Andrea Levy: A Writer of British Stories
“None of my books are just about race. They’re about people and history.” - Andrea Levy
Andrea Levy, passed away in 2019 from breast cancer was a renowned and celebrated black British writer of very British stories. She achieved global recognition from her book Small Island; Set in 1948, it explores the polarising experiences of four central characters, a white couple and a black couple, during a time of post war hardship and the arrival of the Windrush generation. It was given new form this year for the stage by Helen Edmundson, with a three month run at the National Theatre.
Andrea Levy was born in 1956, in England to Jamaican parents who both came to Britain during the Windrush in 1948. She grew up in Highbury on a council estate and attended Highbury Grammar School, where she showed no signs of the esteemed writer she would later become. In fact, Levy was not fond of reading at all, instead expressing other interests in acting and textiles.
Marilyn French's novel The Women's Room, which is hailed as one the most influential novels of the modern feminist movement, was the first book that Levy found "enjoyable" at the age of 23. From then on, Andrea could not stop reading; Andrea devoured books by African-American authors such as Tony Morrison and Alice Walker, yet she felt like her experiences of being black and British were missing from all of these narratives. In the most pragmatic approach to this void, she joined a writing class at City Lit.
A rude awakening of self-identity that occurred during a workshop, compelled Andrea to examine her race and heritage. Andrea needed to connect the dots between being someone who was first generation British to her Jamaican ancestry.
This required a journey to Jamaica to spend time with family she had never met and travel the island. She absorbed Jamaica’s history, observing the holdings of the British Empire and the impact of colonialism. The more Andrea saw and heard the more she realised that her entire family were products of Britain. Her parent’s story of migration, her grandparent’s story, Jamaica's story were all veritably "Britain's Caribbean story" too. Andrea, now in her thirties began to write about what she knew. These were stories that reflected her background, intertwined with the dynamics of a growing and changing society as a result of colonialism.
Publishers struggled to see how Andrea's first novel Every Light in the House Burnin' could appeal to the mainstream market with a leading black protagonist. It was side-lined as a 'black book' for 'black readers' of which they believed were too few to consider. However, the numbers did the talking, as did the critical acclaim. Andrea’s second book two years later Never Far from Nowhere was longlisted for the Orange Prize.
Andrea was creating a name for herself in historical fiction, serving courses of digestible hard truths with wit, punchy dialogue and engrossing narration as collective accounts as to why her parents and the likes of my grandparents came to be in Britain. The "why", being situated between the promises and false hopes set by their oppressors, who would soon be their neighbours, patients, passengers...Yet, the hostility was still met with some surprise.
Many have called Andrea Levy a pioneer, which comes with a certain amount of impudence. It relies on the ideologies and expectations of the white publishers and audiences rather than the actual credibility of her writing, which is completely free-standing. What is undoubtedly true is her mark in her genre and British literature. Andrea's legacy is one of illuminating the voices of the colonised who had otherwise been eliminated from the British narrative.
