London Book award nomination Pauline Black: 'Growing up, the usual horrors and confusions of being an adolescent had extra weight as she struggled to define herself in a largely white community and a family who thought it best not to acknowledge her colour.'

When singer and Queen of Ska Pauline Black was a teenager, seeking to connect with her black roots by letting her hair grow into a glorious afro, her white adoptive mother’s response was that Pauline looked “like a bloody golliwog.”

It’s one such sad tale in Black’s otherwise gritty, wise and frank autobiography Black by Design, published to great acclaim this summer and hailed as one of the best musical memoirs of the year. The Independent said: “It paints a vivid portrait of simmering racial tension.”

Black, born to a Jewish mother and a Nigerian father, was adopted by a white couple from Essex as a baby. Growing up, the usual horrors and confusions of being an adolescent had extra weight as she struggled to define herself in a largely white community and a family who thought it best not to acknowledge her colour. After studying science in Coventry with a view to becoming a radiographer, Black discovered her voice as a singer and joined The Selecter in 1979, seeing in the Two-Tone movement, with its frenetic fusion of punk, reggae and ska, unity and a chance to bring black and white youth together in post-punk, Thatcher-blighted Britain. When the band split in 1982, Black pursued a successful career as an actress. The Selecter reformed in 1994 and have performed on and off since, including during 2011.

Black by Design (a reference to both her roots and her name, taken on in her 20s), Black’s story of growing up different, of the loneliness being one of the few women of the Two-Tone movement, of touring with the Specials and Madness and of uncovering her roots was described by The Scotsman as “Strong-minded, intelligent and open” and as a “brave, intelligent woman’s struggle to make sense of the nasty world around her.” Photo Miles Gehm