Introduction

The writer Monica Brown, whose father worked on building Coventry Cathedral, states in her visit to the cathedral for the Hear Here podcast: “I am here because dad was here”. Monica brings an inter-connected set of journeys to our dialogue, vividly relaying the strength and struggles of her family, in the context of the Windrush Generation, whilst moving back and forth between Jamaica and Leamington. Monica undertakes the art of transnational diasporic storytelling, one that is also locally situated. Recently her mother faced the burden of doubt, in terms of immigration, when she was refused entry to the UK for her grandson’s graduation. Monica and her siblings fought a campaign against this decision. Monica takes us to the heart of how to take matters on when people are made to feel they don’t matter. She carries her embodied signature voice and specialism in media production and histories right into the cathedral.

We consider a handful of images taken by the building contractors Laing, showing black workers on the cathedral construction site. Whilst opening the half empty pages of an embossed book in the cathedral archives, with the names of some of the workers who helped build the cathedral, the task of filling in the gaps of the empty weighted pages, gilded with gold leaf, appears blatantly before us as an open-ended process, bearing the weight of the past in the present. Monica closes the podcast with a call for an installation to recognise black and brown people, whose presence is absent and nowhere to be seen. A video featuring Monica Brown in the cathedral accompanies this discussion.

Biography

Monica D. Brown is a Project Manager at Warwickshire Record Office, Media Specialist, Journalist, Corporate Trainer and writer who was born in Birmingham, UK. The daughter of Windrush generation parents, Iciline and Gersham Brown, she grew up in Warwickshire, UK, Clarendon and Kingston, Jamaica. She is a graduate of: U.W.I., Mona, where she studied Mass Communication, French and Literature, Warwickshire College, University of Warwick and U.C.E./Birmingham City University, (M.A. Distinction).

In 1984 she received a French government scholarship to study Television Production in Paris. Upon her return to Jamaica she was the first Television Producer/ Director of one of Jamaica’s longest running television programmes, Hill an’ Gully Ride, which is still on air. Following a full-time career in national Radio broadcasting she taught Media production at university and in 2002 received a Distinguished Faculty Award from Northern Caribbean University.

In 2007, the BBC selected Monica among six others across the UK, to explore their family history. The DNA test results inspired family journeys to Tanzania and Zanzibar in 2009 and 2016 in search of Tanzanian roots. Monica’s book, Journey back to Zanzibar, a loosely autobiographical anthology, traces Monica’s journey, in part, back to Zanzibar. The anthology was translated into Swahili, Safari Kuelekea Tena Unguja, in 2016 by THE LANGUAGE SHOP, N.Y. Monica is currently working on a collection of post Windrush short stories, Going to England.

In November 2013, Monica was selected for a Callaloo Writing Fellowship at Goldsmiths, University of London. She is also a speaker and offers Communications Coaching and Media Engagement Training https://monicabrown.co.uk/

Public Family Talk: https://youtu.be/OWS5oxWLOik

Podcast

Transcript

NIRMAL PUWAR: Hello Monica Brown. Earlier on, we were discussing your whole education and how it forms your thinking. So, take us through what you've studied and what you’re working on now.

MONICA BROWN: I was born in the UK in Birmingham, but my first memory of life is Jamaica. My father came here in 1955 and immediately smelt the stench of racism and realised that this hostile environment would not be one in which his children could thrive. So, although I spent the first two and a half years of my life in Birmingham, my first memory of life is Kingston, Jamaica, where we lived for about a year and a half.

But my mother hadn't signed up to be married to my father to return to Jamaica without doing her nursing training. So, when I was about four and a half, I returned to the UK. By the time I was five, I'd clocked several thousand air miles [laughs].

We lived in Leamington between 1964 and 1972. My father insisted that he was going to use his skills and experience gained in the UK for nation-building back home, so we returned to Jamaica by ship. My mother, my brothers and I took a three-week journey from the UK to Jamaica via Vigo, Coruña, Tenerife, the Canary Islands, across the wicked Atlantic and then to La Guara in Venezuela, then to Trinidad and finally the last 1,000 miles to Jamaica. A tugboat covered that last stretch, and I saw the land emerging in the morning, and it made me gasp. It made me understand, with my European eyes, why the Caribbean was the reason Europeans shed blood over that region.

I'd had the opportunity in Leamington Spa to learn French. In the 1960s, my Head teacher, David Gay, insisted that his state school and his state students learn French. We were the only school in the country in the 1960s to teach French, and the passion for the language remained with me.

