I'm Black So You Don't Have to Be
Written with the intrigue, nuance, beauty and wit of short stories, and with the veracity and painful revelation of memoir, I’M BLACK, SO YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE is an unforgettable exploration of family and generational change.
As Featured In
A Word From The Author
Grant is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and Director of WritersMosaic, an innovative online platform for new writing. He also writes for a number of newspapers and journals including the Guardian, Observer, New Statesman, TLS, London Review of Books, Granta and New York Review of Books.
Colin Grant
Books
Colin Grant is the author of five highly praised books: Negro with a Hat: The Rise and Fall of Marcus Garvey (2008), I and I: The Natural Mystics Marley, Tosh and Wailer (2011), Bageye at the Wheel (2012), A Smell of Burning (2016), and Homecoming (2019). He is an Associate Fellow in the Centre for Caribbean Studies, and teaches creative non-fiction writing, most recently for Arvon and Sierra Nevada College.
What Readers Are Saying
‘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.’
The Observer
‘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 to pull together such an array of voices without producing a cacophony.’
Bernardine Evaristo
Winner of the Booker Prize 2019
‘[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 Times
‘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
Latest Articles
‘The story enraged me’ – an interview with Deborah Roberts
The US artist reflects on her Child Q collage She used to work in a shoe-shop but her work now sells for huge sums and is collected by big museums...
Wheel and Come Again
“Wheel and come again” is how Ethlyn once described this circular migration, back and forth from the island, from somewhere to elsewhere, to turn around and start all over again.
John Akomfrah on Stuart Hall
The artist is revisiting his three-screen film about the legendary thinker and activist, which takes in jazz, Vietnam, and the family trauma that haunted Hall
A Country Out of Control
In Wole Soyinka’s laceratingly satirical new novel, Nigeria has lost its way and is inured to corruption and violence.