Contents

1 ContentsIntroduction4 Andrea Levy & Small Island 6 Ignatius Sancho10 William Wilberforce of Hull11 The Transatlantic Slave Trade12 Glasgow and Slavery16 Darwin and Slavery17 Jamaica Timeline18 The Jamaican Maroons19 The Windrush Generation 20 Black Americans in Bristol24 Settling In25 The Black Community in Liverpool29 Resources30 Acknowledgements31 West Indians arriving at Southampton, 24 October 1952(Science and Society/NMPFT Daily Herald Archive).4/5 Introduction The book that has been chosen for thisexciting initiative is Andrea Levy s SmallIsland, a widely acclaimed novel thatdescribes the arrival in post-war Britain ofblack Jamaican immigrants, the descendantsof enslaved Africans. Small Island Read 2007is linked to the 2007 commemorations of the200th anniversary of the passing of the SlaveTrade Abolition Bill a year that is beingused to explore the legacy of slavery and itscontinuing impact upon modern Levy s novel addresses the themes of identity, racial awareness, forgiveness,ignorance and survival with humour, highdrama, anger and pathos, making it anunforgettable read and one that is a fittingtopic for discussion in 2007.

2 Small Island Read 2007draws upon thesuccess of two previous reading projects Bristol school children travelling to Swindon tohelp promote the launch of the 2006 GreatReading Adventure (Neil Phillips).The Maritime Museum in Hull (Hull City Council).The Mitchell Library in Glasgow (Glasgow City Council).The site also provides news of all theactivities that are taking place over the next few months including talks, debates,workshops, reading group meetings andcompetitions, as well as material linked tothe books chosen for younger participants inthe project, Benjamin Zephaniah s RefugeeBoyand Mary Hoffman sAmazing Grace. The guide itself can be downloaded from thesite in both PDF and Word format, enablingreaders to obtain the text in a layout thatbest meets their hope you enjoy reading Small Islandandjoining in the Small Island Read Reads (launched in 2004 withHoles) and the Great Reading Adventure(launched in Bristol in 2003 with TreasureIslandand expanded to include the whole ofthe South West in 2006) and brings in newpartners from Aye Write!

3 Glasgow and HullLibraries. All four sites have links to the slavetrade and its of copies of Small Islandwill beavailable for loan from participating libraryservices and will also be distributed for freethrough schools and colleges, reading andcommunity groups, hospitals and other sites. This readers guide tells you about AndreaLevy and her work, looking particularly atSmall Island. In addition it providesbackground material on the transportation of enslaved Africans to the colonies and thesubsequent migration of later generations ofblack people from the Caribbean to Britain. An expanded version of the guide, includingadditional background information, isavailable on the Small Island Read 2007website at A listof questions is on the site that might beuseful for prompting discussions withinreading Island Read 2007is the largest mass-reading project that hasever taken place in Britain.

4 It is a community-based initiative thatencourages everyone in the participating locations to read the samebook at the same time. It promotes further reading, writing andcreative work inspired by that shared experience, and this providesan accessible and innovative means of learning about our past. Pupil in Liverpool reading Millions, 2006 (Liverpool Reads).6/7 Small Islandhas been described by the critics as an engrossing read , a work of great imaginative power , funny, tender, intelligent , deftand striking , revealing and accomplished , beautifully crafted,compassionate and an enthralling tour de force .The book is a tragicomedy that provides afascinating and thoughtful portrait of post-war Britain and the first dynamic encountersbetween newly arrived black Caribbeanimmigrants and the resident white Britishpopulation.

5 It is narrated by four characters,each with their own perspective on thesituation. Gilbert, a Jamaican volunteer in the RAF, hasreturned to Britain on the Empire Windrush,having realised there are no opportunities for him back home. After his wartimeexperiences, he has few illusions left aboutthe wonders of the Mother Country .Hortense, his prissy school teacher wife, hasfollowed Gilbert to Britain naively believingall she has been taught about the superiorityof the British and her privileged place amongthem. Queenie, their Earls Court landlady, is abrash, big-hearted woman yearning forexcitement who has found herself stuck in a run-down house with disapprovingneighbours. Bernard, Queenie s racist andoutwardly dull husband, is movingly shown to have his own share of hopes anddisappointments.

