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  3. The multicultural Midlands
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    • Publisher:
      Manchester University Press
      Publication date:
      19 May 2026
      ISBN:
      9781526154538
      9781526154521
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      • Subjects:
      Literature, European and World Literature: General Interest, English Language and Linguistics: General Interest, Language and Linguistics
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    Subjects:
    Literature, European and World Literature: General Interest, English Language and Linguistics: General Interest, Language and Linguistics
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    Book description

    From high above the Spaghetti Junction, to the caves beneath Nottingham castle, The Multicultural Midlands offers a fresh perspective on this overlooked region’s vibrant culture. Whether emanating from the Afrocentric streets of Steel Pulse’s Handsworth Revolution, the working men’s clubs where a young Lenny Henry cut his teeth, or the recesses of Adrian Mole’s teenage bedroom, the Midlands’ creativity thrives in unexpected places. Decades of misrepresentation have framed the Midlands as a cultural wasteland. This bold critical study, however, covers new ground. Using a wealth of archival sources and original interviews, the book maps the histories of twentieth-century migration onto the major cities of the Midlands – Birmingham, Nottingham, Leicester, Wolverhampton and the surrounding Black Country – exploring how diverse communities have made their mark. The book offers detailed analysis of works by Benjamin Zephaniah, Alan Sillitoe, Meera Syal and Catherine O’Flynn, among many others. In doing so, it advances debates about multiculturalism, arts funding and devolution. Within a post-Brexit, post-COVID framework, working collaboratively across cultures will be crucial to the survival of the creative industries, and Tom Kew signposts some tentative routes forward. The Multicultural Midlands provides sustained analysis and critical insight, to demonstrate how a consideration of the Midlands’ multicultural creative output requires us to think again about received ideas. Approaching multifarious texts using an even-handed analytical framework facilitates the discovery of numerous, overlapping networks of influence and impact. These networks reveal how multiple mass migrations have shaped the region which is the beating heart of multicultural Britain.

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