Buchi Emecheta’s Gwendolen follows a Jamaican girl whose childhood is governed by poverty, then layered with the violence within what is supposed to protect her from it.

Left behind when her parents migrate to London, Gwendolen grows up in Jamaica under the care of her grandmother before eventually joining her family in England, carrying with her experiences that have already taught her what, and how badly, will fail a child.

Migration in this book, is not a simple geographical move. England offers distance, possibility and a new family configuration, but it also throws race, gender and belonging into harsher relief. The novel tracks Gwendolen’s struggle to understand what has happened to her without allowing other people’s shame, disbelief or expectations to become the final account of her life. It is a novel about abuse, migration, Black girlhood, family power and the difficult work of acquiring a self when so much of that self has initially been spoken for by other people. The novel was later published in the US as The Family.

Flamingo / Fontana Paperbacks, London, 1990. First Flamingo edition; originally published by William Collins Sons & Co. in 1989. Paperback. Light shelf wear and rubbing to covers and edges; minor handling marks. Internally clean and unmarked; binding firm. Very good condition.