Buchi Emecheta

A vivid and heart-breaking account of the
camaraderie and helplessness, the smells and sounds of the utter poverty that still exists within the Welfare State.
Here is the all too human drama of Adah, young, black, fending for her small children on her own in a London full of poverty and indifference - and of the social workers who tread the frayed tightrope between human charity and human rights... It's a story told with humour, without rancour - but all the more moving for that.

In The Ditch

This reminded me of Mahmoud Mamdani’s memoir from Citizen to Refugee where he writes of he’s first experience with authoritarianism being in UK refugee camps after fleeing Idi Amins expulsion of Indians in uganda. He states “

On the face of it, life in the camp, with its surface calm and order, presented a sharp and favourable contrast to the open terror of living in Uganda. But it was the Kensington camp, and not Amin's Uganda, which was my first experience of what it would be like to live in a totalitarian society

.”  Buchie Emcheta 1972 documentary novel is an account of life on welfare as a black immigrant in the United Kingdom, the realities of working class migrants obtaining housing as a second class citizen in the UK intersecting race and class. Buchie work has been defined by some as Afro grief but in this book there some beautiful moments of joy and community.

Marion R

This reminded me of Mahmoud Mamdani’s memoir from Citizen to Refugee where he writes of he’s first experience with authoritarianism being in UK refugee camps after fleeing Idi Amins expulsion of Indians in uganda. He states “On the face of it, life in the camp, with its surface calm and order, presented a sharp and favourable contrast to the open terror of living in Uganda. But it was the Kensington camp, and not Amin's Uganda, which was my first experience of what it would be like to live in a totalitarian society.”  Buchie Emcheta 1972 documentary novel is an account of life on welfare as a black immigrant in the United Kingdom, the realities of working class migrants obtaining housing as a second class citizen in the UK intersecting race and class. Buchie work has been defined by some as Afro grief but in this book there some beautiful moments of joy and community.

In The Ditch

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