Barbara Blake Hannah (Author)
Barbara Blake Hannah is a Jamaican author, journalist, filmmaker
and cultural consultant. She trained as a journalist, then
emigrated to London and worked as a PR Executive for the Jamaica
Tourist Board and Government. She became the first Black TV
journalist in the UK in 1968, starring in TV programmes 'TODAY with
Eammon Andrews' and 'ATV TODAY', and working as a producer on
BBC-TV's 'MAN ALIVE'. In 1972 she returned to Jamaica as a PR
Officer for the first Jamaican film "The Harder They Come" and
continued writing articles and books, becoming a Rastafari and
articulate campaigner for acceptance of the religion. In 1984 she
was appointed an Independent Opposition Senator, the first
Rastafari to sit in the Jamaican Parliament. In 2001, she served as
a member of the Jamaican delegation to the UN World Conference
Against Racism (WCAR) in Durban, South Africa, where she was
appointed a member of the special plenary on Reparations, after
which she established the Jamaica Reparations Movement that led to
the establishment of the government's Parliamentary Commission on
Reparations (2008). She presently serves as Cultural Liaison to the
Jamaican Minister of Culture, Gender, Entertainment & Sport, and
continues to work in the film industry.
Bernardine Evaristo (Introducer)
Bernardine Evaristo, MBE, is the award-winning author of eight
books of fiction and verse fiction that explore aspects of the
African diaspora. Her novel Girl, Woman, Other made her the first
black woman to win the Booker Prize in 2019, as well winning the
Fiction Book of the Year Award at the British Book Awards in 2020,
where she also won Author of the Year, and the Indie Book Award.
She also became the first woman of colour and black British writer
to reach No.1 in the UK paperback fiction chart in 2020. Her
writing spans reviews, essays, drama and radio, and she has edited
and guest-edited national publications, including The Sunday Time's
Style magazine. Her other awards and honours include an MBE in
2009. Bernardine is Professor of Creative Writing at Brunel
University, London, and President of the Royal Society of
Literature. She lives in London with her husband.
www.bevaristo.com
A beautiful book. Her writing is just so dynamic and alive
*Bernardine Evaristo*
It is a fascinating book, both for [Barbara Blake Hannah's] vivid
descriptions of her new life in Britain . . . and for the painful
recollections of the racism she faced . . . Wide-eyed wonder
jostles with a vitriolic anger - sometimes in the same
paragraph
*The Telegraph*
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