The literary wave that followed the arrival of the Windrush generation in the UK wasn’t the beginning of Black British literature by any means, but the anniversary of the arrival of HMT Empire Windrush at Tilbury docks on 21 June 1948 seems like a good moment to celebrate 75 books that have shaped the Black British experience.
Our contributors include historians and musicians, educators and publishers, and their choices cover fiction and nonfiction, poetry and politics. The result is an exhilarating range of stories, from freedman and 18th-century abolitionist Olaudah Equiano to the pilots and stretcher-bearers of the second world war; from pioneering teachers to young pleasure-seekers at dancehall dub nights. The earliest voices of the Windrush generation can be heard in works by Sam Selvon and Beryl Gilroy, alongside more recent writing by Malorie Blackman, Nadifa Mohamed and Roger Robinson.
