‘…Black grief is not spoken about openly, but I know that when Black people mourn, it is not only for the passing of loved ones…[We] will also be mourning the systemic inequalities, racial prejudices and oppression that we experience on a day-to-day basis.  The truth of the matter is that when a Black person dies in tragic circumstances or because of state injustices, we don’t often get empathy from the media, and that complicates the grieving process…’ by Stuart Lawrence, p.13 of Black Grief and Healing-Why We Need to Talk About Health Inequality, Trauma and Loss’. Eds: Yansie Rolston & Patrick Vernon OBE. Jessica Kingsley Publishers, London (2024).

Black Grief and Healing-Why We Need to Talk About Health Inequality, Trauma and Loss begins as it means to go on; with breath-taking poignancy.  The foreword to this collection of essays, stories, poems and hybrid-reflections is written by one Stuart Lawrence. The brother of Stephen. The same Black youth immortalised in British history; not because of anything he achieved but for being murdered in 1993, aged 18, by a gang of racist thugs in South-East London, and his family’s long and agonising struggle for justice. 

For a start, it seems extremely unusual to hear from one of the Lawrence siblings; their parents, Neville and in particular Doreen, fronting the campaign to hold Stephen’s murderers – as well as the London Metropolitan Police – accountable.

I’ve often wondered what it was like to grow up in the shadow of such an event; not only dealing with unspeakable trauma at the personal level but being involuntarily part of something that represented an historic shift in the UK’s socio-political landscape.  It is befitting that Stuart should open such an anthology but no less blind-siding.

As illustrated by the above quote, Lawrence doesn’t only situate his own family’s loss in the wider socio-cultural context that the collection seeks to foreground. He shares with us readers his decades’ long wrestle with grief, much of it entangled with – and even subsumed by – the justice campaign…

‘… I lost someone I love under tragic circumstances…I can’t make sense of the loss, and that compounds my grief even more…’ (p.14)

Black Grief & Healing…is a multi-faceted, non-monolithic exploration of loss, mourning and finding constructive ways to negotiate them, as experienced across Afrodescendant diasporas. Editors Yansie Rolston and former NHS director, Patrick Vernon saw a gaping hole in the UK discourse around grief and decided to fill it. This apparent absence of understanding and support for bereaved Black folk is a recurring theme of the anthology.

Two significant events of the last decade loom spectre-like over Black Grief… Firstly, the COVID-19 pandemic. Most, if not all, the contributions were written during the core period of the global health crisis between 2020-2022. Many of the deceased who are memorialised, either died directly or indirectly as a result of the pandemic. The lockdown restrictions also denied family and friends the chance to give the departed what they deemed a proper farewell.

In one especially soul-wrenching chapter, A Multitude of Grief, Wilhemina Joseph-Loewenthal recounts how, during this period, she barely had time to come to terms with the passing of one loved one before it being swiftly followed by another. In addition to her personal grief, she was swept up in the communal lament over the murder of George Floyd. Joseph-Loewenthal’s story is one of a number of contributions that hint at systemic healthcare-related negligence, of which Black patients bear the brunt.

The other spectre is the Grenfell Tower inferno of 2017. A significant number of the 72 victims were from migrant and/or racially-minoritised backgrounds. The chapters devoted to Grenfell focus on its aftermath on the survivors; some so distraught by the mass death, as well as the authorities’ culpability for the blaze, that they took their own lives.  

Considering how these two immense, and in many ways avoidable tragedies, particularly affected Black populations, it’s no surprise that they dominate the collection.

Dominate but not monopolise, however. 

The anthology covers many different kinds of loss and, where applicable, the cultural ceremonies that accompany them.  In My Jamaican Experience of Death by Yvonne Witter, mourning turns to farce as relatives (ab)use the nine-night wake tradition to plunder the home of her late mother.  The restraint shown by the author in the face of such shamelessness is heroic.  Witter is also sadly now no longer with us. The collection is dedicated in part to her.

Co-editor Rolston confesses in Open Wounds: Vicarious Grieving whilst Bereaved, that her own contribution moved from the abstract to the devastatingly real on the loss of her sister, weeks before putting pen to paper. Similar to Joseph-Loewenthal, Rolston lived through a succession of bereavements; including her father and best friend. As a therapist, she benefitted from her training whilst ‘…coming to a point of realisation…that I am not one step removed from who I am; that I had experienced a lot of loss in a short space of time…’ (p.48)

In the chapter Black Queer Grief, Dennis Carney compares society’s response to the deaths experienced during the HIV/AIDS epidemic with that of COVID-19. Carney has strived to create safe spaces in the UK context for queer black men – a minority within a minority – to discuss mental health issues. Carney is nevertheless candid about the layers of grief he himself still carries; the burden of having witnessed so much death in his lifetime, mixed with survivor’s guilt.

Tolulope Olajide opens up about suddenly becoming a widower and single father in Widowed and Young: Condolences, Rallying and Drying Out. Once all the funeral guests had left and the calls stopped, realising there was a dearth in culturally-appropriate resources, Olajide set up a foundation: Balanced Wheel. The shock death of his wife, Chidinma, also relativised some previous losses that either did not hit Olajide as hard or he hadn’t processed fully.

This chapter sits within a series of essays addressing the unhealthy ways men, under the unyielding yoke of patriarchy, (don’t) cope with tragedy. This includes Carney who, despite diverging from heteronormative expectations, at times succumbed to norms about a stoic masculinity whilst (silently) struggling with grief.  It’s no coincidence that Amanda Inniss’ poetic critique of these tendencies, Shed a Tear, is sandwiched between this set of essays. 

