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• Windrush Child was written by Benjamin Zephaniah and tells the story of a 10-year-old boy called Leonard.

• In 1958, Leonard travels with his mother from Jamaica to England to join his father. The novel follows Leonard as he struggles to adapt to life in Britain.

• Although Windrush Child is a fictional story, Benjamin Zephaniah was inspired by historical events when he wrote Windrush Child. He also drew on his own experience of growing up in Britain in the 1960s.

Did you know?

'Windrush child' refers to any child who was born in the Caribbean and came to Britain between 1948 and 1971.

In 1948, Caribbean families were invited to move to Britain by the British government to help with rebuilding the country after World War Two.

These families arrived on ships. One of the first ships to arrive was called the Empire Windrush.

Windrush Child follows the life story of Leonard, from his childhood in Maroon Town, Jamaica, to his old age in Manchester, England.

When Leonard was a baby, his father left Jamaica and went to work in Britain. He travelled on a boat called the Empire Windrush. One day, Leonard’s mother announces that they are leaving Jamaica to join him.

Leonard and his mother sail to Southampton on a ship called the Arosa Star. Leonard’s mother has a passport but Leonard doesn’t need one because he is so young. During the journey, Leonard makes a friend called Winston.

They travel to Manchester. Leonard misses his Grandma and struggles to make friends. The children at school laugh at him and call him racist names. One day, he is violently assaulted by a group of boys in a racist attack.

Leonard grows up, finds a job, gets married and has a daughter called Grace. Despite the verbal and physical racism he encounters, Britain becomes his home.

When he is 71 years old, he decides to take Grace to visit Jamaica. He applies for a British passport for the first time. At the passport office, he is arrested. He has been denied citizenship by the British Government, despite the fact he has lived in Britain for over 60 years.

The novel ends with Leonard hoping that he will be released. He is being helped with his legal case by Winston, who grew up to be a human rights lawyer.

Activity

Leonard

Leonard is the narrator of the story. The novel follows his life from childhood to adulthood.

Even though he is an honest and hard-working man, he is arrested at the end of the story for not having the documents to prove he is British.

Rita

Rita is Leonard’s mother. She works hard to fit into life in Britain but she also encourages Leonard to stand up for himself and to never give up.

She is proud and strong. For example, when she discovers that her husband was unfaithful, she moves out until he understands how much he hurt her.

Morris

Morris is Leonard’s father. Optimistic and determined, he travels to Britain to create a better life for his family. Whilst living alone in Manchester, he is unfaithful to his wife and spends time with an unmarried woman.

He works as a bus driver and dies of a heart attack while he is working.

Grandma

Grandma is Leonard’s beloved grandmother who helps to bring him up in Jamaica.

She inspires Leonard to speak up for himself and to “roar like a lion”. She also passes on their family history so that Leonard knows to be proud of his Jamaican roots.

Activity

Themes are the main ideas that appear repeatedly in a novel. Some of the important themes in Windrush Child are:

• Racism
• Injustice
• History

After their arrival in Britain, Leonard and his family experience many verbal and physical racist incidents. For example:

• There are shops that refuse to serve them because they are Black.
• The children at Leonard’s school laugh at his voice and what he looks like.
• Leonard is violently assaulted by a group of boys in a racist attack in the park.
• His father is violently attacked by racist men.
• Leonard is attacked again when he is older by a group of white men, including a former school friend.

Not everyone Leonard meets throughout the story is racist, but it is a constant fear for Leonard and his family.

The major injustice in the novel is Leonard’s arrest for not having the documents to prove he is a British citizen. Leonard travelled to Britain legally on his mother’s passport when he was a child. He was not aware that he would need his own separate documents to prove his British citizenship in later life.

Even though there is hope for Leonard, as he is supported by his lawyer friend Winston, Zephaniah does not close the story with a happy ending. He makes the point that injustice can happen to innocent people.

Zephaniah is reflecting on what has happened in real life to people from the Caribbean who became caught up in legal arguments about their British citizenship.

