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Sufferah

Memoir of a Brixton Reggae Head

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Sufferah

By: Alex Wheatle
Narrated by: Troy Glasglow
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About this listen

In this breathtaking memoir, acclaimed writer Alex Wheatle shows how music became his salvation through a childhood marred by abuse and his imprisonment as a young man protesting against systemic racism and police brutality.

Abandoned as a baby to the British care system, Alex Wheatle 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 and the challenges of living as a young Black man in 1980s Britain.

Alex's youth was portrayed in Oscar Award-winning director Steve McQueen's "Small Axe" series (2020). 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. Sufferah reminds us that words can be our sustenance, and music our heartbeat.

©2023 Alex Wheatle (P)2023 Quercus Editions Limited Authors Music
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Critic reviews

Not only an intimate and completely engaging memoir, but also an essential piece of social history. Often heartbreaking but frequently life-affirming too. Alex is a truly gifted storyteller, and the way he details his own story here is no exception. (Jeffrey Boakye)

This searing record of a writer's journey offers much more: A history of the reggae revolution in bass riddim. A raw account of racism in Britain. A prose that is Wheatle at his best-gritty, fast-paced, salty, funny, restrained, a tightrope walker's balance. For me, a Black writer in America, the part that resonates the most is, it's the story of how we overcome. (Curdella Forbes)
Alex Wheatle's Sufferah is a moving account of one writer's indomitable will to overcome the odds stacked against him. A tender, hilarious, and deeply felt memoir, the book places Wheatle's experiences in foster care and incarceration within a larger context of racism in the UK and dovetails with his coming of age as a lover of reggae music and Jamaican culture. What a gift to witness Wheatle's journey to find and forgive his birth family and to make a life and family of his own (Naomi Jackson)

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In Awe!

I loved the nostalgic exciting feel of Brixton back in the days.
Still smiling ☺️ hearing the family’s names as I know all of them!
The sadness was profound but the joy and exhilaration that Alex experienced from music comforted me. A perfect 10/10 score

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Identity

Was brought up in care myself and lockup to bring myself closer to my community.also suffers many racism as a young infant and primary school kids in the country areas before coming back to London. So yeah I can id with the books?

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