For the characters in these stories, the mark is about to buss. Events have come to a head and decisions have to be made. Sixteen year old Paul, aka ‘Umpire’, discovers not only that he has a half-brother, but that he is coming to share his home. How is he to keep this cuckoo out of his life without attracting his mother’s wrath? Mama Pala and her fourteen hungry-belly children have hit financial rock bottom. Can she humble herself enough to coax a little money from snooty Cousin Gloria? Soraya waits for her husband’s return, trapped in her East End tower-block by the racist graffiti in the lift. Taiwanese student Li Li, alone and pregnant in London, takes desperate action. In Miami, Jamaican Basil confronts his homophobia when his ‘batty boy’ son comes home, and how long can Erma get away with her infidelities?

These stories, written by Caribbean and Black British writers, share a common concern with the experiences of migration, poverty, racism and sexism, with human fragility and human strength. They range from the comic to the tragic in their telling. The stories speak of different places, different cultures, but what animates the writing is the concern with people, different but the same.

This is a joint large print publication with the National Library for the Blind who brought out a simultaneous braille edition.