Sugar and Slate

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What to expect

Brought to you by Penguin.

A powerful, intimate memoir from writer and academic Charlotte Williams exploring the intertwined history of Wales, Africa and the Caribbean

As the daughter of a white Welsh-speaking mother and black father from Guyana, Charlotte Williams's childhood world was one of mixed messages dominated by the feeling that 'somehow to be half-Welsh and half Afro-Caribbean was to be half of something but never quite anything whole at all.'

Sugar and Slate tells the fascinating story of her journey of self-discovery, from the small north Wales town of her birth to Africa, the Caribbean and back to Wales. This is both a personal memoir and a story that speaks to the wider experience of mixed-race Britons. It is a story of Welshness and a story of Wales and above all a story for those of us who look over our shoulder across the sea to some other place.

A title in the Black Britain: Writing Back series - selected by Booker Prize-winning author Bernardine Evaristo, this series rediscovers and celebrates pioneering books depicting black Britain that remap the nation.

©2023 Charlotte Williams (P)2023 Penguin Audio

Critics Review

  • An engaging and perceptive voice describing an engrossing and particular personal story

    Guardian

  • Warmly recommended to any curious minds, at 20 years old Sugar and Slate still speaks to us in these modern times, helping to ensure marginal voices remain heard

    buzzmag

  • I loved this book . . . Williams pushes us to ask what ‘Welsh’ means, what Guyanese means, as much as her luminous words and intricate structure force a deeper understanding of ‘classic’

    Nation Cymru

  • In this moving and thought-provoking book, Charlotte Williams demonstrates how global histories impact our most intimate spaces and acts. Linking the histories of Africa, South America and rural Wales, it is an unforgettable account of a search for belonging and identity

    S. I. Martin

  • Charlotte’s observations and descriptions in Sugar and Slate are highly original and her writing nothing less than brilliant

    Caribbean Review

  • An imaginative expansion of the autobiographical form

    New Welsh Review

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