{"id":23719,"date":"2025-07-25T22:09:15","date_gmt":"2025-07-25T22:09:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/23719\/"},"modified":"2025-07-25T22:09:15","modified_gmt":"2025-07-25T22:09:15","slug":"debut-novel-jamaica-road-explores-identity-and-coming-of-age-in-1980s-britain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/23719\/","title":{"rendered":"Debut novel &#8216;Jamaica Road&#8217; explores identity and coming of age in 1980s Britain"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>    <img decoding=\"async\" class=\"Image\" alt=\"The cover of &quot;Jamaica Road&quot; beside author Lisa Smith. (Courtesy of Alfred A. Knopf)\"  width=\"880\" height=\"587\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/1753481355_58_\"\/><\/p>\n<p>    The cover of &#8220;Jamaica Road&#8221; beside author Lisa Smith. (Courtesy of Alfred A. Knopf)<\/p>\n<p>Deborah Becker speaks with British Jamaican author <a href=\"https:\/\/www.penguinrandomhouse.com\/authors\/2318923\/lisa-smith\/\" class=\"Link\" target=\"_blank\" data-cms-ai=\"0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Lisa Smith<\/a> about her debut novel \u201cJamaica Road.\u201d It centers around Daphne, a British-Jamaican girl growing up in 1980s London and her relationship with a Jamaican boy, Connie, who is in Britain illegally.<\/p>\n<p>Book excerpt: \u2018Jamaica Road\u2019<\/p>\n<p>By Lisa Smith<\/p>\n<p>This article was originally published on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wbur.org\/hereandnow\/2025\/07\/25\/jamaica-road-lisa-smith\" class=\"Link\" target=\"_blank\" data-cms-ai=\"0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">WBUR.org.<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"fullattribution\"> Copyright 2025 WBUR <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The cover of &#8220;Jamaica Road&#8221; beside author Lisa Smith. (Courtesy of Alfred A. Knopf) Deborah Becker speaks with&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23720,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[457,96,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-23719","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23719"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23719\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}