Just us when we celebrate the recent publication of Pauline Campbell’s groundbreaking hybrid-memoir, RICE & PEAS AND FISH & CHIPS. Pauline will be joined in conversation by Corrina Antrobus.
Part memoir, part commentary, this book reflects on race and racism, identity and belonging, set against the historical, political and social climate of twentieth-century Britain to the present day, along with a personal exploration of what it means to be British as a first-generation immigrant child of Caribbean parents.
Pauline Campbell was brought up on Rice and Peas and Fish and Chips after her parents crossed thousands of miles, leaving the warm shores of the Caribbean, to settle in Britain. In this book Pauline will take the reader on a journey into where her generation has been. A generation of people who at their birth had no idea that the subsequent political events that were taking place throughout their young and adult lives would lead to a tsunami of inequality. It would have a rippling effect on not just them, but the generations that followed, as they along with other immigrants would become pawns in a horrifying game used to secure votes for Labour, Conservatives and rightwing groups. They would be denied the very equality any human should have regardless of the colour of their skin.
Pauline Campbell is a lawyer and writer that grew up in north and east London to Jamaican parents. After qualifying as a lawyer at the age of 41, she worked in a senior legal position for Hackney Borough for over 14 years, and currently works for Waltham Forest. She supervises The Windrush Justice Clinic, which provides free legal advice and prepares Windrush Compensation claims for victims of the Windrush scandal. Pauline has written on race and identity, including her short story “Rice and Peas and Fish and Chips’ which was published in the London Reader in spring 2020. RICE & PEAS AND FISH & CHIPS is her first full length work of non-fiction.
Corrina Antrobus is a writer from Hackney. She is the founder of Bechdel Test Fest, a feminist film festival established in 2014, and is a regular film contributor to Empire magazine and the Picturehouse Podcast, and has been Channel 4’s Sunday Brunch film presenter since 2019. Corrina is now Arts and Culture Cultural Development Manager for Hackney, and currently programmes the borough’s Black History Season as well as other community arts festivals and initiatives for Hackney.
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