Her 1985 debut novel The Unbelonging made her "the first Afro-Caribbean woman author to write about the experiences of Blacks in England".
[2] Joan Riley was born in Hopewell, Richmond, St. Mary, Jamaica, the youngest of eight children (six girls and two boys),[1][3] and was raised by her father after her mother died in childbirth.
[citation needed] She has worked at a drugs advisory agency and wrote about the experiences of Caribbean women.
Riley is the author of four novels; her first, The Unbelonging, published in 1985, is considered the first by a woman about the black experience in Britain.
[3] Riley co-edited with Briar Wood Leave to Stay: Stories of Exile and Belonging (Virago, 1996), a collection of fiction and poetry by writers from India, the Caribbean, China, South Africa, the USSR, Canada, Australia and Pakistan, including Sujata Bhatt, Fred D'Aguiar, Michael Donaghy, Jane Duran, Michael Hoffman, Aamer Hussein, Mimi Khalvati, Adam Lively, Sindiwe Magona, Bharati Mukherjee, Hanan al-Shaykh, Janice Shinebourne and Zinovy Zinik.