The Windrush generation, in their own words - Homecoming is the first book to bring together oral testimonies of the post-war Caribbean immigrants to Britain
Colin Grant is a historian and author of four highly praised books, including Bageye at the Wheel, a memoir about his Jamaican family. He is an Associate Fellow in the Centre for Caribbean Studies, and teaches creative non-fiction writing. He has worked as a BBC radio producer and writes for many publications, including the Guardian, Times Literary Supplement and New York Review of Books.
A remarkable oral history of black postwar British life… Homecoming
is an extraordinary and compelling book in which the memories of
bus drivers, civil servants, engineers, nurses, RAF and army
recruits, teachers, shop stewards and seamstresses jostle with
those of journalists, musicians, novelists and poets... The
recovered memories in Homecoming are a formidable challenge to
those still nostalgic for a lost empire, to all who cling to narrow
and parochial definitions of Britishness... The voices in
Homecoming sing throughout the book but they also reverberate pain,
for so many are recounting stories they do not want to
remember.
*Daily Telegraph*
Grant is the writer to do justice to [the Windrush Generation’s]
lives… he has conducted dozens of interviews, dug into the Mass
Observation archives, and combed through semi-forgotten oral
histories from the 1960s to produce this anthology of submerged
lives that prickles with beautiful, comic and brutal details.
*Observer*
Homecoming by Colin Grant is...by turns sad, painful, warm,
revelatory and utterly fascinating. I think we would live in a
slightly kinder and better country if everyone read [it].
*New Statesman *Books of the Year**
Drawing on scores of first-hand accounts, Colin Grant offers oral
history at its finest.
*Daily Mail*
Hundreds of first hand interviews, archive footage and memoir
extracts of the Windrush Generation, beautifully edited into a
patchwork quilt of experience and heritage. It's so powerful
hearing these voices direct, making for a hopeful and angry, joyful
and tear-jerking read.
*Grazia*
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