I'M BLACK SO YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE: A MEMOIR IN EIGHT LIVES
By Colin Grant
Synopsis
'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 small-time criminal 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 black British experience.
Sample Player
| Narrator | Colin Grant |
|---|---|
| Length | 7hrs 43mins |
| Catalogue No. | 17110 |
| Publisher | Findaway; 2023 |