Andrew Salkey, the British Home and the Intimacies In-between

Caribbean author Andrew Salkey's 1960 novel, Escape to an Autumn Pavement, diverges from the ‘unhomeliness’ of many contemporary diasporic narratives by placing its sexually confused West Indian protagonist within the domestic milieu of the English home. It also troubles the peculiarly English discourse of the ‘respectable homosexual’ to account for the presence of the Caribbean migrant. In so doing, Salkey makes domestic space a site where migrant and queer affiliations collide, with ideas of nationhood proving crucial to both. In offering an early prototype of a figure both black and gay, this text explores the hazards and the possibilities of an intimate life conducted ‘out of line’.