Every day brings a new story. And each day contributes to the art of story telling -- in prose and poetry, in music, on the stage, on the screen, in podcasts, and in books.
Today is a story of March 7th
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It is the 66th day of the year, leaving 299 days remaining in 2023.
She told her stories about living the British-Jamaican experience, using the voices of Black Caribbean women and families living in London during the middle of the 20th Century, and Black soldiers with ancestors from the Caribbean colonies returning home to England after fighting in World War II. She told about the racism they encountered, the pain of emigration, and their trying to survive in a sometimes hostile country.
But she also told the stories of the native British who interacted with the newcomers, as she sought to understand how imperialism affected lives on both parts of the colonial divide.
In her early 20s, Levy was working as a costume designer, when, attending a diversity conference, she was asked to designate herself as Black or white. She thought of this as a rude awakening, and when she began to read on the subject, found few books by Black women with her background. She decided to write her own stories.
Her first novel, published in 1994, Every Light in the House Burnin', is semi-autobiographical tale about a Jamaican family living in 1960s London. Her next book, Never Far From Nowhere, is about two sisters from Jamaica growing in public housing in London in the 1970s. It was longlisted for the Orange Prize, a major literary award in the United Kingdom.
Levy's most recognized novel in 2004's Small Island, which uses four voices to tell the story of post-war emigration from the Caribbean to Britain. Hortense and Gilbert are a Black couple who move from Jamaica to London in 1948, and Queenie and Bernard become their landlords after renting a house to them.
That book won the Orange Prize, along with two other major awards, The Whitbread Book of the Year, and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize.
Her last novel, The Long Song, returns to the 19th Century to tell the stories of the last days of slavery in the Caribbean through the voice of an elderly Black woman who experienced a life of slavery before a brief bout of freedom.
Levy died in 2019.
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