ABSTRACT
Joan Riley was born in Hopewell, Jamaica in 1958 and raised by her father
after her mother died during childbirth. She moved to Britain in 1976 and
studied at the universities of Sussex and London before beginning an active
career in social work. Many of her novels engage with the realities of ‘care’
or the lack of it in the community, particularly as far as women’s issues are
concerned. Riley’s first published novel, The Unbelonging (1985), was
seen as the first novel by a woman about the black experience in Britain.
