Homecoming

Voices of the Windrush Generation

By: Colin Grant

Narrated by: Colin Grant, John Sackville, Debra Michaels, Leemore Marrett, Kristin Atherton

Length: 9 hrs and 8 mins

Publisher's summary

Brought to you by Penguin.

When Colin Grant was growing up in Luton in the 1960s, he learned not to ask his Jamaican parents why they had emigrated to Britain. ‘We’re here because we’re here,’ his father would say. ‘You have some place else to go?’ 

But now, 70 years after the arrival of ships such as the Windrush, this generation of pioneers are ready to tell their stories.

Homecoming draws on over a hundred firsthand interviews, archival recordings and memoirs by the women and men who came to Britain from the West Indies between the late 1940s and the early 1960s. In their own words, we witness the transition from the optimism of the first postwar arrivals to the race riots of the late 1950s. We hear from nurses in Manchester; bus drivers in Bristol; seamstresses in Birmingham; teachers in Croydon; dockers in Cardiff; inter-racial lovers in High Wycombe, and Carnival Queens in Leeds. These are stories of hope and regret, of triumphs and challenges, brimming with humour, anger and wisdom. Together, they reveal a rich tapestry of Caribbean British lives. 

Homecoming is an unforgettable portrait of a generation, which brilliantly illuminates an essential and much-misunderstood chapter of our history. 

©2019 Colin Grant (P)2019 Penguin Audio

Stories worth listening to

The narration brings the stories to life, making it worth listening to.

I’d recommend it to anyone who’d like to understand the Windrush generation and people who live in or had their parents/grandparents come from British colonies... many similarities in the way of life and community.