Writer Caryl Phillips was a mere 10 years old when his father first decided to leave him alone while he worked a night shift.
"Then, late at night, alone in the huge double bed, he leans over and discovers a paperback in the drawer of the bedside table and he begins to read the book," Phillips read from his autobiography titled "Growing Pains." "It is a true story about a white American man who has made himself black in order that he might experience what it is like to be a coloured man."
John Howard Griffin's "Black Like Me" was just one of the works that deeply affected Phillips as a child. Phillips, this summer's Montgomery Fellow, summarized his life and inspiration in a complete reading of his compact autobiography Tuesday in Filene Auditorium. He chose to write the 10 chapters of his short autobiography in third person to separate himself from the narrative.
"It just gave me that little bit more room where I felt comfortable to speak," Phillips said. "There is a very profound tradition of novelists who are very visible, and that's an entirely legitimate strategy, but not one that I feel comfortable with."
His autobiography charts his life from age five in England, when Phillips first began dealing with racial issues, to his visit more than 20 years later to his birthplace on the island of Saint Kitts, located in the West Indies.
From a very young age, the literature that Phillips read shaped his overall view of people and the world, he said. After getting in a fight with his mother, a novel helped him deal with the altercation, Phillips noted.
Phillips recalled the difficulty in getting past the first sentence of James Baldwin's "Blues for Mister Charlie."
"'And may every n-gger like this n-gger end like this n-gger -- face down in the weeds!'" Phillips read from his book. "He reads this one sentence over and over and over again. And then he closes the book and decides that he should go back and make up with his mother."
Phillips said he planned to major in psychology at Oxford University, because he wanted to better understand other people. As he explained in his autobiography, his tutor convinced him to change his major to English literature.
"I had a sense of psychology as having a kind of surreal, 'X-Files' feel to it, but I just wanted to know what made people tick," he said. "That's what English literature can give you, a profound understanding of other people."
Phillips began Tuesday's event with a reading from his most recent novel, "Dancing in the Dark," based on the life of Bert Williams, the first famous and wealthy black entertainer in the United States, according to Phillips. Williams, who wore blackface makeup and white gloves during performances, prematurely ended his career and withdrew into obscurity because of internal struggles he faced with racism and shame.
"One of the most demeaning forms of racial reinvention was to black up and perform as a minstrel," Phillips said. "I wanted to know what it was like to decide he had had enough."
Phillips used the available information on Williams' life to set the stage for his novel, but took artistic liberties fictionalizing a personality for Williams. Phillips even stood on a Broadway stage and visited dressing rooms in order to get into the mind of Williams.
After the readings, Phillips opened the floor to questions from the audience, the majority of whom were local community members. One attendee asked him about his experience moving from England to the United States to teach at Amherst College.
"From the NFL to Levis to music, you just felt that you were familiar with America," he said. "It was weird to come here and find that this country is far too large to be open to that type of casual scrutiny."
Phillips said he plans to continue writing in hopes that he will "leave something behind that will affect people."
