“A JAMAICAN STORY.”

“A JAMAICAN STORY.” Last Thanksgiving, I posted here to give thanks to all those who went before and made it possible to have the lives we have today. In the moving last chapter of OUTLIERS, entitled “A Jamaican Story”, Malcolm Gladwell tells about the string of incidents which led to his Jamaican mother getting a college education. He summarizes: “Joyce Gladwell owes her college education first to W. M. MacMillan, and then to the student at Saint Hilda’s who gave up her scholarship, and then to Mr. Chance, and then, most of all, to Daisy Nation.” W.M. MacMillan was an historian who wrote an influential book in the thirties urging better educational opportunities for poor Jamaicans. The student at Saint Hilda’s had won two scholarships and surrendered one. There was a prize scholarship available for university education. It was awarded to a girl in alternate years. Gladwell’s mother was eligible in the year when a girl could win, but her twin sister won the scholarship. Mr. Chance was the Chinese shopkeeper in the neighboring village who lent Joyce Gladwell”s mother (Daisy Nation) the enormous sum to permit both twins to go to university. And those are some of the circumstances that enable us to read Malcolm Gladwell’s wonderful books.