Day 206, Year of #Mygration: Sam Selvon – The Lonely Londoners

In June 1948 the SS Empire Windrush arrived at Tilbury Docks in England at the end of a journey from Jamaica that brought around 500 West Indians to Britain. The British Nationality Act earlier that year had granted free entry to Britain for all Commonwealth citizens, as the government tried to recruit extra labour to help national reconstruction after the Second World War. This led to a large increase in the immigrant population of Britain, mostly from the Caribbean, India and Pakistan.

The Lonely Londoner was one of the first books to explore the lives and experiences of the poor, working-class black population that had come to Britain after the end of World-War II. It tackles the complex emotions of dealing with homesickness while attempting to improve lives and achieve upward mobility within a prejudiced system that designates them as ‘other’. The Lonely Londoners also considers the depiction of migration in the text as well as Selvon's treatment of memory as a vital part of the migrant's experience.

• Understand representations of the themes of migration and memory in Sam Selvon’s novel The Lonely Londoners

• Relate this text to the context of Caribbean migrant experience

• Carry out critical analysis of prose fiction 

• Discuss the novel in relation to the concept of literatures.