Jonty

Second Eulogy: Mind the Gap

Billy Gerard Frank

Jonty, Urias Francis Peters

Mind The Gap is an autobiographical de-construction and re-positioning of personal memories of the father. It gives a voice by de-contextualizing and de-constructing the mythologies and legacies of the present/absent one. 2nd Eulogy: Mind The Gap spurns personal tales of loss, longings, memories, and the phantasmagoria by interweaving fiction and non-fiction to conjure an abstract story of interconnected lives. The central tale narrates the lives of Nelson, a fisherman and father; his gay son James who is coming of age in a verdantly charged landscape; Antoinette, Nelson's wife who embodies the island's colonial past and Mother Country; and their maid, Josephine. Apart from telling the personal story around the father, it explores personal experiences of growing up as a gay teenager in Grenada: the ridicule; the sexual molestation; the trauma. (Billy Gerard Frank)