Precious

A story of mothers and daughters, of a struggle with racial identity and a journey to find a sense of belonging. 'Where are you from?' is a question I always find hard to answer. 1971: an ad in Nursery World. Foster parents required for a three-month-old baby – me. The lucky applicants are a white middle aged woman and her daughter, who love babies, especially black babies. My mother arrives, a haughty Nigerian woman in a convertible with a moses basket on the seat beside her, setting the net curtains in this all-white council estate twitching. And though the whole place makes my privileged mother's skin crawl, she returns to London with an empty basket beside her, because, unusually for the area, my foster mother talks proper, and I'll need a posh white accent for the bright future I have ahead of me. I'll cling onto that idea – that I've a bright future ahead of me – even though there's nothing in my upbringing to warrant it. Even though my mother's love...