Queenie

Queenie is set in present-day London. Although the book is a work of fiction, it incorporates many historical and current cultural events and, like Carty-Williams’s other writing, connects to her own life. Like the author, Queenie is from a Jamaican-British family and lives on the South side of London.

From 1707 to 1962, Jamaica was a British Colony and then a Crown Colony. London has become home to a large population of Jamaicans and Jamaican descendants since World War II, when they immigrated to London in hopes of finding financial success in reconstructing the city postwar. Most of them settled South of the Thames River in places like Brixton (Queenie’s community).

Queenie is a very place-based novel, and Brixton’s history is evident throughout the story. For instance, on page 179, Queenie attends a protest at Windrush Square, which is named after a ship that brought many Jamaicans looking for work to the UK over after the war. Queenie learns that her grandmother was left alone in Jamaica with her firstborn for two years while her grandfather fled to London to try to make a home for their family. As Queenie struggles with her own identity, she notices that Brixton has started to lose its identity too. In this way, the narrative explores the issue of gentrification, showing how it impacts the memories, lives, and mental health of those who are either forced to move or lose their sense of connection to a place.

This text fits in the psychological fiction genre in that it focuses largely on Queenie’s mind and how her thought processes impact her life, rather than on external events. The book expands this genre by centering the story on Queenie’s mind specifically, as her perception of the world and her experiences is shaped by her being Black and Jamaican-British, by grandparents being immigrants, by her curvy figure, by her mental health condition, and by her being a woman.

As the plot introduces current issues, such as the Black Lives Matter movement, the Me Too movement, the accessibility of mental health care to people of color, “diversity” initiatives, and the normalization of casual sex, Queenie interacts with them through her lived experiences and psychological framework. For example, on page 180, she suggests writing about “how it would be great to see all the liberal white women who were tweeting fervently from the women’s march at a Black Lives Matter march.” Queenie’s relationship to sex is complicated too: Her friend “slut-shames” her, and men fetishize her and treat her as lesser, while her workplace believes the man’s twisted story rather than hers in an HR review of an incident. Thus, the narrative shows how she might easily feel as though the Me Too movement hasn’t benefitted her in any way. While Queenie has difficulty getting mental health help because of the stigma her family carries about it, once she starts therapy, the benefits for her and her family are obvious; in this way, the story advocates for greater access to mental health care. While the text points out that Queenie has been part of a “diversity” campaign at her office, the people she works with clearly have no real interest in hearing about or supporting “diverse” ideas. As the text takes on these contemporary issues, it shows how Queenie formulates the opinions she does by making her interior world so visible.

Carty-Williams told Stylist that she isn’t Queenie but that “‘we see the world through the same lens’” (Keegan, Hannah. “Candice Carty Williams explains why Queenie will never be a ‘black Bridget Jones’.” Stylist, 2019). Other pieces by Carty-Williams cover similar topics, such as dating as a curvy Black woman and experiencing a mental health condition as a Black girl/woman.