Andrea Levy

Andrea Levy (born 1956) is a British author, born in London to Jamaican parents who sailed to England on the Empire Windrush in 1948. Levy is of primarily Afro-Jamaican descent. Levy has a Jewish paternal grandfather and a Scots maternal great-grandfather. In her mid-twenties she did work for a social institution that included dealing with racist attacks. She also worked part-time in the BBC costume department, while starting a graphic design company with her husband Bill Mayblin. During this time she experienced a form of awakening to her identity concerning both her gender and her race. She also became aware of the power of books and began to read “excessively”: it was easy enough to find literature by black writers from the United...