Candice Brathwaite

It’s about time we made motherhood more diverse… When Candice fell pregnant and stepped into the motherhood playing field, she found her experience bore little resemblance to the glossy magazine photos of women in horizontal stripe tops and the pinned discussions on mumsnet about what pushchair to buy. Leafing through the piles of prenatal paraphernalia, she found herself wondering: “Where are all the black mothers?”. Candice started blogging about motherhood in 2016 after making the simple but powerful observation that the way motherhood is portrayed in the British media is wholly unrepresentative of our society at large. The result is this thought-provoking, urgent and inspirational guide to life as a black mother. It explores the various stages in between pregnancy and waving your child off at the gates of primary school, while facing hurdles such as white privilege, racial micro-aggression and unconscious bias at every point. Candice does so with her trademark sense of humour and refreshing straight-talking, and the result is a call-to-arms that will allow mums like her to take control, scrapping the parenting rulebook to mother their own way.

I Am Not Your Baby Mother was a landmark publication in 2020. A Sunday Times top five bestseller, it was an important call-to-arms allowing mothers to take control and scrap the parenting rulebook to do it their own way. Sista Sister goes further. It is a compilation of essays about all the things Candice wishes someone had talked to her about when she was a young black girl growing up in London. From family and money to black hair and fashion, as well as colourism and relationships between people of different races, this is a fascinating read that will launch some much-needed conversations, between Sistas and Sisters alike. Written in Candice’s trademark straight-talking, warm and funny style, it will delight her fans, old and new.

A sharp and funny YA love story that explores themes of race, class and the complexities of growing up as a black British teen, from Sunday Times best-selling author Candice Brathwaite, author of I Am Not Your Baby Mother. London is all Cynthia knows, so when her parents abruptly uproot the family after a traumatic incident, to a place where there is only one bus an hour and the faint smell of horse manure continuously permeates the air, it’s a culture shock, to say the least. As is transitioning to a private school. At her new school, Cynthia is one of the only black students. Goofy Thomas, her white lab partner, immediately takes her under his wing. He’s kind and sweet, and her parents are pleased – someone like Thomas will be good for her ‘future prospects’. As much as Cynthia likes Thomas though, she can’t help noticing Isaac, the only other black student in her year. He is aloof and doesn’t seem to like her, but there’s something about him she cannot quite get enough of… But when it turns out both boys have been keeping secrets from her, secrets that link back to the life Cynthia thought she had left behind in London, she realises that not everything is as it seems. Will Cynthia be able to forgive the lies and follow her heart? An exploration of race, class, love and the complexities of growing up as a black British teen, from bestselling author Candice Brathwaite.