Context: Caribbean Immigration & British Identity
Winsome Pinnock and Leave Taking
Leave Taking (1987) by Winsome Pinnock is a play about a Caribbean-British family navigating questions of identity, belonging and cultural roots in 1980s London. For OCR, you study it as your modern prose or drama set text. The play focuses on Enid Matthews, a Jamaican-born mother raising two daughters (Del and Viv) in England, and her complex relationship with Mai — an Obeah woman who represents the Caribbean spiritual traditions Enid has tried to leave behind.
Pinnock was one of the first Black British women playwrights to have work staged in major London theatres. Leave Taking draws on the Windrush generation experience — Caribbean immigrants who came to Britain seeking a better life but faced racism, cultural displacement and the challenge of raising children between two worlds.
Historical Context
After World War II, Britain actively recruited workers from the Caribbean. The British Nationality Act 1948 gave them the right to settle. The HMT Empire Windrush brought the first large group in 1948. By the 1980s, when the play is set, the children of these immigrants were growing up British but facing racism and questions about where they truly belonged. The 1981 Brixton riots and the 1971 Immigration Act form part of the backdrop to the racial tensions Enid's family navigates.
Pinnock is part of a tradition of Black British theatre that emerged in the 1980s, giving voice to experiences largely absent from mainstream stages. Leave Taking is significant because it centres Caribbean-British women's experiences — motherhood, cultural identity, generational conflict — rather than presenting them as secondary to male or white narratives. When the National Theatre produced the play in 1994, it was the first time a Black British woman's play had been staged there — a historic milestone. The 2018 Bush Theatre revival, directed by Madani Younis, introduced the play to a new generation.
The Play's Two Settings
Leave Taking is set in 1980s London and is structured as eight scenes — not two formal acts. The play has two physical settings: Enid's North London living room (Scenes 2–4) and Mai's Deptford bedsit (Scenes 1 and 5–8). The play opens and closes at Mai's bedsit — the Caribbean spiritual space frames the entire action. This is structurally significant: the domestic English space is bracketed by the world of Obeah and Caribbean roots, suggesting that Enid's attempt to confine her family to English respectability is always surrounded by the heritage she tried to suppress.
Scene 1 takes place at Mai's Deptford bedsit. Enid brings both daughters there for a reading. Del stays behind when Enid and Viv leave. The play's final scene (Scene 8) also takes place at Mai's bedsit — where Del reads Enid's palm as Mai's spiritual successor. The Caribbean space opens and closes the play, framing the family's journey.
The first generation of Caribbean immigrants faced a painful dilemma: to survive in a racist Britain, many felt they had to suppress their cultural identity, language and spiritual practices. The cost of this strategy fell on the second generation, who grew up in England but felt culturally rootless. They were too English for Jamaica, but not fully accepted in England. Pinnock's play dramatises this dilemma through Enid (first generation) and her daughters Del and Viv (second generation). The tension between assimilation and cultural belonging is the engine of the entire play.
Context and Critical Reception
Understanding the social and historical context in which a play was written is essential for top-band exam responses. For Leave Taking, this means engaging with the experience of the Windrush generation and the particular challenges facing Black British women in the 1980s. Winsome Pinnock brings her own background to the play, writing from within a community whose stories had been largely absent from mainstream British theatre. The play's critical reception has grown over time: the 1994 National Theatre production was historic, and the 2018 Bush Theatre revival confirmed its status as a landmark text in British drama. When writing about the play, always connect the specific scene or character detail you are analysing to this broader context — explaining not just what Pinnock shows, but why she chose to show it.