‘Reconnecting with my family’s history has been a powerful journey’ 2023 DEBUT AUTHOR Eleanor Shearer SHARES THE STORY BEHIND RIVER SING ME HOME

River Sing Me Home is set in 1834 following the Slavery Abolition Act, and traces a mother’s search to find the children she has been separated from. Where did you draw the inspiration from?

When I was a teenager, I went to an exhibition in London called Making Freedom, put on by the Windrush Foundation. It explained that the story of emancipation in the Caribbean is often told through the lens of it being a gift from white people. However, there was also a lot of resistance in the Caribbean. As part of this exhibition, there was a small panel of text on the wall explaining that, after abolition, lots of women downed tools and went to find the children who had been taken from them. It stuck with me, and eventually became the seed of the book.

You are the granddaughter of Caribbean immigrants who came to the UK as part of the Windrush generation. How did learning about your own family’s history inform your interest in this period?

My grandma died before I was born and my grandad when

I was 16, but he had married again and my step-grandma is still alive. They retired to the Caribbean and I visited for the first time when I was around 11. He had this new lease of life after returning to the islands – he swam in the sea every day until he died. He did talk a little about his experiences of coming to the UK, but the idea of story and silence – one of the themes in my book – is also there in my own family; there were elements of my grandparents’ past that were just too painful for them to talk about, such as their experience of racism. It’s only as an adult that I’ve pieced things together and begun to understand what they went through.

You wrote your first draft during lockdown in 2020. Why did that feel like the right time?

I was working from home, which meant I had more free time. I had completed a Masters in Politics at the University of Oxford and my dissertation was on how slavery is remembered in the Caribbean, so I had spent time out there interviewing family and reparations activists. I’ve always loved creative writing, but thinking too much like a historian is not always conducive to being a novelist and having creative freedom. It was only when I had finished my Masters and decided I didn’t want to stay on in academia that I was able to think in a more creative way.

Has your research impacted on your own identity in any way?

All of the work I’ve done has been an ongoing negotiation of my identity. Although I’m mixed race, I pass for white, and I didn’t visit the Caribbean until I was almost a teenager. It has felt like an active choice to stay attached to my roots. My grandparents came here because, like many Windrushera people, they wanted to assimilate into British culture. Their idea of success was probably someone who looks like me and had the educational opportunities I have had. It meant my heritage wasn’t always spoken about when

I was growing up, and wanting to fill in those gaps has really driven me. Reconnecting with my family’s history has been a powerful journey.

Are you hoping this will be the first of many books to come?

River Sing Me Home (Headline, £16.99) by Eleanor Shearer is out 19th January

Definitely. I’m working on a second book now and I have a list of three or four other ideas I’d love to write, so there’s plenty in the pipeline, I hope!