London Is the Place for Me tells the beautiful story of how a defiant, steadfast, organized people made the Union Jack black. Kennetta Perry's illuminating and deeply researched book documents how Afro-Caribbean migrants resisted British racism, radically redefined the meaning of citizenship, and transformed post-war England in the process. Jolly old London Town will never been the same. -Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Africa Speaks, America Answers: Modern Jazz and Revolutionary Times (2012)
An absorbing, timely, and inspiring account. Kennetta Hammond Perry captures vividly the challenges Windrush-era migrants faced. But she also shows that grassroots organizing by Afro-Caribbeans really did make a difference, changing formal and unspoken exclusions and bringing about a more inclusive definition of what 'Britain' could be. This is a story that matters. -Lara Putnam, Professor and Chair of History, University of Pittsburgh
How were Black British imaginaries of 'belonging,' and of imperial 'subject rights,' challenged in practice, after the War? Perry's work skillfully explores bedrock sources that illuminate daily life, expectations, and the contradictory realities of lived experience for West Indians in motion. She follows ideas and movement from their roots in the Caribbean, into a reconstituted metropolitan racial politics-from the streets to the halls of power. Her work assuredly enters the canon of burgeoning Black British scholarship, as a rich and provocative research study and as an argument about the ironies of British claims properly juxtaposed with Black perception-both local and global. -Susan Dabney Pennybacker, Chalmers W. Poston Distinguished Professor of European History, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
A genuinely post-Windrush history of Britain, driven by the experiences of Afro-Caribbean migrants, is long overdue. Perry offers us a glimpse into the vibrant everyday life of mid-20th century black Britons who had one eye on London and the other on global race politics. London Is the Place for Me revises narratives of postwar British history to account not just for the presence of people of African descent but for the ways they shaped key debates and landmark moments at all scales of political practice as well. -Antoinette Burton, Professor of History and Bastian Professor of Global and Transnational Studies, University of Illinois
[A] brilliant account on the transnational and multi-faceted perspective of race politics. London is the place for me contributes from a historical point of view to an interdisciplinary debate that stretches beyond academia and still reverberates in contemporary societies. * Ana Moledo, Leipzig University, Connections: A Journal for Historians and Area Specialists *
