Sugar and Slate

Charlotte Williams

• Publisher: Parthian Books
• Year: 2023
• ISBN:
  9781914595493
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies
• Index: Social Sciences

'It is Williams's Welshness that makes the examination of her mixed-race identity distinctive, but it is the humour, candour and facility of her style that make it exceptional... an engaging and perceptive voice describing an engrossing and particular personal story.' – Gary Younge'In its exploration of geographical, racial and cultural dislocation, Sugar and Slate is in the finest tradition of work to have emerged from the black diaspora in recent times.' – The Guardian'Within this review, I can only scrape the surface of the many dimensions of Williams' memoir, so I strongly encourage you to read this precious book for yourself, and find those parts of it which speak most to you.' – Sarah Tanburn, Nation.Cymru'Warmly recommended to any curious minds, at 20 years old Sugar And Slate still speaks to us in these modern times, helping to ensure marginal voices remain heard.' – BuzzA mixed-race young woman, the daughter of a white Welsh-speaking mother and black father from Guyana, grows up in a small town on the coast of north Wales. From there she travels to Africa, the Caribbean and finally back to Wales. Sugar and Slate is a story of movement and dislocation in which there is a constant pull of to-ing and fro-ing, going away and coming back with always a sense of being 'half home'. This is both a personal memoir and a story that speaks to the wider experience of mixed-race Britons. It is a story of Welshness and a story of Wales and above all a story for those of us who look over our shoulder across the sea to some other place.It would have been so much easier if I had been able to say, 'I come from Africa, ' then maybe added under my breath, 'the long way round.' Instead, the Africa thing hung about me like a Welsh Not, a heavy encumbrance on my soul; a Not-identity; an awkward reminder of what I was or what I wasn't.Once at a seminar, one of those occasions when the word Diaspora crops up too many times and where there aren't too many of us present, the only other Diaspora-person sought me out. His eyes caught mine in recognition of something I can't say I could name, yet I must have responded because later as we chatted over fizzy water and conference packs, he offered quite uninvited and with all the authority of an African: 'People like you? You gotta get digging and if you dig deep enough you're gonna find Africa.'

Table of contents

• Cover
• About Charlotte Williams OBE
• About Denis Williams
• Title Page
• Foreword
• Epigraph
• Preface
• Africa
• Small Cargo
• Afternoon Dreaming
• Africa to Wales
• Alice and Denis
• Beit-eel
• Weddings, mixed blessings
• Chalky White
• Purple Haze
• Icon and Image
• Guyana
• I goin’ away
• Neva see com fo’ see
• Expat Life
• Parallel Lives
• Tekkin’ a walk
• Goin’ for X amount
• The Jumbie parade
• Wales
• Sugar and Slate
• Bacra-johnny
• I goin’ home
• Acknowledgements
• Library of Wales
• Planet advert
• Funded by
• Library of Wales list
• Copyright