River Sing Me Home

Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses abuse of enslaved people.

Eleanor Shearer’s inspiration for River Sing Me Home originates from a historical exhibit. The Windrush Foundation’s Making Freedom exhibit, which marked the 175th anniversary of full Emancipation in the Caribbean, had a huge impact on her as a teenager. Through the exhibit, Shearer connected with the stories of enslaved people seizing liberation, particularly the tales of formerly enslaved women searching for their missing children post-Emancipation. It is through learning about these women’s actions, Shearer writes, that she found “the seeds” for River Sing Me Home (Shearer, Eleanor. “For Me and My White-Passing Family Members, Our Heritage Has a Complicated Legacy.” Good Housekeeping, 2023).

The broader direction for her novel came to her while conducting fieldwork in Saint Lucia and Barbados. When speaking to people on the islands about slavery’s impact on the areas’ culture(s), she noticed a gap between how the UK and Caribbean discussed slavery (Polk, Shelbi. “River Sing Me Home and the Lengths a Mother Will Go for Her Children.” Shondaland, 2023).

Shearer espouses the power of writing for those whose heritages are impacted by colonial racialization. She says that that writing provided an additional way for her to get “closer to her roots” (“The Lengths a Mother Will Go for Her Children”).