Empire Windrush: Fifty Years of Writing about Black Britain

Oneyekachi Wambu

In 1940 my white grandmother made the Atlantic crossing from her home in Barbados to reach my Grandfather in England, marry him, settle down, and make a new life. Eight years later the SS Empire Windrush docked in London, having made the same journey, but bringing the first of several million West Indian immigrants from what was then known as The New Commonwealth. My grandmother dodged German U-boats in the Atlantic and she arrived to find England in the middle of the blitz. The Empire Windrush must have had a more peaceful crossing but her passengers disembarked to an equally unwelcoming reception.

'Empire Windrush' is one of a handful of books which came out a couple of years ago to celebrate fifty years since the start of widescale immigration in Britain. It contains short stories, essays, transcripts, extracts and poems from some 60 Caribbean and Asian authors living and working in Britain today.

Unfortunately my book journal says I've been reading it for 194 days, almost time enough to swim the Atlantic, but what can I say? Anthologies are a problem. Sure, there were some good pieces, but all too soon, in a work containing such a wide mix of contributions, I was bogged back down in something difficult. The poems, I mostly skipped, though I liked some of the titles. "Inglan is a Bitch" for example. And there is an interminable essay on the importance of cricket in the Caribbean, which I have erased from memory. And then there is Salman Rushdie (who uniquely boasts two contributions) being ... well, Salman Rushdie. I find him an admirable bloke, but completely unreadable. Worst of all, there is a dreary transcript featuring Stuart Hall, entitled "The Formation of a Diasporic Intellectual". Has there ever been a more turgid title?

I'm being too negative. There is "The Devastating Boys", by Elizabeth Taylor, a sweet story from the 1950s about a genteel white British couple whose life is turned upside down, and eventually improved, when a couple of orphaned Caribbean boys, Sep and Benny, come to stay for a week. There is a great extract from "A Brighter Sun", by Sam Selvon, featuring an arranged marriage, Asian-Caribbean style (I hadn't realised there were Asians in Trinidad). But the pieces I enjoyed most were towards the end of the book (which is loosely chronological) in which Black Britain has started to find its voice and its confidence. Andrea Levy is featured, "Never Far from Nowhere", and she's an author I'll try again. Also there are hopeful and upbeat pieces by Mike Phillips, "At Home in England", Hanif Kureishi, extract from "The Buddha of Suburbia" and a rather strange but fun, story from Meiling Jin, "The Song of the Boatwoman".

I guess it's just the anthology format I have difficulty with. If you're happy to skip the odd turgid piece, it might be worth trying.