When I was 10, I had the opportunity to go to France for a month with five other students from the Warwick district, as Leamington was twinned with Sceaux. I'm still in touch with my first French teacher. Her name is Monique Gonta; she is 93 years old and is suffering from vascular dementia. I met her last year in London for the first time in many years, and she said words which made me cry. She said, “I have forgotten many things about my life and my family, but I've never forgotten you”. She has been an inspiration to me. I kept my passion for the language throughout my life, through ‘O’ levels and ‘A’ levels.

I went to do my first degree in Jamaica. It was a combination of mass communication through radio and the French language, along with literature in English, French, French-African, and French-Caribbean. That was the formation. I then had a career in national radio and television production, as well as in academia. I taught media at a university in Jamaica before returning twenty-three or twenty-four years ago.

Later on, I did my Master's degree in media production because the technology had changed. When I went to university for my undergraduate degree, in the late 70s and early 80s, we were using reel-to-reel technology [laughs]. I remember carrying a Uher recording machine on my shoulder for an interview, and it weighed thirteen and a half pounds! [laughs] I was taught to edit using a Chinagraph pencil and a blade, and to stick the tapes together [chuckles]. Technology has changed, and I had to upgrade, so I did my Master’s in 2007 at Birmingham City University. So, my life and work have encapsulated education, media advocacy, writing, journalism, training, and coaching.

I'm currently managing a project at Warwickshire County’s record office, called _Telling Our Own Storie_s, which aims to shine a light on the stories of communities whose stories have not been told because of racism or other reasons. We are doing pioneering work such as engaging with communities, listening to them, and asking them how they would like their personal and organisational community records to be documented at Warwickshire County’s record office. That’s what I'm currently doing.

NIRMAL PUWAR: Thank you. That's incredible. I found you through Holly, a doctoral student, and I've listened to your amazing talk with the Leamington History Society, alongside your two brothers, where you discussed your father's journey and how you were all entangled with it.

Similarly, at the Cathedral, I'm trying to think of how we can centre the figures who have been left on the side. They're in the shadows — that kind of absence presence. Often, when I go through the Laing archive, I share a few videos and photographs from the archive where there clearly are black workers in the most obvious sense, but there are no stories. Their families may be in the city, and that's when Holly said you must speak to Monica. Your father, Gersham, brought his skills from Jamaica, and he built a house there. He was a very skilled person, and he contributed to city-building around us.

MONICA BROWN: Absolutely. Dad came here in 1955 when he was 25, a fully grown, highly skilled individual looking for opportunities to add value to himself. By the age of 19, he had built a house with his cousin.

He had been taught carpentry; he had made furniture. When he died in 1991, his late sister wrote a tribute and talked about him building her doll houses. He built tables, chairs and furniture in his family home.

I remember when he turned 21 in Jamaica, he started wearing long trousers. Men couldn’t afford to wear long trousers then because they were expensive, but he wore his first pair when he was 21. He was engaged with a group of builders in Jamaica who were building bridges and roads [laughs]. So, this is a man who was involved, and so he could afford to buy long trousers, which at the time were an indication of some wealth. If you had a bicycle and long trousers, you're on your way! [laughs]

So, when he came here in 1955, he was very clear- he was fully formed. If you look at a picture of dad here, this is a picture of him at 25 [pointing at a photo]. He had a hat on, the jacket, the shoes, the seams on the trousers… he was ready to work. We have photographs in our family album in Jamaica of dad standing on the scaffolding of this building with Coventry Cathedral in the background because he helped to construct this Cathedral and Coventry University.

NIRMAL PUWAR: Can you say that again! [smiles]

[00:10:13]

MONICA BROWN: We have photographs in our family album that I have seen. I can picture dad in that dark blue cardigan. It may have had holes in it [laughs]. I can see Coventry Cathedral in the background.

In addition to that —and this is something that makes me marvel—he was a man with four children, a wife, and determined to add value to himself.

He goes to work; he takes his flask and his sandwiches with Mother’s Pride bread. I can still see the striped blue and white Mother’s Pride. The sandwiches were bacon or egg, and he would always add the Pickapeppa sauce to the sandwiches to give them some heat and flavour. But dad always left a sandwich. Every day that he came home, he never ate all his sandwiches. We would wait on the landing, and when we'd see him coming, we would say, “Oh! Dad's here! [clapping] What did you bring for us? Did you leave any of your sandwiches?” So, he always left a sandwich for us.

