The Lure of America

Very little is written about the Caribbean immigrant experience in America. This story is told through the eyes of two friends of the writer, young Orson Meyers and his aunt, Elsie Meyers. They emigrated from Barbados to America, Elsie in the fifties and Orson in the sixties. Paving the way for the latter, President Lyndon B. Johnson had just opened the doors a bit wider with the Immigration Act of 1965. It was a radical break from the policies of the past which selectively favored those of Northern and Western Europe but now welcomes the skilled and educated indiscriminately. These characters are real people, albeit disguised with fictitious names. Their stories are told with echoes of America's good as well as her failings, of subtle and not so subtle racism, of job and housing discrimination in those early years. “The Lure of America” encapsulates the journeys of one family all the way from Barbados and recaps the days of their early indoctrination that America was that reputed “Shining Light on the Hill”. This is a story of struggle and survival, of disillusion and determination, of failure but also of triumph. Those who overcame the barriers found good fortune in the land they called their Land of Opportunity.