6 The story switches between the four voicesand between 1948 and before as well asacross three continents to reveal how eachperson has reached this particular point intheir life. The small island of the title refersto Jamaica, once considered the big island of the Caribbean but now seen as aninsignificant place by those who havereturned from the war. It also refers to Britainreluctantly waking up to the fact it no longerrules the world, the borders of its once globalempire shrinking around it, as well as to theindividual characters who are isolated fromeach other by their failure to Levy & Small Island The book s author, Andrea Levy, is aLondoner whose parents came to Britainfrom Jamaica in the 1940s. Small Island,published in 2004, was her fourth novel andher breakthrough, an international bestsellerthat has won the Orange Prize for Fiction,the Whitbread Book of the Year, theCommonwealth Writers Prize and theOrange Best of the Best.

7 Her three previous novels were also criticallyacclaimed. Every Light in the House Burnin (1994) is the semi-autobiographical story ofa Jamaican family living in London that shiftsbetween the narrator s memories of growingup in the 1960s and her experiences in thepresent sitting by her dying father s was described by the Times LiterarySupplement as a striking and promisingdebut . Never Far From Nowhere (1996) isabout two sisters, daughters of Jamaicans,Andrea Levy (Angus Muir).8/9 The first time she encountered a work offiction that spoke to her was at the age of 23 when she read Marilyn French s TheWomen s Room. She describes this as aprofoundly moving thing , as until thatmoment she had associated novels with theslog of school examinations. She became anavid reader and in the interview she refers to other books she has particularly enjoyedsince then, including Kazuo Ishiguro s The Remains of the Day, Matthew Kneale sEnglish Passengers, Philip Roth s The HumanStain and George Eliot s Middlemarch.

8 Shehas said elsewhere that she is inspired by thepower of story telling which is able to startan intimate conversation between the writerand reader that leads to some kind of winning the Whitbread for SmallIsland, Andrea Levy was asked in aninterview why she wrote. She replied:I really write this stuff because I want peopleto know about it. I don t think I could writefor its own sake because sometimes it s notthat much fun and it s quite lonely and quitescary because you ve only got yourself to rely on and all sorts of things like that. I love it, I really do, but if I didn t have apassion, a real passion for what my subjectis, I couldn t do began writing fiction in her early first three novels, with their explorationof the life of black British-born children ofJamaican immigrants, are more personalthan Small Island, though this book too hasits autobiographical aspect with its links toher parents experience in coming to Britain.

9 Small Islandhas been her most far-reachingbook to date. It took four-and-a-half years to complete and involved extensive all of the material Andrea Levy gatheredfound its way into the book, but byimmersing herself in the period she had the confidence to create characters andsituations that are well-rounded, believableand emotionally involving. In his Guardianreview of the book, Mike Phillips wrote thatthe author s reliance on historical fact givesLevy a distance which allows her to be bothdispassionate and compassionate. The history also offers an opportunity toconstruct the characters in patient andilluminating detail .The Minneapolis Star Tribunerecommendedthe book to anyone who enjoys a good, longread . The review continued: It s all here: exceptional dialogue, clevernarrative, and a rich story that tells ussomething new about our shared history ona planet that is increasingly small and yetwill always be inhabited by individualspossessed, at our best, by singularconsciousness and desire.

10 That Small Islandcreates such a world, so peopled, is its greatsuccess: With their graciousness in conflictand comedy in moments of despair, Levy scharacters enlarge our lives even as theirown life shrinks around Sunday Times critic Penny Perrickconcluded her review of Small Islandwiththe words:If it weren t for Levy s light, this novel would be almostunbearable to read: a tragic litany ofprejudice and the ingrained stupidity that isits cause. Every scene is rich in implication,entrancing and disturbing at the same time;the literary equivalent of a switchback ride. We hope you enjoy the live on a London council estate in the1970s. One of the sisters identifies herself asblack while the other passes as white. Thebook was long-listed for the Orange of the Lemon(1999), which won theArts Council Writers Award, is about a blackLondoner who visits Jamaica and discovers apreviously unknown family history.