He gave leadership to the first West Indian Association in Leamington Spa. He was involved very heavily in the church, the Leamington Spa Baptist Church. He went to Warwickshire College to study. He did his City and Guilds in concrete technology, so we have books at home about wood technology. I can tell you the three types of wooden cells: xylem, phloem and cambium. Whenever he studied those things, he would recite the notes, and so I knew that xylem are the cells that carry water. Did you know that?

NIRMAL PUWAR: No.

MONICA BROWN: But we knew that [laughs]. He learned marquetry- the intricate use of wood. He made the outer covering of a flask with marquetry. He gave that to my brother for his wedding present.

He did his City and Guilds, a degree-level in civil engineering. He was a man with a plan. He wasn't here to play small, and he would not cower. We heard a mantra daily, even as small children: I am NOT an asylum seeker; I am NOT a criminal, and I am NOT going to stay here to be a third-class citizen. That's what we heard growing up on Clarendon Avenue.

On the outside, he was very involved in the interracial community, so that we could try to bring peace and harmony between the raging racists on the one hand and so on. This involved white people of conscience, and he was very involved in that. In fact, my mother found a letter, dated — I believe —March 1964, from the Conservative Party of Leamington, thanking my late father for speaking to them about race relations. I've been trying to find the notes of that presentation. I made contact with the Conservative Party; I went to the Bodleian Library, but I found nothing. I believe they may very well be at Warwickshire County’s record office, but I've got to do some research.

So, here is a man who knew himself, who was very clear about the environment within which his children were to be raised. As a result, he took us out of the UK. At the time he took us out, I thought it was the worst thing in the world. I had just passed my 11-plus and was ready to attend Leamington College for girls. I was one of maybe three black girls in the school of over 600 white girls. Academically, I'm very competitive; I was brought up with boys.

But none of this happened, and I despised my father. I was determined to despise Jamaica until he had us stand before him, put our arms behind our backs and look up to him. He said, “Jamaica is your home, and this is where you're going to make a contribution”.

When he came here to the UK, he gave leadership to the Caribbean community in Leamington, but he was a visionary. He insisted that we know ourselves, that we know our culture, and that's why he took us out of the UK. We have all come back. When we compare ourselves, our thinking, and our approach to life with our cousins and others who stayed, we’re very different.

NIRMAL PUWAR: In what way?

[00:15:55]

MONICA BRWON: We're different in that we are very clear about ourselves. We have courage; we are not afraid to challenge. We are also interested in our African origin. As a result of returning to the UK, I've had the opportunity to explore my African heritage in a way that I would not have had, had I stayed in Jamaica.

The BBC had a program in 2007 on the 200th anniversary of the end of the slave trade, and they chose six people across the UK with connections to the Caribbean. They had people sending in their stories, and they chose mine. I have a recording I made with my late grandmother—who was born in 1903—recounting the great earthquake in Jamaica in 1907. In the recording, she described what she saw and how she felt. I sent this recording to the BBC and they chose me. They flew me to Jamaica and featured me on a radio program about my life and Chinese heritage. My mother's great-great-grandfather is Mr. Lee.

We have a Chinese population in Jamaica, along with populations from Lebanon, Syria, Germany, and India. There's a town outside of Montego Bay called Sifah Town, where, if you go into the graveyards, you will see these German names: Hocker and Kamika. Then, there are people with my skin colour, this deep mahogany with blue eyes [laughs]. So, Jamaica is fascinating. We don't have to be taught diversity because we have lived it. It is in our history.

My father is a man with a mission, a man who knew himself and a man who inspired us to know ourselves, to make a contribution. Wherever you are, you are a change maker. So, here we are in the UK now, and I can say that each one of us is a change maker in our chosen fields.

NIRMAL PUWAR: You mentioned earlier about an inner turmoil with him, which set him back. Clearly, he was doing everything he could to establish himself and contribute, but it was that inner turmoil that took him back and took all of you back. Your mum went back and left her nursing training as well.

MONICA BROWN: She started her training and never finished. Remember, in the 1960s, there was no protective legislation. If someone spits on you or calls you a racist name in 2025, you've got recourse to the law. But in the 1960s, I was spat on in this town.

