E-grāmata: Sufferah: Memoir of a Brixton Reggae Head

Not only an intimate and completely engaging memoir, but also an essential piece of social history. Often heartbreaking but frequently life-affirming too. Alex is a truly gifted storyteller, and the way he details his own story here is no exception. -- Jeffrey Boakye This searing record of a writer's journey offers much more: A history of the reggae revolution in bass riddim. A raw account of racism in Britain. A prose that is Wheatle at his best-gritty, fast-paced, salty, funny, restrained, a tightrope walker's balance. For me, a Black writer in America, the part that resonates the most is, it's the story of how we overcome. Once you start reading, it's hard to put this book down. -- Curdella Forbes * author of A TALL HISTORY OF SUGAR * Alex Wheatle's Sufferah is a moving account of one writer's indomitable will to overcome the odds stacked against him. A tender, hilarious, and deeply felt memoir, the book places Wheatle's experiences in foster care and incarceration within a larger context of racism in the UK and dovetails with his coming of age as a lover of reggae music and Jamaican culture. What a gift to witness Wheatle's journey to find and forgive his birth family and to make a life and family of his own -- Naomi Jackson * author of THE STAR SIDE OF BIRD HILL * Alex Wheatle's bracingly honest, at times excruciatingly evocative memoir is shaped by the poetics of reggae music-but more than that, it is reggae music: brimming with all the pain and injustice that is baked into Babylon system, yet at the same time, by virtue of its artistic majesty, a beautiful transcendence of these things -- Baz Dreisinger * author of INCARCERATION NATIONS * Inspiring . . . His journey from orphan to self-professed storyteller is by turns gripping and heartbreaking * Publishers Weekly * Conversational and full of self-deprecating humour, Sufferah is a potent tale of triumph over adversity. Angry but never bitter, Wheatle's compassion shines through the pain * Observer * A personal memoir as well as a hosannah to the glory that is Jamaican music . . . Sufferah, by turns witty, tragic and, yes, righteous, is a gem * Spectator *