K.N. Chimbiri


and offering us Black protagonists. Gifford acknowledges King becoming Mayor of Southwark. Chimbiri impresses upon us the pioneer status of The Windrush Generation (whilst acknowledging the prior Black presence in Britain); she states that King was the first Black Mayor of Southwark.


However Chimbiri also stresses that whilst most of the travellers on the Empire Windrush were Black, not all were. She includes the 66 Polish people who boarded the vessel in Mexico, and the Indian Caribbean people who made the journey in her telling of history. Both books have almost exactly the same number of images depicting people – yet whilst Gifford’s book includes only three with white people depicted, Chimbiri’s includes ten, demonstrating that 20th century Black history is intertwined with British history, not isolated from it.


Whilst both books refer to how Britain was viewed by many who travelled on the Empire Windrush in 1948 as the ‘Mother Country’, they differ in the context they provide in order for children to understand this idea. For Gifford, affinity with Britain is explained by speaking English and hearing British news on the radio. Chimbiri includes information on the many West Indians who served in the British army in World War II. Gifford refers to the West Indies as being ‘ruled by Britain’ and provides a map of the Caribbean region whereas Chimbiri places this in the context of the British Empire, offering a map of the Empire as well as one of the region. She notes ‘Most people in the Caribbean were of African descent; however in school the students were taught little about Africa or the Caribbean. Instead the focus was on England and English history.’ (9) Gifford limits his information on the education system in the Caribbean to ‘Schools were strict and teachers were treated with respect’. (5) and that children read British books.


Both books avoid the topics of the enslavement of African people and indentured servitude, which are important for understanding the population in the Caribbean islands. Chimbiri does however begin her section on the islands with information about the diversity of peoples on the islands. Gifford does not address this but rather discusses the climate, the crops that grow and how the islands are popular with tourists. These comments suggest a particular point of view – a greater emphasis is placed on the utility of the islands. This is in keeping with how the islands were viewed by the British Empire. However Chimbiri places the people of the Caribbean front and centre in her telling of history – indeed they are in the foreground of the cover, with the ship, which takes up the entirety of the cover for Gifford’s book, in the background. We suggest this is fitting. The Windrush story is social history. Chimbiri’s book clearly recognises this, at various points picking up the story of Sam King


Chimbiri connects recent history with the present when she writes that the people of the Windrush generation are the ‘foreparents of many of today’s Black British people’ (35). This attention to terminology (elsewhere she uses ‘people from the Caribbean’ and ‘African-Caribbean’) and its


relationship to nationality and


identity is less apparent in Gifford’s’ book, where he writes ‘Today, around 600,000 West Indians live in Britain and work in many different jobs including business, medicine, education, sport and music’ (27). Most of the 600,000 are not, in fact, West Indians at all, but British-born citizens. It suggests, most probably unintentionally, that ‘we English’ are still white, and if you are Black, you cannot count among the British.


The Story of the Windrush by K.N. Chimbiri is published by Golden Destiny, 978-0956252500, £6.99 pbk


(Note: Darren Chetty is thanked in the Acknowledgements of The Story of the Windrush for offering feedback on a draft.)


Karen Sands-O’Connor is professor of English at SUNY Buffalo State in New York. She has, as Leverhulme Visiting Professor at Newcastle University, worked with Seven Stories, the National Centre for the Children’s Book, and has recently published Children’s Publishing and Black Britain 1965-2015 (Palgrave Macmillan 2017).


Darren Chetty is a teacher, doctoral researcher and writer with research interests in education, philosophy, racism, children’s literature and hip hop culture. He is a contributor to The Good Immigrant, edited by Nikesh Shukla and published by Unbound, and tweets at @rapclassroom


Books for Keeps No.233 November 2018 17


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