A man who was arrested while holidaying in Jamaica as a 17-year-old published a book based on the true accounts of his experiences.
Ashleigh Nugent’s book ‘Locks’ was signed by traditional publishers Pan Macmillan Picador. He launched his book with a reading and a talk with Jennifer Hayashi Danns the Liverpool author of Beneath the Burning Wave at Liverpool’s Waterstones bookstore on June 28.
The child of a Black Jamaican and White Scottish mother, Ashleigh grew up on the outskirts of Liverpool. In 1993, two days into a three week holiday he found himself in a Jamaican detention centre.
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Ashleigh told the ECHO: "I spent my 17th birthday in a Jamaican detention centre, being beaten unconscious for being the “White Boy” after having grown up in a very white leafy suburb where I was always singled out and marginalised for being the Black kid.
"I knew at that point, as long as I survived this experience, then this will be the basis for my first book. At some point I’ll write this story.
"I got this deal by self-publishing my own book (2020) and being so determined, because I knew it was good enough. So I was going to keep pushing until they, the industry pays attention and make them come to me.
"Maybe sometimes you have to be very ruthless".
Locks is set in a fictional village based on where Ashleigh grew up and also in Jamaica. Aeon goes to Jamaica and he gets in some trouble, gets in a fight, gets mugged, gets stabbed, which is all true, then he gets arrested and ends up in a Jamaican detention centre.
Aeon is singled out as the “White Boy” after having been brought up within White culture in the UK and does not understand Black culture.
Ashleigh actually skipped bail after the fortunate intervention of the American Embassy got him released. However, the story in the book is about two characters, Aeon based on Ashleigh and the other, Increase, portrayed as his cousin.
Ashleigh added: "I’m really proud, happy and glad, as it's been a very long and arduous journey. 26 years I’ve had this dream of writing a book and a publishing deal.
"It's all starting to come together now I’m a 46 year old bloke. It feels great and quite strange.
"As I got older I realised this isn't just a story about race, this is a story about a young lad coming of age trying to find his identity. It's a story that is relevant to all of us because we all at some point question our identity.
"It's time society overcomes this polarisation, this binary thinking that everything is either black or white, right or wrong, left or right, blue or red, gay or straight, nothing is that simple. Once we overcome that binary thinking"I’m right and they’re wrong” then I think society will move forward, that’s really what the book is about for me."
Clare Coombes, founder of Liverpool Literary Agency explained what attracted them to be Ashleigh’s agent. She said: "It was Asleigh’s voice. It was just this incredible brave honest and confident voice I thought when I read it was self-published.
"I’ve known Ashleigh from Writing on the Wall, you know he’s worked on his novel in the early stages, I felt this needs to be out there. This needs to be with a big publisher who really gets it.
"The first thing Pan Macmillan Picador said was the voice, it’s unique, it's incredible, it's fresh. It's going to speak to so many different people from so many different backgrounds."
Ashleigh continued: "For aspiring writers, I’ve been doing this for 26 years. I haven't always stayed on the path and always done the right thing and I haven't always had the confidence to really be honest about what I was trying to achieve.
"Get honest and never ever stop. The show is only over when you decide it’s over and you are only limited by your own imagination. "How many books are written from the perspective of a teenage Black or mixed race Scouser. That's why I had to write it.
“Also, no one was writing the book I want to read".
Ashleigh is working on a follow up set from 1997 to the new millennium on things that happened to Aeon and Increase.
To get your copy of Locks visit Pan Macmillan HERE or Ashleigh Nugent
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