Shortly before dropping out of medical school in the early 1980s, Colin Grant stumbled upon his long lost Uncle Castus in London. A Windrush-era arrival, remembered as a man of promising intellect, Castus turned out to be working in an East End off-licence. The older man berated the younger with his catchphrase: “I’m black so you can do all those white things. I’m black so you don’t have to be.” The list of white things would stretch over the years to encompass cycling, drinking chardonnay, reading feminist literature and living in Brighton. But on that day in Mile End, Grant was being accused of almost the whitest thing possible: turning down an opportunity. By rejecting medicine he seemed to be distancing himself from the humiliations and privations his family had undergone in order to facilitate his place at the Royal London hospital. Picking the arts over medicine was a luxury – choosing to live a more precarious life was indulgent.
In Grant’s previous book, Homecoming: Voices of the Windrush Generation, we encountered many people like Castus. Their oral histories were marked by stories of dashed hopes, racist violence, stoic resignation and an uncertain sense of belonging. “Motherland” or “homeland”? Where were they really from? During the 1960s and 1970s, home for Grant’s family was Luton – and a now-vanished world of linoleum flooring, paraffin heaters, plastic pineapple ice buckets and The Black and White Minstrel Show.
