This book hits hard about otherness in Welsh culture. While I, unlike Sugar And Slate’s author Charlotte Williams, am not a Black person, I am of Greek descent and relate, at least, to one of the pivotal themes of this widely lauded work: the sense of being different to the people I was surrounded by as a young person.

I felt like an immigrant while being born in the UK, my own name felt like currency; a means of understanding my own background. Learning the Welsh word ‘hiraeth’ helped me to recentre: feeling at home, where I made myself comfortable.

Back to Sugar & Slate, originally published in 2002 and now reprinted by Welsh independent Parthian with a newly penned introduction by Hazel V. Carby. I particularly enjoyed Williams’ employment of patois from (her father’s birth nation) Guyana. This mixture of prose, spoken word poetry and memoir felt freeing to read. To leap between forms and cross their boundaries really held together this invigorating voice from the shackles of such a societal norm.

Warmly recommended to any curious minds, at 20 years old Sugar And Slate still speaks to us in these modern times, helping to ensure marginal voices remain heard.