Rainbow Milk
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Rainbow Milk
Buy Now for £12.99
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Narrated by:
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Paul Mendez
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By:
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Paul Mendez
About this listen
Shortlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize.
An Observer Top 10 Debut 2020.
Rainbow Milk is an intersectional coming-of-age story following 19-year-old Jesse McCarthy as he grapples with his racial and sexual identities against the backdrop of a Jehovah's Witness upbringing and the legacies of the Windrush generation.
In the Black Country in the 1950s, ex-boxer Norman Alonso is a determined and humble Jamaican who has moved to Britain with his wife to secure a brighter future for themselves and their children. Blighted with unexpected illness and racism, Norman and his family are resilient in the face of such hostilities but are all too aware that they will need more than just hope to survive.
At the turn of the millennium, Jesse seeks a fresh start in London - escaping from a broken immediate family, a repressive religious community and the desolate, disempowered Black Country - but finds himself at a loss for a new centre of gravity and turns to sex work to create new notions of love, fatherhood and spirituality.
Rainbow Milk is a bold exploration of race, class, sexuality, freedom and religion across generations, time and cultures. Paul Mendez is a fervent new writer with an original and urgent voice.
©2020 Mendez (P)2020 Hachette Audio UKListeners also enjoyed...
Critic reviews
"Sensuous and thrillingly well written." (Observer)
"When did you last read a novel about a young, black, gay, Jehovah Witness man from Wolverhampton who flees his community to make his way in London as a prostitute? This might be a debut, but Mendez is an exciting, accomplished and daring storyteller with a great ear for dialogue. Graphic Erotica Alert! Don't [listen to] this book if you like your fiction cosy and middle-of-the-road." (Bernardine Evaristo, winner of the 2019 Booker Prize for Girl, Woman, Other)
"The kind of novel you never knew you were waiting for. An explosive work that reels from sex, to sin, to salvation all the while grappling with what it means to black, gay, British, a son, a father, a lover, even a man. A remarkable debut." (Marlon James, Booker Prize winning author of Black Leopard, Red Wolf)
I missed a lot of the nuance when I read it and found pain and humour in listening I hadn't realised when I read it. This book is like a film that gets better every time you watch it, noticing stuff you missed the first time around.
I could not recommend Rainbow Milk more highly. The content is timeless, the characters are rounded and you get the sense that they continue on even after they have departed the story. I want to know what happened to them all, I want to meet them and hang out.
No need for a sequel per se, but perhaps some short stories that continue the tales of those characters introduced here?
Sensational
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A very Human story
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Couldn’t put this down!
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Great story from a Black British Gay perspective not shown very often
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This story of escaping the Jehovah’s Witnesses because there is no way to stay, of found family and blood family touched me in my raw parts, and helped me heal them.
The story of surviving in a racist world opened my eyes to a world beyond my experience.
This is raw. This is powerful. This is beautifully told.
Intersectional brilliance
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