The Story

The Novel

Mildred Meet Rasta

A novel by Simbarashe Tongogara

Mildred Meet Rasta brings together an elderly white pensioner and four young black Rastafarian men. Though the story is fiction, from its very first pages it lays bare the cultural divides that quietly shape our streets — and the deep racism that too often goes unspoken.

As unlikely bonds begin to form, a frightened middle-class community moves from fear to joy. At her age Mildred discovers a whole new culture, the young men rediscover the true heart of the Rasta faith — to care and to share — and by the final page, Mildred, who has never once set foot on a plane, is making plans to visit a faraway island called Jamaica.

The Inspiration

A bridge between two worlds

The novel imagines a meeting we rarely picture: an elderly British woman and a group of young reggae musicians, a Leeds street and the rhythms of the Caribbean, brought together by chance and changed by choice.

It is, at heart, a hopeful book about how understanding can begin with something as small as a shared cup of tea.

 
Inside the Story

Where Leeds meets Jamaica, and fear gives way to joy

Set in a quiet, middle-class corner of the city, Mildred Meet Rasta follows the unlikely friendship that blossoms when an elderly pensioner’s world collides with four young Rastafarian men — and a whole community is changed by it.

Ebook

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Paperback

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Hardcover

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