Growing Out is part of the Black Britain: Writing Back series – selected by Booker Prize-winning author Bernardine Evaristo, this series rediscovers and celebrates pioneering books depicting black Britain that remap the nation and reframe our history. There are ten other books in the series ,
Travelling over from Jamaica as a teenager, Barbara’s journey is remarkable. She finds her footing in TV, and blossoms. Covering incredible celebrity stories, travelling around the world and rubbing shoulders with the likes of Germaine Greer and Michael Caine – her life sparkles. But with the responsibility of being the first black woman reporting on TV comes an enormous amount of pressure, and a flood of racist hateful letters and complaints from viewers that eventually costs her the job.
In the aftermath of this fallout, she goes through a period of self-discovery that allows her to carve out a new space for herself first in the UK and then back home in Jamaica – one that allows her to embrace and celebrate her black identity, rather than feeling suffocated in her attempts to emulate whiteness and conform to the culture around her.
Growing Out provides a dazzling, revelatory depiction of race and womanhood in the 1960s from an entirely unique perspective. Buy the book: https://www.foyles.co.uk/book/growing-out/barbara-blake-hannah/9780241993767
Read her recent piece in The Guardian here
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