Decolonial Daughter:
Letters from a Black Woman to her European Son 

Can you escape from racism in the world’s ‘happiest country’? 

We are looking forward to welcoming Lesley-Ann Brown for a reading from her latest book. "Decolonial Daughter: Letters from a Black Woman to her European Son" is the memoir of a bold, independent black woman seeking freedom across different worlds marked by the heavy weight of history and empire––from Trinidad in the 1980s, to Brooklyn in the 1990s, to Europe today. As Brown writes these letters to her son, she faces the ghosts of history which still haunt our time. 

In the 1990s Lesley-Ann Brown was living a whirlwind existence as a dynamic young journalist and assistant to Marie D Brown, one of the first black literary agents in New York. Then, unexpectedly, she took a leap into the unknown to move to Denmark, AKA the world’s ‘happiest country’. She took the leap for a calmer, more balanced life, and for the chance of love. But as a black woman, whose parents emigrated from Trinidad to New York in the 1960s, she soon realized that achieving personal escape in a world still based on systemic oppression is a very difficult task. 

Following a failed marriage and emotional breakdown in Denmark, Brown came to a personal epiphany – true ‘home’ is only ever the people you love and your community both past and present, not so much a geographical location as a shared historical experience across time and space. 

Lesley-Ann Brown  is a Trinbogonian American writer who currently resides in Copenhagen, Denmark. Brown was born in Brooklyn, New York and has also lived in the twin island nation of Trinidad and Tobago. She studied writing at Eugene Lang College, part of the New School for Social Research. During the Golden Age of Hip Hop, Brown honed her writing skills at Vibe magazine and the Source interviewing various Hip Hop artists, writers, poets and visual artists. In 2007 she created the critically-acclaimed blog Blackgirl on Mars and founded Bandit Queen Press. Her memoir, "Decolonial Daughter: Letters from a Black Woman to her European Son" (Repeater Books, London, 2018) covers many themes, including motherhood, environmentalism, the prison industrial complex, racial violence, the violent legacy of silence, spiritual healing and the normalization of white supremacy here in Europe and other western countries, to name a few.