Andrea Levy was an English author best known for the novels Small Island (2004) and The Long Song (2010). She was born in London to Jamaican parents, and her work explores topics related to British Jamaicans and how they negotiate racial, cultural and national identities.
Wide Sargasso Sea is a 1966 novel by Dominican-British author Jean Rhys. The novel serves as a postcolonial and feminist prequel to Charlotte Brontë's novel Jane Eyre (1847), describing the background to Mr. Rochester's marriage from the point of view of his wife Antoinette Cosway, a Creole heiress. Antoinette Cosway is Rhys's version of Brontë's "madwoman in the attic". Antoinette's story is told from the time of her youth in Jamaica, to her unhappy marriage to an English gentleman, Mr. Rochester, who renames her Bertha, declares her mad, takes her to England, and isolates her from the rest of the world in his mansion. Wide Sargasso Sea explores the power of relationships between men and women and discusses the themes of race, Caribbean history, and assimilation as Antoinette is caught in a white, patriarchal society in which she fully belongs neither to Europe nor to Jamaica.
White Teeth is British author Zadie Smith's debut novel, published in 2000. It focuses on the later lives of two wartime friends—the Bangladeshi Samad Iqbal and the Englishman Archie Jones—and their families in London. The novel centres on Britain's relationship with immigrants from the British Commonwealth.
British African-Caribbean people or British Afro-Caribbean people are an ethnic group in the United Kingdom. They are British citizens whose recent ancestors originate from the Caribbean, and further trace much of their ancestry to West and Central Africa or they are nationals of the Caribbean who reside in the UK. There are some self-identified Afro-Caribbean people who are multi-racial. The most common and traditional use of the term African-Caribbean community is in reference to groups of residents continuing aspects of Caribbean culture, customs and traditions in the UK.
On Stranger Tides is a 1987 historical fantasy supernatural novel by American writer Tim Powers. It was nominated for the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel, and placed second in the annual Locus poll for best fantasy novel.
George William Lamming OCC was a Barbadian novelist, essayist, and poet. He first won critical acclaim for In the Castle of My Skin, his 1953 debut novel. He also held academic posts, including as a distinguished visiting professor at Duke University and a visiting professor in the Africana Studies Department of Brown University, and lectured extensively worldwide.
The Lonely Londoners is a 1956 novel by Trinidadian author Samuel Selvon. Its publication was one of the first to focus on poor, working-class black people following the enactment of the British Nationality Act 1948 alongside George Lamming's (1954) novel The Emigrants. The Lonely Londoners was included on the "Big Jubilee Read" list of 70 books selected by a panel of experts, and announced in April 2022 by the BBC and The Reading Agency, to celebrate Queen Elizabeth II's platinum jubilee in June 2022.
British Jamaicans are British people who were born in Jamaica or who are of Jamaican descent. The community is well into its third generation and consists of around 300,000 individuals, the second-largest Jamaican population, behind the United States, living outside of Jamaica. The Office for National Statistics estimates that in 2015, some 137,000 people born in Jamaica were resident in the UK. The number of Jamaican nationals is estimated to be significantly lower, at 49,000 in 2015.
Hortense is a French feminine given name that comes from Latin meaning gardener. It may refer to:
Small Island is a two-part 2009 BBC One television drama adapted from the 2004 novel of the same title by Andrea Levy. The programme stars Naomie Harris and Ruth Wilson as joint respective female protagonists Hortense Roberts and Queenie Bligh, two women who struggle to fulfil their personal ambitions and dreams amidst the chaos of World War II London and Jamaica.
Margaret Cezair-Thompson is a Jamaican writer and a professor of literature and creative writing at Wellesley College.
Leone Ross FRSL is a British novelist, short story writer, editor, journalist and academic, who is of Jamaican and Scottish ancestry.
Andrea Stuart is a Barbadian-British historian and writer, who was raised in the Caribbean and the UK and now lives in the UK. Her biography of Josephine Bonaparte, entitled The Rose of Martinique, won the Enid McLeod Literary Prize in 2004. Although her three published books so far have been non-fiction, she has spoken of working on a novel set in the 18th century.
The Long Song is a historical novel by Andrea Levy published in 2010 that was the recipient of the Walter Scott Prize. It was Levy's fifth and final novel, following the 2004 publication of Small Island. In December 2018, a three-part television adaptation of the same name was broadcast on BBC One; The Long Song was aired on PBS in February 2021.
Nicole Dennis-Benn is a Jamaican novelist. She is known for her 2016 debut novel, Here Comes the Sun, which was named a "Best Book of the year" by The New York Times, and for her best-selling novel, Patsy, acclaimed by Time, NPR, People Magazine, and Oprah Magazine. She lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She is a notable out lesbian and feminist author who explores themes of gender, sexuality, Jamaican life, and its diaspora in her works.
Lucille d'Oyen Iremonger, née Parks, was a Jamaican writer and politician, active in the United Kingdom.
The Long Song is a three-part BBC television serial, which is an adaptation of Andrea Levy's 2010 historical novel of the same name.
Candice Carty-Williams is a British writer, best known for her 2019 debut novel, Queenie. She has written for publications including The Guardian, i-D, Vogue, The Sunday Times, BEAT Magazine, and Black Ballad, and is a contributor to the anthology New Daughters of Africa (2019), edited by Margaret Busby.
Small Island is a 2019 play by Helen Edmundson based on the 2004 novel of the same name by Andrea Levy. It tells the deeply connected stories of three people against the backdrop of the complex history of the United Kingdom and Jamaica. It premiered at the National Theatre in 2019 to critical acclaim.
Queenie is a new adult novel written by British author Candice Carty-Williams and published by Trapeze, an imprint of Orion, in 2019. The novel is about the life and loves of Queenie Jenkins, a vibrant, troubled 25-year-old British-Jamaican woman who is not having a very good year. In 2023, Channel 4 announced that Queenie had been made into a television drama, created and executive produced by Carty-Williams which aired in June 2024.