The first chapter begins:

I love history. I am history. We made history.

Through this statement, Zephaniah is making the point that history is made up of people, including children, the things they do and the experiences they live through.

Throughout his life, Leonard is affected by bigger historical events that he cannot control such as war, riots and changing governments, but this does not mean his life is unimportant. His life story has the power to help people understand what the Windrush generation lived through and reflect on the injustices they faced.

Activity

Writers choose words and phrases carefully when they write. Readers can look closely at texts to think about how and why the writer made these choices.

Accent

Over the course of the novel, Leonard’s language changes.

When he first arrives in Britain, he has a Jamaican accent. Zephaniah spells out words how they would sound when Leonard says them. For example:

That’s what it sey in school…That’s what it sey in all de books.

Here “say” becomes “sey” and “the” becomes “de”.

Leonard’s accent fades as he makes Britain his home. At the end of the novel, he speaks using more standard English:

I want us to take Grace to Jamaica to see her Grandma […] I want her to see the house where I was born.

Leonard’s mother, who eventually returns to Jamaica, never loses her Jamaican accent.

Did you know?

Zephaniah uses some strong, racist language in this novel. In a message to the reader at the beginning of the book, he explains:

“I would be cheating readers if I were to gloss over some of the language that is used by racists.”

He wants the reader to know that words have power and they can hurt, but they can also be used to fight back.

Structure refers to how written text is organised – the way the story is ordered and shaped. Windrush Child is structured carefully to describe the events in both the present and the past.

The prologue

Zephaniah starts the story with a first-person voice talking in the present tense. It is the voice of a man who is imprisoned in a windowless room but believes he is innocent. This sets the story up as a mystery.

Zephaniah builds suspense in the novel. He makes the reader wait until the final chapter to find out why Leonard has been imprisoned.

The prologue also sets the tone and themes of the novel: Leonard is fighting injustice. He is frightened, upset and yet he is still strong.

Main narrative

The main narrative is chronological and written in the past tense. It follows Leonard’s life from his birth in 1947 to his arrest in 2018 at the age of 71.

By following his life story, the reader understands why his imprisonment is so unfair.

The final chapter

The final chapter returns to the same time as the prologue and explains the mystery of the man in the cell.

The final pages switch to the present tense to encourage the reader to feel like they are sharing Leonard’s thoughts and feelings.

Did you know?

The story is left on a cliffhanger: will Leonard be freed or not?

Zephaniah is asking his readers to go beyond the ending of his story to find out more about real-life victims of the Windrush scandal and what can be done to help them.

The context in which a novel was written can sometimes tell you more about its themes, message and meaning.

The Windrush generation

Windrush Child is based on historical events, although Leonard and the other characters in the book are fictional.

In the book, Leonard’s father is a passenger on the Empire Windrush. This was a real ship which travelled to Britain from Jamaica in 1948. Many of the people on board had left their homes in the Caribbean having been encouraged to find work and a better life in Britain. They were all British by law so they were all free to stay. This group of people were the first of the Windrush generation. Many stayed and built lives and families in Britain.

The Immigration Act 1971 granted permanent leave to remain in Britain to those who migrated before 1971. This meant that those who were part of the Windrush generation remained legal migrants and could stay in Britain to live and work. However, no paperwork stating that they had the right to permanently remain in Britain was given to these individuals.

In 2017, the Windrush scandal revealed that many people who were part of the Windrush generation, like Leonard, had been wrongly arrested or forced to leave the country because they had no proof of their legal status.

By 2019, the British Prime Minister had apologised and promised to pay compensation to the 15,000 people affected.

You can learn more about the Windrush Generation on Bitesize KS3 History.

Benjamin Zephaniah

The author, Benjamin Zephaniah, was born in England to a Jamaican mother and father from Barbados. Many of the racist incidents in the novel come from his own experiences.

For example, in the novel a white woman is served ahead of Leonard’s mother in a shop, something that Zephaniah experienced himself.