Joan Anim-Addo: The Longest Journey: A History of Black Lewisham

Joan Anim-Addo is Emeritus Professor of Caribbean Literature and Culture at Goldsmiths. She is currently the convenor for the undergraduate option: Caribbean Women's Writing and also convenes the Pathway 'Literature of the Caribbean and its Diasporas' within the MA Comparative Literary Studies programme.

Longest Journey is essentially a local history, the story of three continents and the journeys which brought them together. The pirates and adventurers, who crossed the oceans in search of gold and slaves, returned to build the manor houses of Kentish London.

Surviving the horrors of the 'Middle Passage' were characters like Cornelius the Blackamore, buried at Lee, the activist Equiano who forgot he was a slave until he was resold at Deptford and young Sancho who learned his letters in a duke's library on Blackheath. In the post-war years a new generation of African-Carribbeans made the crossing, coming in hope, facing a new challenge and putting down the roots of a local black community.