I found this an absolutely fascinating account of those from the Windrush generation. They shared their stories in first hand interviews with the author, from archived material and from memoirs. We hear from those who came to Britain in the late 1940s and 60s about their dreams, the reality of being black in the UK and being away from all they knew. Would recommend.

This is another book about the Windrush generation and is written with interviews and memoirs. First hand stories of people with dreams and the difficulties they encountered with struggling for employment, housing and racism. A good account but I struggled with the writing format of no chapters and lack of structure. Thanks to Net Galley for my ARC.

A beautiful compilation of stories from The Windrush Generation. The UK Gov has mistreated a generation of wonderful people who did so much for the country by attempting to erase their stories. Colin Grant has done an excellent thing by immortalising these stories in print. Everyone should read.

An interesting look at immigration in the wind rush era. I loved reading all the different stories and finding out about this interesting period.

Collating together over one hundred voices into one book is a hard task. But combining those voices into a cohesive, educational and emotional read is even harder but Colin Grant manages to pull it off with finesse. Homecoming gives life to the stories of the Windrush generation, those who arrived in Britain from the West Indies with hope and inspiration and follow them through all walks of life.

The amount of work that has gone into this is astounding. You can feel it comes from a place of passion to get these voices heard, and these stories told to a wider audience. The main points I took away were that there isn't just one story to tell from the Windrush generation. Every single person who arrived in Britain came for a different reason, which led them down a different path and onto a unique and colourful life. Within the pages of Grant's book we have nurses, teachers, dock workers and beyond. All of them start with this one common link, but every life is decidedly unique.

It also didn't shy away from addressing the struggles and tensions the Windrush generation and their families faced, and still face. Discrimination, inter racial love, segregation and violence - all of these are spoken about here, and show the disappointment, fear and anger that come with these important topics.

Such an important book that explores an interesting, yet often overlooked part of British history, that is told with compassion and a lot of richly detailed information.

This is a fascinating book of interviews of men and women who came to Britain in the late 1940's to early 1960's from the West Indies - the Windrush generation.

As Commonwealth citizens, they came over to Britain as a way of improving their life chances and to make money. Many originally planned to go home after 5 or so years, but after living here for a few years, they ended up buying a house, getting married, having families, and settling down.

Taken directly from the individual accounts they talk about their family background; their education; why they decided to leave the West Indies; their experience on arrival; living here; working here; their experiences of racism; the race riots in the 1950's, and other topics.

Written in a chronological order rather than individual stories , you get to understand and see the similarities and differences experienced, because you get the same story about an event or experience from many viewpoints.

This book will make you laugh, make you cry, make you angry, and make you sad. Hopefully it will also make you understand the generation who travelled here, their reasons for coming and their reasons for staying.

Two points of interest for me: I didn't realise how many of them were educated - I made the erronous assumption that many were poor and uneducated, when in fact, many of them were educated to higher standards than working people of Britian were at the time. Nurses, engineers, teachers....it makes sense when you think about it: they were the people who could afford the cost of buying a ticket to travel. Not that they were allowed to work in those jobs when they came over, often having to take menial jobs and jobs on public transport for which they were over-qualified.

The other thing that came across clearly was how little bitterness they have towards the inherent racism that was prevalent in Britain at the time (and still is, in places).

This book is particularly pertinent and topical with the Windrush scandal, where men and women who thought they had a rightful place in British society, are being sent "home" to the West Indies - a place that many had left as children.

Highly recommended.

Thanks to @netgalley and @vintagebooks for letting me read Homecoming: Voices of the Windrush Generation by Colin Grant.

This is an oral history of the Windrush Generation, the influx of immigrants to Britain from the West Indies which began after the Second World War. This is a period of history I find particularly interesting, and reading this I can't imagine what Britain would have looked like if Caribbean immigrants hadn't come! The format - which is literally just people's recorded recollections on a variety of topics - took a little bit to get used to, but soon became easy and digestible. I guess I do prefer a more narrative history, where recollections are organically fed through the text, and I would have appreciated more societal analysis but this was still a super fascinating look at immigrants who - in the legacy of the British empire - wouldn't have even considered themselves as immigrants. The West Indian idealisation of England, racist attitudes and the beginnings of the Notting Hill Carnival (which I have actually been to) are all covered. As usual, it really irritated me when the author/contributors used the terms 'British' and 'English' like they're interchangeable (spoiler: they're not) and particularly curious when you consider how much this book interrogates the idea of the British empire... but whatever. I'd recommend this to anyone looking to learn about the period.

