Stories of Heritage

The Sunshine Simpson series tells the fictional story of one young girl’s quest to find her voice, celebrating the Windrush legacy and exploring themes of identity, community, belonging and self-belief. It is a story that has been strongly influenced by my own upbringing.

I grew up in a home filled with rich Jamaican culture. My mum was a great cook, both my parents were expert entertainers. Music and stories and laughter and delicious food filled our family home. My parents used to sit in the front room of the house they lived in, for almost sixty years, and tell my siblings and me tales of life “back home” in Jamaica, and what it was like when they first travelled to England.

I will not say I took this for granted. I was just used to this way of life. We (my siblings and I) always used to say, “We need to write Mum and Dad’s stories down.” Truth is, I did not log their stories until well into my adult years. Yet, still, many of their adventures lived firmly in my heart.

Honouring a Special Generation

One of the main aims of the Sunshine Simpson series is to celebrate and honour this special generation of people, who are now sadly passing from living memory, by celebrating their rich and colourful stories of the past.

The impact of the Windrush scandal gave me a new urgency to contemplate and complete the first Sunshine Simpson story, My Name is Sunshine Simpson. If nothing else, with my parents getting older, I wanted to draft a story that would always connect my children to them, even if the book was never published.

So Much to Celebrate

I set out for this to be a joyful story, not one of tough times and struggle; the books have an underlying message of positivity and optimism, even in the face of some sadness. Writing a fictional story of a Black British child, who shares a special relationship with her Jamaican-born grandfather, I felt was the best way for me to connect today’s children with yesterday’s past – and I knew I would be able to tell the story authentically.

There is so much to celebrate in the lives of the Windrush generation; they have given so much to the UK. My mum, for example, was an NHS nurse for thirty-five years. My dad was a carpenter, building homes and motorway networks we live in and use today. Having grown up in a nurturing environment, and directly being a child of Windrush parents, I wanted to offer a narrative that highlighted their efforts, their wisdom, their humour, their courage, and their dignity, to younger generations. My one sadness is that my parents did not get to hold the Sunshine Simpson books in their hands. They both died before the first book published. But after darkness, light must follow – and my hope is that their memory and legacy stays alive for new generations of children through reading these stories.

Inspiring the Next Generation

I also hope the books encourage children to celebrate and take pride in their own heritage, no matter what that might be – and even inspire them to write stories of their own grandparents, as a reminder of the past and bridge to the future.

I would have loved characters in books that reflected something close to my experience when I was growing up. Let us hope a new generation of children find themselves in characters that remind them of home – or characters that enable them to see the world from new and exciting perspectives.