Over the four years since we sat down for a coffee in the cafe at the Black Cultural Archives in Brixton, the initial germ of an idea, ‘we should write a book about some of the passengers on the Empire Windrush’, has changed a bit! That initial idea was to follow on from the work we had been doing with the Windrush Foundation to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the arrival of the Windrush, by writing in a bit more depth about some of the original passengers – a chapter each on maybe a couple of dozen of them. Where had they come from, why had they come and what did they achieve?
Gradually though, as we found out more and more about her, we realised there was a whole book to be written about just one passenger. Passenger number 7 on the passenger list was Mona Baptiste (although her name is mis-typed on the list as ‘Baptisite’) and her story is a remarkable one. We are proud to present:
Mona was a big star for several decades but is now largely, unjustly in our view, forgotten. We hope our book, the first full length biography, will bring her the recognition she deserves.
Mona was a black woman from humble origins; women like her are often overlooked by history, a history dominated by white men born into privilege, we hope this book will, in its own small way, help to redress the balance.