"Told through honest, entertaining, poignant portraits, this engaging memoir paints a profound picture of British West Indian experiences as it explores identity, family relationships, race and generational shifts."
Gracious, witty, honest and wise, Colin Grant’s I'm Black So You Don't Have To Be presents a rich tapestry of Caribbean experiences in Britain through honest, intimate portraits of unforgettable people from different generations, each of them on their own unique journey, and each of them having a profound effect on the author’s life. As Grant notes in his introduction, “They’re really the subjects of this memoir but, if you read carefully, you’ll find me reflected in the eight true stories that form the core of this book.”
Grant was born in Britain to Jamaican parents and recalls a Caribbean proverb being issued as advice — “play fool fi ketch wise”, a strategy used to avoid the master’s wrath during the days of slavery that also applied to getting “along in British life unmolested”.
Similarly revealing are words uttered by Grant’s “ribald philosopher” Uncle Castus — “I’m black so you can do all of those white things. I’m black so you don’t have to be.” Meaning, Castus believed life would be different for the author’s generation; he shouldn’t have to “play fool fi ketch wise.” And yet the reality was different, as revealed when the author switches from medicine to broadcasting and finds this strategy coming into play at the BBC.
Among the portraits presented, we meet author’s mother, Ethlyn, who was supposed to move to America, but wound up as a single mother in Luton. The account of her visiting Jamaica with her son is especially poignant. Ethlyn’s disappointment in England, and her yearning to build a house and find a new sense of self back on her home island is palpable.
Then there’s Grant’s father Bageye, who sells weed to make ends meet and leaves the family home after being arrested. Estranged for thirty years, the initial hope of the father-son reconciliation results in bad blood. In Bageye and other men of his age, the author observes a generation of “shipwrecked men” – “Where had all the dreams gone of the zoot-suited sagas boys who strode down the gangway of the Empire Windrush and the many other ships?” As Ethlyn would have said of such men, “England mad them.”
Engrossing and enlightening, I'm Black So You Don't Have To Be is a profoundly memorable work.
| Primary Genre | Biographies & Autobiographies |
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A memoir told through a series of intimate portraits, which build into a poignant, insightful and unforgettable testimony of West Indian British experience 'I'm black, so you don't have to be,' Colin Grant's uncle Castus used to tell him.
For Colin, born in Britain to Jamaican parents, things were supposed to be different. If he worked hard and became a doctor, he was told, his race would become invisible; he would shake off the burden he believed his parents' generation had carried.
The reality turned out to be very different. This is a memoir told through a series of intimate intergenerational portraits. We meet Grant's mother Ethlyn, disappointed by working-class life in Luton, who dreams of returning to Jamaica; his father Bageye, a maverick and small-time ganja dealer with a violent temper; his sister Selma, who refashioned herself as an African princess; his great uncle Percy, estranged from his family through his own pride. Each character we meet is navigating their own path. Each life informs Grant's own shifting sense of his identity.
Collectively these stories build into poignant and insightful testimony of the black British experience. Written with the intrigue, nuance, beauty and wit of short stories, and with the veracity and painful revelation of memoir, I'm Black So You Don't Have To Be is an unforgettable exploration of family, identity, race and generational change.
I'm Black So You Don't Have to Be features in the following genres: Biographies & Autobiographies, Memoirs, Racism and racial discrimination / Anti-racism, Social groups, communities and identities, Age groups and generations, Biography, Literature and Literary studies, Social discrimination and social justice, Social and ethical issues, Society and culture: general, Society and Social Sciences, Non-Fiction Books of the Month, Recommendations
I'm Black So You Don't Have to Be is available in Paperback, Hardback
I'm Black So You Don't Have to Be was written by Colin Grant and published by Jonathan Cape Ltd an imprint of Vintage Publishing
£17.09
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