Sufferah by Alex Wheatle MBE - how music becomes salvation
Abandoned as a baby to the British care system, Alex 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, the challenges of living as a young Black man in 1980s Britain and his imprisonment for protesting against systemic racism and police brutality. Alex's youth was portrayed in Oscar Award-winning director Steve McQueen's Small Axe series. 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. They remind us that words can be our sustenance, and music our heartbeat.
Alex Wheatle MBE
Alex Wheatle is the author of several novels, some of them set in Brixton, where he grew up. Born in London of Jamaican parents, his first book, Brixton Rock (1999), tells the story of a 16-year old boy of mixed race, in 1980s Brixton. Brixton Rock was adapted for the stage and performed at the Young Vic in 2010. Its sequel, Brenton Brown, was published in 2011.
Other novels include In The Seven Sisters (2002), in which the scene moves to Surrey in 1976, where four boys escape from an abusive life in a children's home; and Checkers (2003), written with Mark Parham, was published in 2003. His most recent novels, Liccle Bit (2015), Crongton Knights (2016) - winner of the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize - and Straight Outta Crongton (2017), are novels for young adult readers, focusing on the lives of teenagers and families on the fictional South Crongton council estate.
In 2010, he wrote and toured the one-man autobiographical performance, Uprising. His play, Shame & Scandal, had its debut at the Albany Theatre, Deptford in October 2015.
Alex was awarded an MBE for services to literature in 2008.
