They came to fill labor shortages after World War II, hoping for a more prosperous future. The novel begins in 1956 with Norman Alonso, a gardener and Jamaican emigrant, who resides in Blixton, a coal town, part of the Black country, named after industrial pollution, but also for the first wave of the Windrush immigrant generation who journeyed from the Afro-Caribbean West Indies to Britain from 1948 to 1971.
Both writers concentrate on the challenge of finding one's self while wrestling with a homophobic and racist society. It has received mostly raves from the UK press, transforming Mendez into one of their hottest authors.Ĭlearly Mendez is a bold remarkable talent, perhaps nearly matching that of his partner, the acclaimed almost-thirty-years-older British novelist Alan Hollinghurst ('The Swimming Pool Library,' 'The Line of Beauty'), making them potentially the Mary Shelley/Percy Shelley of English gay literature. It has been nominated for a Lambda literary award ('Lammy') as Best Gay Fiction and will likely win. The book was published last year and will be released as a paperback later this month. Raw and transcendent are the words applicable to Paul Mendez's semi-autobiographical debut novel 'Rainbow Milk.' A multi-generational dissection of sexuality, race, and religion on the rocky evolution of a young gay Black man, it is set in England from the late 1950s to the 2016 Brexit election.
