'I searched for my African identity - and found the most amazing story'
manchestereveningnews.co.ukAshley Thorpe has always wanted to know more about his heritage. During the early years of his adulthood he elected to do just that when he gave a sample of his DNA to the world's largest genealogy company to find out where his roots sprouted from.
He soon found that his ancestors mostly came from the African regions that make up modern-day Nigeria and Ghana. A writer, Ashley’s self-realisation came at just the right time and it helped him pull from the oral stories of his forefathers for his debut novel, 'The Boy to Beat the Gods'. “Ancestry.com happened." He joked with the Manchester Evening News when asked about the genesis of his new children's book. "I was curious, it’s a very common experience as a Caribbean.
I’m second generation, my parents were in Jamaica but moved here when they were five or four. READ MORE: WWE Live coming to Manchester with big wrestling show at Co-op Live - how to get tickets “Their experience is obviously more Caribbean than mine but that’s because they grew up with my grandparents.
It’s still a largely British experience and the further you move away from that the less Caribbean you become. “For me, it was trying to find identity and with Caribbean heritage it starts in Africa, but I was like where?
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