Homecoming cover art

Homecoming

Voices of the Windrush Generation

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About this listen

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, seventy 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 first-hand 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 post-war 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.

(c) 2019, Colin Grant (P) 2019 Penguin Audio

 Americas Caribbean & West Indies Caribbean Creators Emigration & Immigration Europe Great Britain Social Sciences Caribbean England Africa

Critic reviews

A remarkable oral history of black postwar British life… Homecoming is an extraordinary and compelling book in which the memories of bus drivers, civil servants, engineers, nurses, RAF and army recruits, teachers, shop stewards and seamstresses jostle with those of journalists, musicians, novelists and poets... The recovered memories in Homecoming are a formidable challenge to those still nostalgic for a lost empire, to all who cling to narrow and parochial definitions of Britishness... The voices in Homecoming sing throughout the book but they also reverberate pain, for so many are recounting stories they do not want to remember. (Hazel V Carby)
Grant is the writer to do justice to [the Windrush Generation’s] lives… he has conducted dozens of interviews, dug into the Mass Observation archives, and combed through semi-forgotten oral histories from the 1960s to produce this anthology of submerged lives that prickles with beautiful, comic and brutal details.
Homecoming by Colin Grant is...by turns sad, painful, warm, revelatory and utterly fascinating. I think we would live in a slightly kinder and better country if everyone read [it]. (Mark Haddon)
Drawing on scores of first-hand accounts, Colin Grant offers oral history at its finest. (Bel Mooney)
Hundreds of first hand interviews, archive footage and memoir extracts of the Windrush Generation, beautifully edited into a patchwork quilt of experience and heritage. It's so powerful hearing these voices direct, making for a hopeful and angry, joyful and tear-jerking read.
[Grant] lets people speak for themselves… there is much to enjoy. Some of the memories are painful, some are joyous, others are much more ambivalent. (Clive Davis)
The Windrush generation’s voices are rarely heard, but Grant’s anthology is informative and funny, a well-researched window into a vanished world. (Sarah Hughes)
[An] impressive work of oral history.
Colin Grant has interviewed and collected nearly 200 voices from [the Windrush] era, from all walks of life, including policemen and fascists. It's quite a feat. (Bernardine Evaristo)
The structure of Homecoming gives its subjects space to speak for themselves, with each vignette providing a glimpse into little known history… Grant’s collection of voice…exposes effectively the cruel logic of Britain’s legacy of domination. (Renni Eddo-Lodge)
All stars
Most relevant
This was just like listening to my grandparents and parents speaking of home and of their experiences here in the UK.

Thank you so much for capturing their stories, for capturing our history.

Absolutely Fantastic!

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Loved It! It was like hearing our elders speak to their friends at home whilst cooking or visiting each other.
Thank you

Our Elders

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Made me understand my grandparents and mother’s lives better when they came over from Jamaica in the 1950s and 1960s

Excellent book

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Thoroughly enjoyed listening to the true narrative, examples of what happened to our Windrush parents, and how they felt when they came to England. This Audiobook brought my Jamaican father back to life!
Real and captivating.

Great listening

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This was a moving narration of many generations of people coming to the UK from the Caribbean.

My own parents and my grandparents were part of the migration. Although they rarely spoke of what they faced on arrival in the UK and the many years it took to establish themselves, I could identify with many of the stories. I witnessed and have experienced the discrimination and the quiet intolerance. I have also felt the longing for back home and the uplifting drum beats and colours that made a cold weary England tolerable. I do hope this narration gives others an understanding of why Caribbean people deemed the UK as the "Mother land", the fact they came here answering her call for help. And the disappointment they felt when the reality of life in the UK was made apparent to them.

We are here because you were there

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