I had been very much looking forward to reading this book since I heard of it and it certainly didn't disappoint. It is a wonderful addition to the other books about the Windrush generation. Their stories leap of the page and I'm sure that many people reading this book will be able to really hear the voices and the struggles and sheer bravery of all that were involved

What a brilliant book. Looking at stories of people from their home town to the UK and in some cases back again. It was well written and having read The Housing Lark a few months earlier this helped to understand some of the issues mentioned in there or at least fleshed them out.
The book is so well written and it was good to look at the issues that lie behind many of the recent news stories and to get a really good insight into England at the time. A thoroughly recommended read.

A really interesting addition to Black British history, this captures the oral testimonies of the Windrush generation, coming to a Britain which they regarded as 'home'. It's very much like the real-life material of Sam Selvon, and Grant is particularly good at capturing cadences and patois, delighting in the characters. The book captures different moods from nostalgia to the daily struggle with everything from racism to not being able to buy Caribbean food. The characters are remarkably phlegmatic in the face of prejudice and there are positive stories, too, of mixed race romances and friendships. Some of the testimonies are very short and the narrative is fragmented, shared as it is by many voices, so it's helpful to have Grant's introduction and conclusion to pull it all together. A fascinating oral history that captures stories that haven't been told before.

‘Homecoming’ by Colin Grant is a wonderful addition to the books about the Windrush generation.

Grant presents an incredible array of sources including interviews, memoirs and other archival material. Reading the book, I felt that I really got to hear the people who are at the heart of the book telling their own stories in their own way. Grant managed to transport me to those pristine front rooms and it felt like I was sitting there and listening to these moving stories first-hand.

This book is important as a record of so much oral history but also as a really touching account of the dreams and disappointments, difficulties and successes of so many people.. Highly recommended.

With thanks to the publisher for the digital review copy in exchange for my honest and unedited review.

Homecoming is primarily a record of oral history as told by the men and women who came to the UK from the West Indies between the late 1940s and early 1960s. It is made up of the accounts of first hand interviews as well as some archival records and memoirs.
I like how the book was organised in that it was set out chronologically from the journeys to England, the difficulties in getting accommodation and jobs, the racially motivated violence from the Teddy boys and so on. Small passages from different people would follow one another in relevance to the time or topic rather than having each individual account in full from beginning to end.
Oral history is so important and for the most part it is usually only shared with family and friends and the thing about it is that if it’s not recorded or shared then it’s lost forever. This collation of personal oral histories allows everyone to have access to these real lived experiences of an important part of West Indian and British history. It is these little anecdotal stories that truly indicate what it was like for these communities that aren’t reflected in the more impersonal side of history.
I loved the fact that a wide range of opinions, experiences and feelings were expressed throughout the individual stories. I felt that Grant did a great job of making sure he collated a variety and the outcome is that the book reflects the reality of nuanced experiences and that although there were a lot of similar situations, there were still many differences within these and the individuals were affected in contrasting ways.

A very valuable read which would add a lot to an understanding of the personal reality of what life was like in the first decades for the Windrush generation.

As a grandchild of the Windrush generation, these are the stories I wished I could have heard when my own grandparents were alive. I remember snippets of tales told when I was a toddler, but their generation wasn't encouraged to write down their history. They came to the 'Motherland' full of hope and ideology, believing they would be welcomed as British - this is the real story; the story of their struggles, of the painful realities of racism, of interracial relationships and the challenges they faced. Reading this book makes me more proud than ever of my heritage, and more appreciative of the life I have.

This is for everyone who wants to truly understand what Britain meant and still means to this generation, and for those who are yet to tell their stories.

Homecoming is an interesting anthology of personal experiences of a generation impacted by notion of "Home", the impact of settling far away from your birthplace and culture and the racial politics of Britain in the decades to follow. In the ARC i read the formatting distracted from the flow of reading and I wish there had been a larger portion from the perspective of the author himself as it was the most engaging part of the text. That being said, the content provided a perspective of British history that I had not been exposed to before and I enjoyed learning about the intricacies of the lives these people led.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for an ARC in return for an unbiased review.
This publication tell the story straight from the horse's mouth of the hopes and aspirations of a number of the Windrush generation. This is a hugely important part of this contry's history and it is important that these stories are told.
There is no doubt that the treatment of these innocent people is an episode in Britain's history that we should be ashamed of.
Enjoyed reading the stories, although would of found it more so if an entire story from one individual was told at a time, rather than jumping back and forth all the time.

