
Sufferah
Memoir of a Brixton Reggae Head
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Narrated by:
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Troy Glasglow
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By:
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Alex Wheatle
About this listen
In this breathtaking memoir, acclaimed writer Alex Wheatle shows how music became his salvation through a childhood marred by abuse and his imprisonment as a young man protesting against systemic racism and police brutality.
Abandoned as a baby to the British care system, Alex Wheatle grows up with no knowledge of his Jamaican parentage or family history. Later, he is inexorably drawn to reggae, his lifeline through disrupted teenage years and the challenges of living as a young Black man in 1980s Britain.
Alex's youth was portrayed in Oscar Award-winning director Steve McQueen's "Small Axe" series (2020). In Sufferah, he tells his own story urgently, vividly and unsentimentally. His award-winning fiction - and this memoir - are a call to never give up hope. Sufferah reminds us that words can be our sustenance, and music our heartbeat.
©2023 Alex Wheatle (P)2023 Quercus Editions LimitedListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
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. (Curdella Forbes)