Contemporary prejudice

 

Hilarious, inspirational and heart breaking funny novel, where Queenie Jenkins’s boss doesn’t seem to see her and her Caribbean family who don’t seem to listen, as she tries to fit in two worlds that don’t really understand her. A subversive story of her life, love, rave and family, Queenie you will begin liking.

Within the span of six years working in publishing Candice Carty-Williams, has had a huge impact o the Industry , she founded and launched the Guardian and Fourth Estate BAME short-story prize, markets for vintage and acted as a mentor on the Penguin Books Write Now scheme.

She follows a 25-year-old Jamaican British woman whose life is slowly straightening out. Her relationship in trouble, she is hunting for flats in South West London and her job as a magazine culture writer is under threat.

Carty-Williams confronts the racial prejudice of colleagues, internet dates and even on forgetting her official security pass , a guard refuses to believe Queenie is employed at the magazine until she points out her photo on a diversity-initiative poster, which shows “me , Vishnay from the finance suppliement and Josey from Music all standing awkwardly underneath the words ‘ The Daily Read: News for All’.

When she pitches ideas to her boss, pieces on unarmed black men killed by police and Modern day slavery” they are deemed too “radical”. Instead she is asked to compile a list of the 10 best dresses worn by  #MeToo supporters at awards ceremonies.

The casual racism of her ex’s family, his dismissal and therefore complicity init- “why have you always got to take this stuff so seriously“ and the effect this had on the couple is at odds with strident rejection of black women’s fetishisation that Queenie so strongly exhibits elsewhere.

Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams Trapeze £12.99, 400 pages