Celebrating Windrush Day
Selected by the Bookshop
June 22nd is Windrush Day, marking the 75th Anniversary of the arrival at Tilbury docks of the Empire Windrush, carrying a large contingent of West Indian immigrants hoping to find work rebuilding the country in the aftermath of World War Two. Established in the wake of the infamous Windrush scandal of 2018, the day celebrates the enormous contribution of Caribbean and other migrants and their descendants to British cultural and intellectual life.
From the publisher:
In June 1948 the SS Empire Windrush docked in Tilbury, carrying with it the hopes and dreams of hundreds of young men and women from the Caribbean. It was both a point of departure and a historic transformation, a moment which influenced…
From the publisher:
After World War Two England was on her knees, so the call went out to the British Empire for volunteers to help rebuild the ‘Mother Country’. Young men and women from different Caribbean islands were quick to respond, paying the…
From the publisher:
A beautifully evocative story of a child's journey to England on board Empire Windrush, from an internationally celebrated, multi-award-winning poet and an extraordinary debut illustrator.With one last hug, Windrush child says goodbye…
From the publisher:
'A remarkable oral history of black postwar British life... Homecoming is an extraordinary and compelling book' Daily TelegraphHomecoming draws on over a hundred first-hand interviews, archival recordings and memoirs by the women and men…
From the publisher:
Small Island by bestselling author Andrea Levy won the Orange Prize for Fiction and the Orange Prize 'Best of the Best' as well as the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and the Whitbread. Possibly the definitive fictional account of the…
From the publisher:
'This is a miracle of a book' George Lamming'Compelling. Stuart Hall's story is the story of an age' Owen Jones 'Sometimes I feel I was the last colonial'This is the story, in his own words, of the extraordinary life of Stuart Hall: writer,…
From the publisher:
Both devastating and funny, The Lonely Londoners is an unforgettable account of immigrant experience - and one of the great twentieth-century London novels. This Penguin Modern Classics edition includes an introduction by Susheila Nasta.At…
From the publisher:
***LONGLISTED FOR THE 2019 JHALAK PRIZE***A leading new exploration of the Windrush generation featuring David Lammy, Lenny Henry, Corinne Bailey Rae, Sharmaine Lovegrove, Hannah Lowe, Jamz Supernova, Natasha Gordon and Rikki…
From the publisher:
In this heart-stopping adventure, Benjamin Zephaniah…
From the publisher:
The rediscovered classic: an unforgettable memoir by a trailblazing black woman in post-war London, introduced by Bernardine Evaristo (‘I dare anyone to read it and not come away shocked, moved and entertained … One of the…
From the publisher:
Johnnie Sobert is a brown Jamaican who earns his living as a barman in a Soho club. Sobert is a man divided: between Black and White; between class identities; between heterosexual and homosexual desires; between being an exiled Jamaican…
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