The Empire Windrush docked at Tilbury in June 1948, but when we talk about the “generation” it is about more than just the passengers on that one boat. It is about all those who came to the UK, whether enticed by politicians such as Enoch Powell (who, before his infamous “rivers of blood” speech invited Caribbean women to come and work in NHS hospitals) or who were following family members who had already made the trip and settled. Many of these later arrivals were children, arriving on the British passports of their parents, who grew up to consider themselves as British, having little connection left to the countries they had travelled from.

My debut novel This Lovely City begins in 1950, two years after Jamaican Lawrie Matthews has arrived on the Empire Windrush. After a rough start, he’s found a decent job as a postman, a place to live that, while not ideal, is better than many of his fellow countrymen have to put up with, and he’s fallen in love with Evie, the girl next door. When Lawrie is crossing Clapham Common one morning he makes a terrible discovery and finds himself accused of a heinous crime.

In 2018, the Windrush scandal uncovered the shocking official treatment of Caribbean immigrants from that era. Two years on, reports of related injustice continue to surface. Another reason to read these books, which fill out the story of those who came to Britain in the first wave, and those who came after.

1. Small Island by Andrea Levy (2004)
Probably now the book that first springs to mind when people think of Windrush novels. A book, a TV series, and most recently a play at the National Theatre, Andrea Levy’s novel is wide in its range, showing the viewpoints of four main characters over several years and three continents. To achieve what she does without the novel feeling over-long is a feat of genius in itself. Yes, there are a couple of handy coincidences, but the pay-off warrants it and I defy you not to cry at the end. A book that I have re-read many times for the wonderful characters.

2. The Lonely Londoners by Sam Selvon (1956)
On the opening page of Selvon’s iconic novel, Moses Aloetta is on his way to Waterloo station to meet a fellow Trinidadian, Henry, who has just arrived in England. Between the hopeful new arrivals and Moses’ homesickness, this is a novel about a community of people trying to survive in a strange city. I didn’t expect to identify with this motley assortment of men, but somehow I did. When Moses shows Henry – AKA Sir Galahad – how to get on, he is also showing the reader what it cost them to get by. The book also has one of the funniest scenes I’ve read, involving a pigeon, a starving Galahad and a little old lady.

3. To Sir, With Love by ER Braithwaite (1959)
An autobiographical novel about a well-educated Guyanese man who ends up teaching in an infamous secondary school in London’s East End, To Sir, With Love is probably best known for inspiring the Sidney Poitier film of the same name. The auhour’s alter ego Ricky Braithwaite is a qualified engineer and an RAF veteran of the second world war, but he finds it impossible to get a job in his field due to the colour of his skin. The author is as concerned with the lives of his pupils as he is with his protagonist’s struggles to get on in a city that seems determined to reject him. His experiences feel all too familiar, but there is a hopeful streak through the book, especially when the children get involved and teach Ricky that perceptions can be changed, not least his own low expectations of the kids.

4. Mother Country edited by Charlie Brinkhurst-Cuff (2018)
Brinkhurst-Cuff has brought together the life stories of 22 people of Caribbean, heritage, covering seven decades of experiences. From MP David Lammy, to playwrights Natasha Gordon and Rikki Beadle-Blair, to publisher Sharmaine Lovegrove, these accounts are varied but give insight into what it is to grow up black and British, and how that can mean different things to different people.

5. Familiar Stranger by Stuart Hall with Bill Schwarz (2017)
Hall grew up in a middle-class Jamaican family in the 1930s before winning a scholarship to Oxford in the early 1950s. In his last book – he died in 2014, this book finished by his collaborator Schwarz), he tells of the struggle to reconcile a feeling that he belongs neither to Jamaica or to Britain. Most fascinating to me were his memories of a Jamaica still under British rule, where fair skin was prized above all else and the word “black” was taboo. As Hall quotes fellow Caribbean writer George Lamming: “Many of us first became West Indian in London.”

6. War to Windrush: Black Women in Britain 1939 to 1948 by Stephen Bourne (2018)
One of the few books to shine a light on the lives of black women coming to Britain from the Caribbean, Stephen Bourne also shares stories of those who were here already. From Una Marson, who arrived in Britain from Jamaica in 1932 and became an influential broadcaster at the BBC, to British-born women such as Shirley Bassey and Amanda Ira Aldridge, this is a wonderful exploration of black women’s lives in mid-20th century Britain. I found this an inspirational read, full of trailblazing women with ambition and character.

7. Windrush Songs by James Berry (2007)
Berry came to Britain from Jamaica in 1948. In the introduction to this collection of poems, he explains why he came to Britain and left a country he loved. Beginning in a City, 1948 in particular gives a strong impression of what Caribbean arrivals experienced in their first hours and days. The emigrant experience is often littered with contradictions, a major theme in my own novel, and Berry’s poems illustrate this perfectly.

8. Surge by Jay Bernard (2019)
Before Grenfell there was the New Cross Fire of 1981, a tragedy that was met by indifference from the government and the press. Bernard’s poetry collection was written after investigating the New Cross Fire records during their residency at the George Padmore Institute, a centre dedicated to radical black history in Britain. History resonates through these poems, not turning away from the horror but shining a light on it, as in the last line of Sentence: “Not rivers, towers of blood.” These are poems that never fail to move me.

9. Voices of the Windrush Generation by David Matthews (2018)
In the wake of the overdue scandal, several books have offered up accounts of the Windrush generation. Matthews explores the stories of ordinary people who came to Britain from the Caribbean between 1948 and 1971. Removing himself from the narrative as much as possible, Matthews has assembled a book that aims to replicate an oral storytelling tradition. I loved reading these accounts, which felt fresh and honest.

10. The Windrush Betrayal: Exposing the Hostile Environment by Amelia Gentleman (2019)
Gentleman was the journalist who first exposed the scandal and has rightly won awards for her reporting. The book is dedicated to Sarah O’Connor, a Windrush victim who died before publication and whose story is now so sadly familiar. As deportations continue, sending people to countries they haven’t known since childhood and have no ties to, this is a difficult read but one that shouldn’t be shied away from.

• This Lovely City by Louise Hare is published by HQ. To order a copy, go to guardianbookshop.com. Free UK p&p on orders over £15.