INTERVIEWS
There are some very talented writers not being published
We have seen Brixton go through many problems and changes since the turn of the century, such as the riots of 2011. Recently those who have grown up in Brixton have been displaced from their homes through gentrification. How would you say this has affected the young people of Brixton and would you say the changes that Brixton has undergone has done the area more good than bad? I think it’s split families up. My generation could remain in the area, which allowed us to maintain the close social support networks that everybody needs, especially when you’re young. When I returned to Brixton from the children’s home at 14, the friends that I made could just go two roads away and spend time at their auntie’s house if they weren’t getting on with their mum or dad; it was all very close knit — there were support systems. These are lacking today because young people cannot afford to remain in the area. I do like visiting Brixton now, I can enjoy a nice Brazilian or Portuguese meal and the diversity is incredible. In my time it was very much Jamaican- dominated but now you can see features from all over the world, but I despair that prices have gone up so much and the young people who grew up there are now being priced out. At the youth club where I work we come across cases where young people have been sent to Margate or even further: Lowestoft and Liverpool. I despair at this because everyone needs support networks and systems to progress.
JR: From reading your work, including books such as Brixton Rock , something that really stood out to me was the recurring theme, illustrated by the main character, Brenton Brown, that those who have lived a life of relative privilege lack empathy. Would you say that through your work you are trying to highlight this? AW: I wouldn’t say that was the sole reason why I had written those texts, but it was crucial for me that the people I grew up with were given a voice. I guess my mantra is ‘everybody deserves a place in fiction’ and when I read heavily, after my prison term, I remember coming across the angry young British writers of the 1950s; you had authors like John Osborne, there was Alan Sillitoe’s Friday Night and Saturday Morning , or Saturday Night and Sunday Morning — something like that! There were strong working-class narratives, and that inspired me to use my own reference points and experiences to bring my characters into a fictional space that I felt wasn’t there at the time, because even though I read the American Harlem Renaissance writers, people like Langston Hughes, James Baldwin, Richard Wright — I read them greedily — I was still very hungry for that black, London perspective that I couldn’t see and I couldn’t find anywhere no matter what bookshop I went to. All I could find in 1981-82, was perhaps Sam Sevlon’s The Lonely Londoners , and the poetry of Lyndon Kwesi Johnson, who is one of my idols. When I decided to write fiction I felt compelled to give those voices that I knew, those that I had empathy with, those that I grew up with, a voice on a written page. It wasn’t to counter anything — I simply felt those voices need to be heard.
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