Windrush Stories

Today is Windrush Day,  which was set up to remember when the first generation of people from the Caribbean arrived in the UK, by invitation, on the HMT Empire Windrush to help rebuild Britain after WWII.

The British Library’s Windrush Stories resources exploring race, migration and culture, ‘invite us to consider a longer, more complicated and ongoing relationship between Britain and the Caribbean’.  

Highlights include close readings of three poems by John Agard and  author Andrea Levy’s essay on ‘notions of racism’ and what events let her to use writing as a tool to explore her Caribbean heritage.  To view all resources click here.

Andrea Levy’s award winning 2004 novel, Small Island, provides a definitive fictional account of the experiences of the Windrush generation and was selected by the BBC as one of it’s ‘100 Novels that Shaped Our World’.