Family therapist, Karen Carberry, looks at the specific kind of grieving that accompanies miscarriage and infant loss. Carberry’s analysis encompasses the harmful macro socio-cultural factors that heighten medical risks for both mother and child, such as unfounded beliefs about the higher pain threshold of Afrodescendant women. Natalie Darko’s more academic Death, Grief, Loss and Bereavement During COVID-19, is not limited to grief associated with the pandemic or even just physical death. Darko recognises loss can take several, non-exhaustive forms. Furthermore, her research has led her to make a distinction between bereavement and grief that requires some deliberation…

‘... “Bereavement” refers to the process of adjusting to a loss. “Grief” is the multifaceted reaction to a loss or death…’ (p.153).

One of the most astounding aspects of the collection is how the authors find words to articulate sentiments that seem beyond the mind’s grasp.  

The simply-titled Sadness: Losing a Daughter, by Michael Hamilton is arguably the anthology’s most haunting chapter. It’s also one of the few accounts of death not related to the recent pandemic or the Grenfell fire. In 2001, Hamilton’s daughter died after a burglary that took an even more horrific turn. If she had lived, we would have been the same age. 

Her youth, as well as the terrifying and lonely circumstances of her death exacerbated one of the worst kinds of bereavements; a parent burying their child. Moreover, Hamilton was not on good terms with his daughter at the time. This brutal interruption, he readily admits, made it all but impossible to make peace with her premature death. There’s a palpable freshness to the loss, decades later.

The indispensable support of a friend, meeting weekly over years, provided Hamilton with an outlet to grapple with something that has no resolution. Alas, death would once again rob him of that precious relationship; a cancer diagnosis this time. Slotted between these two accounts of loss – both staggering in their unique ways – are a number of Hamilton’s poems, Have you ever seen a grown man cry? being the most arresting.

Reverence for the ancestors and a deep spirituality are threads throughout the anthology, Christianity in particular; be it the writer’s own observance and/or that of the belated. The collection is even rounded off by a reverend, Cassius Francis.  There are, of course, exceptions. Agnostic but culturally Muslim Black Turkish Cypriot, Ertanch Hidayettin coveted the faith of his more devout family members when grief came knocking. The more religiously heterodox (or promiscuous?) Chukumeka Maxwell has at various points been a ‘Christian Buddhist Monk’ and a Quaker chaplain, leaving him well qualified to explore death rituals across cultures. Similarly, Debi Lewinson-Roberts left behind the Christianity of her preacher father in favour of a generalised spirituality. Her job description of  Funeral Celebrant falls outside specific religious, or even humanist, posthumous practices.  These chapters are testament to the diversity of perspectives reflected — and respected — throughout the collection.

Not surprisingly, beyond the immediate heaviness of the central theme, Black Grief and Healing…engenders much philosophical pondering. How do we find the balance between acknowledging the particular kind of grief experienced by Afrodescendants, as Stuart Lawrence does so well, and not being reduced to just our collective suffering? Such reductiveness pervades NusShen Ankhu’s (Afro-)pessimistic When do We Grieve?.  As the author appears to start the historical clock with colonialism and slavery, it’s a reading that inadvertently centres whiteness and its attempts to define – and confine – diverse peoples. 

The collection also highlights a very human propensity towards blame and insensitivity; whether it’s an acquaintance of Hamilton’s implying he was somehow responsible for his daughter’s manslaughter or the reflex ‘Christianese’ of Olajide’s church community.

It takes me back to the time of losing my maternal grandmother. Owing to the complicated nature of our relationship, on reflection, what I thought was grief was a vicarious anguish I felt on behalf of my mother. Still, it was to be handled with care. The cult-like church I attended Up North at the time weren’t short of tone deaf -if not insulting – platitudes. One young member, who alongside his wife had suffered the loss of a number of children in infancy, spoke of grief with a cloak of shame; as if it were always ‘of the devil’ to feel prolonged emotional agony. 

Returning to one of the anthology’s main preoccupations, it’s refreshing to come across a work that formally recognises the collective trauma of COVID-19. Much of the world seems desperate to forget that extremely troubling period in our very recent history. This selective amnesia can’t be good for our mental well-being long-term.

The Black Grief and Healing…collection is as much about the living as the dead, if not more so. Questions around post-death rituals- especially elaborate funerals- transcend cultures. It’s why I can see the wisdom in the quick and pragmatic burials of Jewish and Muslim traditions. 

Even if one holds to the belief that there is a soul and it is eternal — as I do — the dead are no longer physically present to hear the eulogies. It becomes all the more obvious that giving someone a ‘good send-off’ has more to do with those left behind. As Lewinson-Roberts observes ‘…Grief can be compounded if a funeral doesn’t feel exactly right. When things aren’t as they should be, families can feel guilty that they’ve let down the loved one who’s passed…’

If the deceased was blessed enough to be well-known and much-loved, it’s understandable to want this reflected during any farewell ceremony. (All the organisation can also be a momentary distraction from acknowledging the absence). On the other hand, maybe this is an unfair and self-imposed pressure. Losing someone is difficult enough. 

Ironically – and as hackneyed as it might sound – a book about death is a reminder to let the living know how much we value them, whilst they’re still around to appreciate it.

The original version of this review was first published on the I Was Just Thinking blog…