs, adjectives, etc which could create a dramatic effect.


Chapter 6, ‘Enemies, Friends and Siblings’, is a complicated chapter weaving personal experience with the coming of independence in India and Gandhi’s assassination. Gavin describes her first ‘best friends’ in England and India.
Chapter 7, ‘Escapade on an elephant’, recalls an elephant ride.
Chapter 8, ‘Now I am ten’, describes her experiences at an international school called Woodstock in India, and her return to England to live rather than holiday.

Possible teaching points:
Read p97-102 ‘ the single most miserable year of my life’. Discuss the author’s “point of view” on her experience at Woodstock.
Model write a letter home from Jamila
Model write an account of Jamila’s school year by her teacher. How might her teacher’s point of view differ from that of Jamila?


Chapter 9, ‘Childhood’s end’, contains an evocative image of her life as a canvas with several coats of paint.