Black Cake(96)

I knew that immigrants from the Caribbean and other Commonwealth nations were actively recruited to study nursing and work in other sectors in the UK in the post–World War II years. But until I had read firsthand accounts of immigrants, I was unaware of the extent to which some Caribbean trainees and employees found themselves harassed, discriminated against, and limited in work opportunities within their professional fields.

It was my personal familiarity with a particular Caribbean food, black cake, that led obliquely to this book. It started me thinking about the emotional weight carried by recipes and other familial markers that are handed down from one generation to the next. Then it had me writing about characters who must hold fast to their sense of self when they learn that their lives have been built on a dubious narrative.

Despite the use of some historical and present-day context, this narrative focuses primarily on the emotional lives of the invented characters and is meant to be fable-like in its recounting of some of its main events. For fictional stories more deeply rooted in the political and social discourse of multicultural lives in various Caribbean countries and the Caribbean diaspora in the mid-to late twentieth century, I would like to remind readers that there are a number of wonderful authors to turn to, such as Edwidge Danticat, Marlon James, and Jamaica Kincaid.

I would like to recommend also a few books that I discovered while finalizing this book: The novel Pao by Kerry Young and the nonfiction account Finding Samuel Lowe: China, Jamaica, Harlem by Paula Williams Madison offer different but fascinating insights into the Chinese Caribbean experience. In a related note, I would like to mention Jamaican-born producer and director Jeanette Kong, who did a film based on Williams Madison’s book and other documentaries on this aspect of Caribbean life.

The Lonely Londoners by Sam Selvon and, more recently, Small Island by Andrea Levy do a delightful job of bringing to life some of the nuances of ethnic relations in Jamaica and the Caribbean-UK immigrant experience in the post–World War II years. I also found The Windrush Betrayal by British journalist Amelia Gentleman to be useful in capturing the sense of dual identity that many Caribbean members of the Commonwealth felt as they settled into new lives in the UK. This is by no means an exhaustive list and I encourage readers to continue their own exploration of these topics.

Even when stories are made up, they typically contain emotional truths. It is my hope that the emotional notes in this story will resonate with people of various backgrounds who have thought about shifting concepts of home and family, about longing, loss, and second chances and, of course, love.