No Telephone to Heaven

Clare is the protagonist of No Telephone to Heaven, and Cliff organizes the novel around her experiences. She is the lighter-skinned daughter of Kitty and Boy Savage and a counterpart to her darker-skinned sister, Jennie. When Clare is an adolescent girl, Boy moves his family from Jamaica to New York in hope of securing a better life. In the US, Boy attempts to pass as white, separating his family from ties to their home country. Longing to renew that connection, Kitty ultimately returns to Jamaica with Jennie, leaving Clare behind with her father because, as Jennie later explains, “One time she say she feel you would prosper here” (105), due to her lighter skin tone. This revelation deeply hurts Clare, and she feel internally divided. As a disenfranchised black woman of Jamaican heritage, Clare grapples with her identity and yearns for the security of a “mother-country” (109) in Kitty’s absence.

As a young woman, Clare attends university in England, seeking solace in her studies of art, history, and literature. She feels alienated from her university colleagues, however, as she encounters signs of her difference in perspective. This feeling of difference reaches its apex when Clare witnesses an anti-immigrant protest near the university.