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A Quick Ting On: Grime
Regular price $22.95 Save $-22.95From pirate radio to Glastonbury's Pyramid Stage, journalist and rapper Franklyn Addo pens an extraordinary narrative of the history, present and future of Grime music.
The influence of Grime on contemporary British culture is difficult to understate. From fashion trends and evolving language to potent political statements, Grime is a musical juggernaut that has reverberated far throughout British society. Chronicled for the first time in powerful literary prose, Addo intelligently documents the genre's cultural explosion and investigates how it became the voice of a generation.
A phenomenal insight into the captivating and electrifying genre that has taken the British music scene by storm, A Quick Ting On: Grime is an essential and long-awaited read for Stormzy aficionados and grime newcomers alike.
Finding Home
Regular price $18.95 Save $-18.95Alford Dalrymple Gardner is one of the few living passengers to have travelled on the Empire Windrush. Now published for the first time, this is his stirring life story.
On 22nd June 1948, the Empire Windrush sailed from Kingston, Jamaica, to harbour at Tilbury Docks. It carried 1,027 passengers and two stowaways, and more than two thirds of them were West Indies nationals. Alford Dalrymple Gardner was among them.
Alford's story traverses both the uplifting highs and intolerant lows that West Indian migrants of his generation encountered upon travelling to Britain to forge out a life. From joining the British military during World War II to being forcibly deported back to Jamaica once it was won-only to come back to the UK when the government decided it needed him again-Alford witnessed milestone events of the 20th century that shaped the country he still lives in today.
In the context of a supposedly 'post-Imperial' Britain where the lives of West Indian migrants hang precariously on the whims of the Home Office, Alford's heartening testimony is a celebration of those who endured hardships so that generations to come could call this place home.
The Spook Who Sat By The Door: The first Black man in the CIA (2024)
Regular price $29.95 Save $-29.95Continuously available in print since 1969, this novel has become embedded in progressive anti-racist culture with wide circulation of the book and hotly debated film. A literary classic, The Spook Who Sat by the Door is a strong comment on entrenched racial inequities in the United States in the late 1960s.
Dan Freeman, 'the spook who sat by the door', is enlisted in the CIA's elitist espionage program after a white senator decries the lack of Black officers in the agency. The first Black man in the Central Intelligence Agency, Freeman is given a desk job. Despite excelling, promotions are hard to come by as the token black in the CIA. Deciding he's had enough, Freeman uses the tactics he learns in the CIA to foment violent rebellion in Chicago, in a mirror image of the coups wrought around the world by the Agency itself.
With its focus on the militancy that characterised the Black Power movement of the 1960s and 1970s, this is the story of one man's reaction to ruling-class hypocrisy in ways that make the novel autobiographical and personal. As a tale of a reaction to the forces of oppression, this brilliant and funny satire by Sam Greenlee proves to be just as potent today as it was when it originally was published.
While We Were Burning
Regular price $19.95 Save $-19.95'Patricia's shoes. That's what I'd heard that morning, echoing outside of my bathroom window.'
After her best friend's mysterious death, Elizabeth Smith's picture-perfect life in the Memphis suburbs spirals out of control, causing her to hire an assistant to keep her world from hurtling off its axis. In comes the composed and elegant Brianna. But Elizabeth's obsession is catching, and Brianna quickly becomes accomplice rather than diversion.
Why? Because Brianna has questions, too...
She wants to know why the police killed her young Black son. Why someone in Elizabeth's neighbourhood saw him and thought to call the police. Who she can hold responsible for his death. As the two women hurtle towards the truth, it becomes clear that neither of them is who they claim to be.
A scorching debut that is as heartbreaking as it is thrilling, examining the intersection of race, class, female friendship, and the devastating consequences of everyday actions.
Colours of Hatred
Regular price $18.95 Save $-18.95When in service of money and power, is love a deadly game of an eye for an eye?
In this politically charged thriller, Leona, an internationally renowned Sudanese-Nigerian model was in her youth asked by her father to marry Akinola, a billionaire and son of his rival and kill him afterwards, to avenge her mother.
Now on her deathbed, Leona is driven to confess her sins and find absolution.
But how does one begin to do that? For as dastardly as the sin, it was an act of love, loyalty, disobedience, and perceived fairness.
Set against a background of real events, Colours of Hatred is a complex web of plots detailing how one woman moved from childhood through the fire and anvil of love, loss, longing, lust, and duty.... to become a woman whose life stands for mpre than another person's bitter machinations.
Stick To My Roots
Regular price $18.95 Save $-18.95The autobiography of Tippa Irie, Stick To My Roots tells the reggae musician's incredible story - from his trail-blazing beginnings in Saxon Sound International to the Grammy Award-nominated "Hey Mama" with the Black Eyed Peas.
Titled after his 1980s hit single, the book will cover 35 years of Tippa's prestigious career: from the first sign of talent as a child in South London and family members encouraging him to enter local talent competitions, to making his first record and becoming the powerhouse and Reggae-scene legend he is now.
It's a story full of dreams, music and hope, but also the deep traumas and tribulations that Tippa experienced throughout his life, and how music helped him to move forward.