The first book by British-Nigerian journalist Jimi Famurewa is a wide-ranging survey of the cultural and economic life of London’s African diaspora. A blend of memoir, social history and reportage, it is made up of nine essays that take in everything from education, housing and policing to religion and cuisine. The general tenor is celebratory: the author waxes sentimental about independent supermarkets such as TM African Foods on Goldhawk Road, where customers can indulge in “unhurried lingering, haggling on price, speaking at volume in thick-accented patois or pidgin or, perhaps, not even in English at all”. Scoffing Nigerian scrambled eggs in West Kensington’s Pitanga restaurant, he experiences a “quintessential Proustian rush” – “I might as well be slumped happily on my mum’s corner sofa, listening to the faint sound of her singing church hymns in the kitchen.”
Famurewa is a food critic by trade, so it’s no surprise that gastronomy features prominently. He interviews the owners of Ikoyi, which in 2018 became the first west African-inspired restaurant to earn a Michelin star, while drawing criticism from some Nigerian customers who felt the food was insufficiently authentic; Chishuru restaurant in Brixton and the Eritrean-inspired pop-up Lemlem Kitchen have incurred similar opprobrium. Such are the pitfalls of cleaving to rigid notions of identity: the nostalgic émigré wants their ancestral culture frozen in aspic, but that’s not how life works. At its worst, that kind of insularity can, as Famurewa acknowledges, breed a mindset of cultural separatism with potentially harmful consequences.
Settlers is replete with revealing anecdotes. As a teenager, Famurewa was mugged on a bus by a mixed-race boy while he was with a group of white pals; when he reported the crime, a policeman ludicrously suggested that Famurewa had been in cahoots with the mugger and had insinuated himself into the group in order to facilitate the scam. Elsewhere, one of his interviewees recalls how he felt the need to hide his African heritage, which was considered terribly uncool not so long ago: “If ever my mum wanted to punish me for misbehaving, she would have my Nigerian clothes ironed out and ready for school the next morning … And I would just beg and beg. I won’t do it again. Please.”
Although the book has no obvious through-line, certain themes recur. Famurewa notes that the African diaspora’s success stories usually involve private-sector initiatives. If, as he puts it, Nigerians are “entrepreneurial to an almost pathological degree”, this trait has been engendered by certain material realities – an “understanding that opportunities will not be meted out fairly”. Likewise, the growth of independent tutoring businesses reflects a strategic desire to circumvent the shortcomings of under-resourced state schools, a matter of “Black people helping themselves in lieu of outside help”.
Despite being occasionally repetitious and a little prone to cliche – we encounter more than one “perfect storm” – Famurewa’s writing is thoughtful, cogent and admirably even-handed. Cumulatively, these essays tell a story of slow but inexorable progress: he observes “a generational swing from the emotionally durable, necessary stoicism of those first West African settlers … to a way of being that was more about openness, psychological curiosity and a desire to explore … past traumas”; he believes today’s youngsters are less inclined to put up with discriminatory policing (“that impulse of stunned acceptance or denial doesn’t exist any more”) and suggests that increased Black migration to suburbs in Kent, Buckinghamshire and Essex represents “the triumphant endgame of the African diaspora in London”, marking a shift “from a transient population … to a thriving community with a sense of belonging”.
• Settlers: Journeys Through the Food, Faith and Culture of Black African London by Jimi Famurewa is published by Bloomsbury (£18.99). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
