Homecoming

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. – Hazel V Carby * 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]. – Mark Haddon * New Statesman Books of the Year *Drawing on scores of first-hand accounts, Colin Grant offers oral history at its finest. – Bel Mooney * 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 *[Grant] lets people speak for themselves… there is much to enjoy. Some of the memories are painful, some are joyous, others are much more ambivalent. – Clive Davis * The Times *The Windrush generation’s voices are rarely heard, but Grant’s anthology is informative and funny, a well-researched window into a vanished world. – Sarah Hughes * i *[An] impressive work of oral history. * BBC History *Colin Grant has interviewed and collected nearly 200 voices from [the Windrush] era, from all walks of life, including policemen and fascists. It’s quite a feat. – Bernardine Evaristo * i Newspaper *The structure of Homecoming gives its subjects space to speak for themselves, with each vignette providing a glimpse into little known history… Grant’s collection of voice…exposes effectively the cruel logic of Britain’s legacy of domination. – Renni Eddo-Lodge * Guardian *

Colin Grant is an author, historian, and critic. He has written acclaimed biographies of the Wailers and of Marcus Garvey. Bageye at the Wheel, his memoir of growing up in a Caribbean family in 1970s Luton, was shortlisted for the PEN Ackerley Prize. His history of epilepsy, A Smell of Burning, was a Sunday Times Book of the Year. Homecoming - Voices of the Windrush Generation was a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week and Daily Telegraph Book of the Year. His most recent book, I’m Black So You Don’t Have to Be, was a New Statesman Book of the Year. He is director of WritersMosaic, a division of the RLF, and a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

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