Gretchen Gerzina’s book, Black England, was recently featured in The Guardian, with novelist Zadie Smith reflecting on the book’s impact. The article, “Zadie Smith on discovering the secret history of Black England,” explains, “When the novelist first read Gretchen Gerzina’s 1995 book Black England, she discovered the complex and unexpected lives of black people in England before the abolition of slavery. Two decades on, the stories still have the power to astonish.”
Black England was originally published in 1995 and recently reissued, with a forward by Smith, in September, 2022.
For more on Gerzina’s work, see her faculty profile.