I remember coming home to my late father with these stories: “Dad, why do they call us these racist names?” And my father would sit us down in front of him and he would take out the Concise Oxford Dictionary, with that dark blue cover - I can still see it now. He would find the racist names and go into the etymology of the word. He explained, “This is what they mean when they call you this”. But he had the brilliance to reframe it. He would say, “But you're not that. You are bright, you're intelligent, you've got things to do. This is not who you are.” It was brilliant.

NIRMAL PUWAR: Yeah, he wanted to make sure you didn't take on that inferiority complex they're trying to give you.

MONICA BROWN: Absolutely! When we were eight, we didn't understand why it was like that. My brothers were in fights almost every day. My younger brother was so terrorised by a racist white boy that he wanted to throw himself off the Victoria Bridge.

Those who never had the opportunity to leave, to live in a country where their teachers, all the professionals—the stockbrokers, scientists, police officers, bank managers, and leaders—looked like them, didn’t have that kind of empowering experience. So, there's a lot of trauma work that needs to be undone and healed in our community so that we can be whole, organised and forward-thinking.

NIRMAL PUWAR: So, your father stayed there, and you came back.

MONICA BROWN: I came back. My marriage broke down. I didn't want to come back because I had a small child then. I didn't want to take him away from everything that he was familiar with. My son’s now 31 and he's going back to Jamaica [laughs]. He’s going back to Jamaica for the same reason: he wants to make his contribution to the Caribbean. He will not stay there forever. His father is also there, but isn’t doing so well. So, he wants to be present; he wants to show up, not when he’s 60, 70 or 80, but while he's a man of intelligence and vision. I said go.

NIRMAL PUWAR: So, you’re saying your mum is there now.

MONICA BROWN: She moved back to Jamaica because she had four children. She said, her plan, after we had come off the ship, was to settle us and then leave us. She was going to leave us! We had a family meeting, and she said, “I’m leaving you” [laughs], but she wanted to hear what we had to say.

NIRMAL PUWAR: To come back to her nursing training, I suppose.

MONICA BROWN: That’s what her plan was. And in that family meeting, no one said a word, not even my brothers. I said, “Well, I don't want you to go,” and so, she didn't go.

NIRMAL PUWAR: You spoke up.

MONICA BROWN: I spoke up [laughs], but this has been the story of my life.

NIRMAL PUWAR: You probably felt scared or just petrified of her going.

MONICA BROWN: Yeah, everyone was crying, and she stayed. She recognises the importance of her presence and the stability she brought because my father worked all over the country. When he left the UK to go to Jamaica, he helped to construct the Bauxite plant at Breadnut Valley. He contributed to the construction of the Bank of Jamaica in downtown Kingston. They were really huge projects with huge teams. He managed big teams and worked on large and small projects.

So, my mum was present, but we recognise her sacrifice. To be very honest, it is something that still aches inside her. She's 89 this year, and it still hurts. She still talks about not completing her training at Warwick hospital and that she hasn't really achieved what she wanted to accomplish. Obviously, she's very proud of us and the people we have become. But she also had her own wishes. We're adults now, so we can talk about these things.

NIRMAL PUWAR: You said she has an installation of an exhibition which includes a quilt from your mum and her story?

[00:24:58]

MONICA BROWN: Yes, there is an exhibition at the Leamington Spa Art Gallery and Museum called Unravelling History. It combines the work of many textile artists from across the county. Annabelle Rainbow made contact with several Windrush Generation individuals, including Benjamin Zephaniah. The intriguing thing about them is that it's not just a painting and a quilt, but each installation is surrounded by the story of the person in their own words. So, this is an opportunity for the person to tell their own story.

NIRMAL PUWAR: What do you remember from your mom's story?

[00:25:55]

MONICA BROWN: I just went there before coming here today. I've been there several times, but each time I look at her, I see many things in her eyes that other people wouldn't see. Many people would see her composure and that she's in charge. I see sadness, I see rage. One of the things that Annabelle picked up is that there is no mercy. Remember, my mother lived and worked in this country for 15 years. She came here like the other half a million people who came here from the Caribbean on British passports. They thought they were British, but they learnt later that they were not. I learnt that later when we had to fight for our mother to come here. She was refused a visa to come here twice.

We fought the government for two years for her to come to the UK. This is a woman whose breast milk kept white babies alive. When she had her first child in 1958, she produced so much breast milk that the National Health Service gave her an icebox and every day for four months, my black mother provided 32 ounces of breast milk for white babies to keep them alive. This mother—this black woman—whose milk kept white children alive was not allowed to come to the UK. She couldn't come to my son's graduation.

