Obitatario by Alex Wheatle | Alex Wheatle

Better known as the author of the series of novels for young adults Crongton, Alex Wheatlewho died at the age of 62 of prostate cancer, he was a writer, speaker and activist whose well -observed stories based on his life gave a painful and vivid picture of his harsh first years and adolescence in southern London.

His experiences, to grow in a system of violent care, police brutality and a spell in prison, have modeled Alex’s world’s vision of the world and wanted others to know; His passion and anger were temperate but never blocked from his subsequent success as a writer. Known as Brixton Bard, he wrote fiercely but with understanding, energy and humor in a series of adult novels, starting with Brixton Rock (1999), before moving on to fiction for young adults (YA).

In 2020 Alex’s first life was at the center of Steve McQueen Small Axe’s film: Alex Whenle, the fourth drama in his Series of BBC television anthologies Highlighting institutional racism and black British experience from the late 1960s to the early 1980s.

Alex was cured like a child and grew up in Shirley Oaks, a children’s house in Croydon where, later he was revealed, Physical, mental and sexual abuse had been widespread for decades; He wrote about the violence inflicted on him in SFonh: Memoir of a Brixton Reggae Head (2023). He was born in Brixton, son of Almira Gunter, who was married to four children when he arrived in the United Kingdom in 1961, where he met Alfred Wheatle, also from Jamaica, who worked as a carpenter. Shortly after the birth of Alex, his mother returned home, leaving his son with his father, who fought to face.

At 15, Alex was moved from Shirley Oaks to a social services hostel in Brixton. Here, he had his first experience in the Western Indies community and was quick to embrace his black identity with clothes, hair, language and in particular Reggae music, appearing as DJ Yardman Irie at 16 years old and becoming a founding member and lyricist of the crucial audio system group. He was also active in the fight against racism and brutality of the police, and was arrested and given a prison sentence for his involvement in Brixton Revolt of 1981.

During his four months in Wormwood Scrubs, Alex’s cellmate was Simeon, a Rastafarian who recognized the deep feelings of isolation of the young man.

“He understood too well that I was disconnected from my roots, culture and people from the moment I was taken care of in two and a half”, “” Alex wrote later. “He took responsibility for reconnecting me. He pushed CLR JAMES‘S The black Jacobins in my hands eager. “This will tell you Ah, something licensed on where you come from and where you are in the fight from,” he said. “

He presented Alex to other black authors including Chester Himes, which Alex subsequently cited as inspiration for his own writing, together with Maya Angelou, Charles Dickens, Linton Kwesi Johnson and John Steinbeck.

But when Alex started writing, it was his life, not the books that inspired his debut novel, Brixton Rock; Set in the south of the 80s, its central character, the sixteen year old Brenton Brown, brings the same history of abandonment and subsequent rebellion against the authority. He was praised by critics and won the London Arts Board New Writers Award in 1999.

This was followed in 2001 with East of Acre Lane, “an equally tough slice of social comment,” said a critic, set up against the background of the 1981 revolts; and several other books including The dirt south (2008) e Brenton Brown (2011), a sequel to Brixton Rock.

He also drawn on his story for the revolt, an individual comedy that wrote and exhibited for the first time in 2011, in London and on tour, before visiting again in 2012 as part of the celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the Jamaican independence.

Despite his success, and was made MBE for literature services in 2008, Alex became disillusioned by adult publication – “I felt like if I were this black sign that writes about stuff ghetto” – And instead it turned to fiction for young adults, telling similar stories but into a lighter style and with more imaginative license. Instead of recreating Brixton, Alex has created Crongton, his imaginary world, with a multicultural cast of pumping chestnut teenagers who navigate in a seal in the city center.

Guided and told mainly through a Rauco dialogue, Crongton’s stories have given a realistic picture of growing in contemporary Great Britain. The transition to Ya brought success to Alex immediately. Licle Bit (2015) was Longisted for the Carnegie medal in 2016 and Crongeton Knights (2016) He won the Fiction Prize of Guardian children.

“There was a true sense of excitement, both in the room and among the readers, when Alex was announced as the 50th winner of the fiction prize for children Guardian”, recalls Claire Armitsted, then publisher of books at The Guardian.

“Here there were band violence and the violence of gangs and visits to Morning in Tower Block’s bailiffs: the stuff of the dark news just coined in a glorious invented jargon that gave its characters the property of their stories with not a breath of condescension. As the author and the David Armond prize said, the novel” Humming with the rhythm of real life “.

Other books by Crongton followed, including Straight out of Crongton (2017) and Curbo Stain Boys (2018), as well as the YA novels that explore aspects of black history, including Warriors dog (2020), on a slave rebellion in Jamaica in 1760 and Kemosha of the Caribbean (2022), about the adventures of slave escaped as a pirate. A 10 sides Series of comic BBC dramas, CrongtonBased on books, launched in March.

I met Alex for the first time when he won the Children’s fiction prize. I was inspired by his passionate belief that, telling the stories of his life and the life of other children like him, he could make the difference for young readers who had been largely excluded from the representation in the books. Subsequently he summarized what the recognition brought by the prize meant for him: “Sometimes I still see myself as” little Alex “that he would never have thought that he would reach anything. Growing up with this low self -esteem against which it is difficult to fight”.

He spoke in schools and festivals, encouraging young people to write their stories. Aine Venbles, head of the Hay Festival education that brought him to a week of a week talking to the children of all Wales, said: “Alex’s life experience and his warmth have scored his writing and his narrative brilliance has fascinated thousands of young people”.

Last year, as a “Thinking in residence” In Hay, speaking to the public of all ages, Alex has supported greater interventions by the government and those involved in the world of books to do more to help even younger children to have fun reading so that their lives, like his, could have changed. He also made a campaign for the Prostate Cancer UK, after being diagnosed the disease in 2023, honestly speaking to men, in particular to color men, to dispel the fears for the necessary control.

He survived his wife Beverley (born Robinson), whom he married in 1999, and their three children, Marvin, Tyrone and Serena.