This very welcomed publication, co-edited by Bertha Ochieng and Carl Hylton, brings together a solid collection of fifteen chapters charting the experiences of ‘Black families’ of African descent in Britain. The chapters comprise a mix of original empirical research, analysis of secondary data and literature reviews. The concepts of ‘family’ and ‘Blackness’ are tackled directly early on in the Foreword (provided by Harry Goulbourne), and the editors’ Introduction. The editors acknowledge these terms are highly problematic and subject to much debate in the literature. Nonetheless, they argue confidently that the definitions used throughout the work provide an important framework with which to critically analyse the experiences of a cohort of Britain's ethnic minority population, whose presence predates the post-war wave of labour-led migration. At the start, the editors set out their key objective for the volume: a bringing together of work that challenges the ‘deficit-orientated research models’, which they argue has dominated the way Black families have been unfavourably compared with other ethnic groups (p. 1). They have been generally successful in achieving this. The collection of articles, spread out over 322 pages, is aimed at a wide audience – higher education students, professionals, practitioners and the general reader. The volume draws on the contributions of fifteen authors of African/Caribbean descent spanning the academic sector, arts, practitioners across a range of fields and community activists. The contributors’ shared ethnic background plays an important role in providing the collective work a sense of ownership, identity and legitimacy. This is presented as a key strength of the book, and is one which came out strongly in the passion and rigour in which the contributors approached their work.

The coverage of topics (that is, social policy, under-achievement of Black students, music, sports, social exclusion, racism, religion and spirituality) is indeed impressive, reflecting both the individual interest of the contributors, and the broad impact these issues have had on Black family life in contemporary Britain. This breadth of coverage also raises a number of challenges for any edited work on this scale, in terms whether to group contributions under organising sub-themes, and more generally ensuring individual chapters hang together in a coherent whole. Browsing through the listing of contributors and chapters, even before reading the Introduction, I was intrigued about the process of pulling together this ambitious project. This would have made an interesting read in itself if it were included. One area picked up in the Foreword, and in several of the chapters, is the influence of US culture, politics and academic/policy literature on the UK experience. Reference to the US literature is made in several of the chapters, most notably Tony Sewell's critique of African Caribbean underachievement in the British education system; Jerome Williams’ chapter on Black UK families and the labour market, and Richmond Quarshie's chapter on black music. UK-based cultural theorists such as Paul Gilroy (Reference Gilroy1993) have sought to widen the theoretical lens through which we understand the ‘Black British experience’, by drawing on the experiences of our US counterparts, but within the wider context of the ‘Black experience’ in Europe. The volume would have benefited from this approach by including a fuller discussion of US influence on Black families in Britain.

In a collection of this scale, it is sometimes easier to pay greater attention to what is missing or meriting fuller discussion, rather than focusing on what is included. For example, given the book's use of the word Britain in the title, readers would have expected insights to the experiences of Black families in other parts of the UK, particularly Scotland, where there are strong historical colonial ties to the Caribbean. The emergence of the Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) housing association movement in the 1980s and 1990s, and its demise in the 2000s, received only a passing reference, which is a shame. At its height, the sector, with state support, represented the largest grouping of BME-led businesses anywhere in Europe, offering an important resource to Black families throughout many of Britain's inner city areas. The volume would have been further strengthened by the inclusion of a separate discussion on some of the demographic trends picked up in the 2001 census, most notably the dramatic growth in size of the ‘mixed race’ population. This group is set to become the single largest minority group in future years, with the ‘White and Black Caribbean’ sub-category representing the largest grouping. A number of academic and policy researchers have already begun work to unpick the wider implications of these demographic trends to policy, ethnic identity and family structures (Runnymede Trust, 2007). Moreover, this growing body of work suggests these developments will have profound implications for our understanding of the ‘Black family’.

The concluding chapter, although clearly summarising what went on before, might have been much bolder by offering the reader possible insights into where the journey that had been embarked on might take us in the future, and by speculating on what challenges the research and policy communities might face. I was itching to hear the editors’ thoughts and suggestions on these issues, and how the baton might be passed on to the next generation of researchers in this field. This discourse becomes even more pressing given the unprecedented challenges facing Britain, in terms of growing economic uncertainly, significant squeeze on public expenditure and services, as well as reform to the welfare state by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat led coalition government. Perhaps, these concerns might form the focus of the next volume in this series. What is on offer, however, is a very strong, if at times uneven collection of work, which provides the reader with a clear and well-researched critique of issues and concerns facing Black families in contemporary British society.