An autobiographical novel about a young Jamaican boy who comes to live in England and is sucked into a life of crime he can’t escape.
Brixton Bwoy is the story of Pupatee, one of many brothers and sisters, growing up in Jamaica. Aged nine, he is sent to live in London with his twenty-year-old brother Joe. In London he sees snow for the first time, light switches, television; he is forced to cook for his violent brother who beats him if he does anything wrong, and soon Pupatee’s idyllic early childhood becomes a distant memory. It isn’t long before he is stealing bicycles, and then pickpocketing, shoplifting, armed robbery and more serious offences that land him in borstal and prison. As he gets older it becomes more and more difficult, however hard Pupatee tries, to escape the life of crime that threatens to ruin him. Brixton Bwoy is fresh and unflinching, a rivetting and honest account of a boy’s strange journey into adulthood, his Jamaican past and the South London streets that shape him.