Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    Island Songs
    Unavailable
    Island Songs
    Unavailable
    Island Songs
    Ebook412 pages11 hours

    Island Songs

    By Alex Wheatle

    5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    Listen to the audiobook instead

    About this ebook

    'Alex Wheatle writes from a place of honesty and passion with the full knowledge and understanding that change can only happen through words and actions.’ Steve McQueen. Alex Wheatle's life is the basis for an episode of McQueen's Small Axe airing November 2020.

    'Grabs your heart, not with pity but wonder that such beauty can come from such a life' The Independent

    ‘She wondered what kind of world she had brought her two daughters into – the tedious cycle of rural Jamaican life. No chance for them to set off upon adventures and see the outside world.’

    But sisters Jenny and Hortense Rodney, descendants of the fierce Maroon people, do get to see the outside world, and Island Songs is their story. Growing up in rural Claremont, working amid the hustle and bustle, lawn parties and ‘houses of joy’ in Trenchtown, the two sisters take a chance and move to England with their husbands, that far-off land of riches, where they settle down to motherhood among the jazz cafés and bleak streets of Brixton.

    A hauntingly beautifully written evocation of twentieth-century Jamaica, its history and traditions, Island Songs is an epic of love, laughter and sorely tested family loyalties. Many stories are told, but many more secrets are never revealed.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAllison & Busby
    Release dateOct 1, 2012
    ISBN9780749013721
    Author

    Alex Wheatle

    Alex Wheatle is the award-winning author of Brixton Rock which was published in 1999. He spend most of his childhood in care homes and foster families. ‘‘East of Acre Lane’ won the 1999 London Arts Board London Writers’ Award. He has worked with the Book Trust and the London Arts Board to promote literature within the city. He lives in South London with his wife and three children.

    Read more from Alex Wheatle

    Related to Island Songs

    Related ebooks

    Cultural Heritage Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Africa’s Warrior Queen

      Sep 3, 2020

      Africa’s Warrior Queen
      6 min read

    • Article

      Year in Reading: Jennifer Acker

      Dec 11, 2020

      I first read The Transit of Venus by Shirley Hazzard in college in a fiction workshop taught by Anita Shreve, who once, with the best of intentions, lectured our class on the “banality” of the subjects we chose to write about, and who, when her most

      3 min read

    • Article

      Contemptible Collectibles

      Feb 27, 2016

      Contemptible Collectibles
      3 min read

    • Article

      Impressive Powerhouse

      May 1, 2023

      Impressive Powerhouse
      4 min read

    • Article

      Death Of A Radical Rewilder

      May 20, 2020

      Death Of A Radical Rewilder
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Maya: We Are Here

      Mar 1, 2019

      The Maya: We Are Here
      3 min read

    • Article

      Writing Family History

      Dec 15, 2021

      Writing Family History
      5 min read

    • Article

      75 Best State Websites

      Jun 21, 2022

      Alabama Department of Archives & History AlabamaMosaic Alaska State Archives: Genealogy American Samoa Genealogy

      1 min read

    • Article

      A sentimental JOURNEY

      May 10, 2023

      A sentimental JOURNEY
      9 min read

    • Article

      The Third Obituary of Anton Popov

      Mar 4, 2019

      Three days after Anton Antonovich Popov garroted himself with piano wire, Elsie Green motored up his looping driveway—voice recorder and notepad in her shoulder bag—to write Popov’s first, and her 200th, obituary. Popov, composer of an acclaimed debu

      17 min read

    • Article

      A sentimental JOURNEY

      Apr 26, 2023

      A sentimental JOURNEY
      9 min read

    • Article

      Winter Sun

      Feb 6, 2020

      Winter Sun
      4 min read

    • Article

      A sentimental JOURNEY

      May 3, 2023

      A sentimental JOURNEY
      9 min read

    • Article

      THE BOY WHO KEPT Bees

      Oct 6, 2021

      All you could hear was rain, rain, rain. Rain drumming on the slate roof, streaming down the kitchen window, saturating the meadows and the dark woods beyond. Jess waited until her dad had turned away to check his phone, then dropped her half-eaten s

      8 min read

    • Article

      The King’s passion

      Aug 11, 2021

      The King’s passion
      11 min read

    • Article

      The Scarlet PEBBLE

      Feb 7, 2024

      The Scarlet PEBBLE
      9 min read

    Reviews for Island Songs

    5/5

    1 rating0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words