It is 1975, a time of raging socialism, when Jamaica’s middle and upper classes are leaving the island in droves to escape the dreaded descent into communism. Among those at the fore of the throng are white and near-white Jamaicans made fearful by a growing anti-white sentiment in the country. Yet Anthony Winkler, a white Jamaican, resident of the USA for the last thirteen years, decides to go home to Jamaica, to teach.
Winkler’s account of the year spent in Jamaica teaching at a rural teacher training college is a rich combination of autobiography and incisive social commentary, with a wealth of material including contrasts between the American and Jamaican outlooks, insights into the dilemma of being a member of a privileged minority, and lessons about the perils of superimposing a foreign ideology onto a native culture. Told with Winkler’s characteristic zany humour – and featuring an entertaining assortment of quirky characters from the author’s past and present – but also teeming with frustration, anger and ultimately a passionate love of country, Going Home to Teach is significant both as a work of literature and as a marker of a pivotal period in Jamaica’s modern history.

“In Going Home to Teach Winkler’s strength as a writer lies in the vividness of his descriptions, the power of his imagery, and the range of his vocabulary …” Elaine Reynolds, The Sunday Observer

“… Anthony Winkler is a man who lives and breathes the island’s culture and customs, speaks and writes in the musical rhythms of its language, understands the unending struggle for survival and dignity that is every Jamaican’s lot.” Vincent Coppola, Atlanta Magazine