Showing results by narrator "Sara Powell" in All Categories

She wondered what kind of world she had brought her two daughters into, the tedious cycle of rural Jamaican life. No chance for them to set off upon adventures and see the outside world. But sisters Jenny and Hortense Rodney, do get to see the outside world. Growing up in rural Claremont, working amid the hustle and bustle, lawn parties and houses of joy in Trenchtown, the two sisters take a chance and move to England with their husbands, that far-off land of riches, where they settle down to motherhood among the jazz cafés and bleak streets of Brixton.

On the eve of the planet Ileri's historic vote to join the Commonwealth, the assassination of a government minister threatens to shatter everything. Private investigator Noo Okereke and spy Meiko Ogawa join forces with police chief Toiwa to investigate - and discover clues that point disturbingly toward a threat humanity thought they had escaped.

Mina Smallman has lived through the unimaginable. On Saturday 6 June 2020, her daughters, Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman, were killed in a park by a male stranger as they celebrated Bibaa's birthday. Mina has been fighting for justice ever since - for her daughters, and for the rest of us, by challenging the toxic culture in the Metropolitan Police and calling out the wider institutional misogyny, racism and classism in Britain. Now, she tells her story for the first time.

The Day I Fell Off My Island tells the story of Erna Mullings, a teenage Jamaican girl uprooted from her island following the sudden death of her beloved grandmother. When Erna is sent to England to be reunited with her siblings, she dreads leaving behind her elderly grandfather, and the only life she has ever known. A new future unfolds, in a strange country and with a mother she barely recognises. The next decade will be a complex journey of estrangement and arrival, new beginnings and the uncovering of long-buried secrets.

Evelyn Dove embraced the worlds of jazz, musical theatre and, most importantly, cabaret, in a career spanning five decades from the 1920s through to the 1960s. A black British diva with movie star looks, she captivated audiences and admirers around the world, enjoying the same appeal as the ‘Forces Sweetheart’ Vera Lynn throughout the Second World War.

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 generations of writers and artists and produced much poetry, prose, fiction, journalism and influential essays. In this groundbreaking collection, journalist and writer Onyekachi Wambu collates some of the best and most significant writing from the 75 years following the arrival of Empire Windrush.