A really interesting book that gives a deep insight of British history though interviews and first hand tellings. It's interesting how people were lured for work and treated in totally opposite way to a guest.

Colin Grant gives a brief interviews of children and adult immigrants, the treatment, racism and the country crisis in the time

An extraordinarily important book on the subject, filling in the blanks from existing material. Interesting to read the facts and author opinions and view point on the windrush generation and their origins.

'In this book there are many lions and lionesses, and they are all telling their stories and unashamedly 'chatting their business.''
~
I found this to be a very insightful and important collection of accounts, collated and smoothly presented by Grant.
~
The flow of the stories, from initially travelling to Britain, the changes and challenges the individuals faced, and ending on the Windrush scandal, depicts the journey of each life in an interesting way, and the different voices kept my engagement.
~
'These were young and dynamic adventurers... they succumbed to the urge to leave. They called it 'England Fever'... So many were 'gone to foreign' that a joke quickly emerged and was heard throughout the region: 'Will the last person out please turn off all the lights?''
~
The separation of families in an endeavour to make a better life in Britain felt particularly challenging. For both generations (parents and children) sacrifices were made.
~
'I was told that, if you walk in fear, fear follows you. I fear nothing, I don't go with fear in my heart.'
~
The depiction of the poor treatment these individuals faced, as well as the joyful focus of living life and making the best of things, shines through in their overall joy for life.
The stories of their experiences are important, and while things seem to not be as overtly racist today, it is clear that so much more still needs to change.
~
'I felt extremely angry about Windrush scandal... How can that be done to people who've been living here all along?'
~
The stories spanning the generations of families impacted by the Windrush reflect the parallels and differences between the older and younger family members, highlighting the changing views and attitudes, in the same way as for any other families.
~
'The market, I'm thinking with hindsight, was a really buzzing hive of cultural activity but, coming from a ten-year-old's perspective on a Saturday morning, it was a pain in the arse and you couldn't wait to get home to watch TV.'
~
Overall I'd absolutely recommend this book. I think it is really important that these stories are shared and heard, and that they continue to be amplified and acted upon.
I'd recommend it to anyone to read.
~
'And so what more was there to discuss? 'Argument done,' as Jamaicans say.'

The Windrush Generation are getting older and it's really important that their voices are heard and their stories are told. At a time when more and more people seem to want to rewrite or wipe out the past, recent history is every bit as important to set down as the older 'stuff' and one of Britain's most interesting 20th Century stories is that of the early waves of immigration from the Caribbean.

Colin Grant interviewed Caribbean immigrants - both adults and children at the time of their arrival - who left the sunshine of their island homes to help Britain rebuild after WW2 or to seek their fame and fortune across the ocean. Homecoming: Voices of the Windrush Generation gives them the chance to set down their stories.

Britain after the war was bleak, cold, and buzzing with resentment. Overt racism was everywhere. New arrivers were forced to take disgusting, run-down and over-priced lodgings with manipulative landlords because the mainstream landlords didn't want them in their properties.

We learn about the lands they left behind, the journeys they took, the hostility they encountered and the jobs that were blocked to them, the dance clubs and the fighting and the challenges of mixed-race relationships. Also, we read about the kids who were left behind in Jamaica and other islands who were 'sent for' years later, already alienated from their parents by the separation, and of the people who tried to go back 'home', only to find that places like Jamaica had become too dangerous for them.

Britain should be immensely proud of the Windrush Generation and this book gives us all a chance to know more about how they suffered and how they succeeded.

It's fair to say that I found the content very interesting so why only 3-stars? The structure just didn't work for me. There were so many people's stories but they just didn't knit together. I couldn't remember from one section (there weren't really chapters) to the next who was who and what had already happened. Perhaps my pre-publication ARC wasn't fully formatted for the Kindle, but the lack of structure - when did chapters start and finish? Were there even chapters - marred the book for me.

I received a free ebook from Netgalley and the publishers in return for an honest review.

Everyone should be aware by now that there are huge gaps in the British history syllabus at school. Homecoming doesn't fill in those gaps but it does give the reader a taster as to where those gaps are in the last 60yrs. These are incredibly moving and personal first hand accounts and as such this is essential reading. However, don't expect page of historical context, that's not what the book is about. Consider this the stepping stone to going and finding more books on the specific areas that interest you.