“On an a&ernoon train from Purley to Victoria” by James Berry

and the theme of racism

Sofia Cioli (1657909)

“On an afternoon train from Purley to Victoria” is a beautiful poem by James Berry written in 1955
and born from the encounter with a woman on a train. The author, born in Jamaica and moved to
England in 1948 to be able to cultivate his passion for books, deals in this poem with the theme of
racism, a topic on which he has often concentrated in his works also because of his origins. He
recounts a personal experience, a conversation he had with a woman he met on the train in which
you can meet, in addition to the theme of racism, also that of the memory of his own country, the
melancholy of childhood and the motivations that led him to to move. The structure is very simple,
precisely to bring out the simplicity of the encounter between two unknown people and belonging
to completely different cultures.
The poem begins with the woman greeting Berry:

“Hello, she said, and startled me

Nice day. Nice day I agreed”

The woman introduces herself as a Quaker, a member of a Christian group that seeks to stop racism
and discrimination against black men, and told Berry that Sunday she spoke aloud “a poem for
racial brotherhood". The author is surprised by this, perhaps because he had never known a Quaker
before. Thanks to the poetry of the woman, Berry began to remember the moments spent in
Jamaica:

“Inexplicably I saw
empty city streets lit dimly
in a day’s first hours.
Alongside in darkness
was my father’s big banana field”

The author compares the empty streets of the city with the banana field where his father worked, as
if he wanted to create a kind of fusion between the two cultures. There's also a sense of nostalgia in
Berry's words, especially when he remembers his father's banana field.
The ironic aspect can be seen in the last verse, with the Quaker proving not to be very intelligent by
thinking that Jamaica was part of Africa.

“Where are you from? she said.

Jamaica I said.
What part of Africa is Jamaica? she said”

Berry replies wryly, saying: “Where Ireland is near Lapland”.

“Hard to see why you leave

such sunny country she said.
Snow falls elsewhere I said”.

With this last sentence, Berry wants to make it clear that many like him, citizens of Jamaica but also
of other black men, move to England to get things they cannot get in their country. In this case the
author refers to his passion for books and writing, since access to books was limited in Jamaica.
In the finale, the author describes the woman as a person "beautiful in her sincerity", focusing more
on her simplicity than on being "ignorant" of her.

“So sincere she was beautiful

as people sat down around us”.

Up to the last two lines the poem can be read in a melancholic way, but the final sentence shows us
how the author has taken the positive aspects of this conversation, such as the sincerity and
simplicity of the woman.

The theme of racism is dealt with a lot in literature, and there are many poems that talk about it
through different perspectives: from personal experiences, from the struggle of people who try to
stop it, to racism involving politics and people who create stereotypes. These last two points can be
found in the poems "On the subway" by Sharon Olds and "In-a Brixtan Markit", another poem by
James Berry. In both poems the woman and the policeman stereotype the people they see: the
woman thinks the black boy is a thief just because of his looks, while in "In-a Brixtan Markit",
another poem probably based on the personal experience of the author, the policeman frisks a black
boy even though he has done nothing wrong, abusing his power.