We had to organise correspondence back and forth with our MP, the Minister of State, in the media for two years. I'm a media specialist; I know how to do that. Then, at the very end, when nothing was happening, I crafted the letter of my life to the then Home Secretary. I said I'm not waiting anymore; this is nonsense! I wrote a letter to Priti Patel. Five days later, I got a letter of apology from the Home Office. It promised that my mother would get her biometric card. It came the next day. A man in a white van brought the letter of apology; it did not come through the post. Then, the following day, a different man in a white van brought the biometric card.

So, we had to fight guerrilla tech tactics. How many Caribbean families have the stamina and the skills to engage with authority in that way? We had the strength and the stamina because we are a united family. We have an active faith in God. We're Christians, and Jamaica taught us to be strong. You cannot live in Jamaica without learning to be strong.

In many ways, you have to learn to respect nature. Jamaica has hurricane season every year, and I have lived through many hurricanes. I remember hurricane Gilbert in 2012, when winds of 150 or 60 miles tore off the roof of my house like tin foil. I became a refugee. You watch these refugees on television with nothing, and suddenly that’s you. Everything you have—your designer clothing, your belongings—I was working in television at the time, and I was a bit of a fashionista, but I have seen my shoes, and all my things reduced to mush.

We were taken in as refugees for a week because our house was torn apart. When you live in that environment, you learn to humble yourself to nature. If you have faith, you learn to pray in the same way that Covid made many people who didn't pray engage with their faith. Something happens to you when you live in an environment that reminds you how small you are. In fact, you realise that you're nothing.

NIRMAL PUWAR: So, we're sitting in this Cathedral. How do you relate to it as a place of faith, or if you relate to it at all?

MONICA BROWN: It is so emotional for me to come here. Every time I come here, I cry. I go outside and see that sculpture of Gabriel and that final conflict between Gabriel and the devil. We know what the outcome is going to be, but I cry every time I come in here, into the Cathedral. I feel so grateful, I feel proud. I see other people taking pictures, and wherever in the world, there is a place of worship, people are intrigued by the architecture. I'm intrigued by the design and the skill that brought this place together, but for me, it's so much more. Dad was here. He worked with others to contribute. Black and brown people whose labour, whose stories and whose names are never called. We were here. We were here

NIRMAL PUWAR: But you wouldn't know it at all.

MONICA BROWN: And that's why I'm here.

NIRMAL PUWAR: Thank you for coming. How do you think we could take this forward in the Cathedral to bring out his stories, his presence and your father's skills? What could the Cathedral become in order to acknowledge these stories that are nowhere inside the traditional narrative of the Cathedral?

[00:33:35]

MONICA BROWN: There are many spaces in the Cathedral itself, and there could be an area about them, with something like: we came by invitation— you could use that. Then, there could be pictures of them at work, with the details of what they did and where.

People didn't know about the Windrush generation in Warwickshire and the West Midlands. I watched people going to the installation at Leamington—I didn’t go in and say this is my mom—but I stood at a distance and watched them think about what they saw.

It would be good to have an installation that has a bench for contemplation; it needs to have a book, so people can respond. It needs to have images and a component that is kinesthetic, so that children can engage with it. There needs to be a space that says we were nation builders.

There was a campaign that the British government mounted, and when you study some of those posters, you’ll see: the white person standing at the front, behind him another white person, then maybe a Canadian, then the sikh man in his turban, and at the very back, the black man. The poster says, 'All together now’ That's intentional.

However, there was no such campaign mounted in the UK that said three words—that’s all it needs— three words— We Need Them [laughs]. If there had been a campaign like that in this country at the time, we wouldn’t be where we are now, in terms of race relations. And we're not here now, because of racism. ­

NIRMAL PUWAR: In thinking about this absence, I found this contractor’s book in the Cathedral that the builders' Laing produced [opening the book]. We can feel the writing that's engraved in it. It’s leather. You can open it, Monica.

You’ll see empty pages, but eventually you get to the names of the people who helped build it, but there are no roles assigned to them. We don't know what they do; there are no dates. It’s just a list. It's half complete, and I feel that's very much the situation we're in, trying to bring that presence that has been made absent. It was very present, as you said, your father was here…

MONICA BROWN: and others as well.

NIRMAL PUWAR: Of course, and so we need to fill the pages.

MONICA BROWN: We need to fill the pages. Let us fill the pages.

NIRMAL PUWAR: Thank you, Monica, for being on this journey with us.