Double MOBO Award Winning Rapper releases new book tomorrow (Thurs 18th)

UNSPOKEN WORD: DOUBLE MOBO AWARD-WINNING RAPPER GUVNA B RELEASES A BOOK ON TACKLING TOXIC MASCULINITY 

Unspoken: Toxic Masculinity and How I Faced the Man Within the Man sees British rapper Guvna B in an intimate and sincere memoir, exploring how toxic masculinity affects young men today. Written to inspire, UNSPOKEN examines male identity while drawing on his own powerful experiences and is a powerful message aimed at young men who are most in need of guidance.  

Once thinking he knew everything that he needed to know about what it means to be a man today, a personal tragedy hit Guvna B hard when his dad passed away unexpectedly and his world turned upside down. When his father died, he was unable to cry, conditioned by a lifetime of feeling that being a man meant being strong. At the age of 28 he withdrew from the world and cut himself off from his wife, his family, his friends. His happy life unravelled. 

Guvna B was brought up on a London council state in East London and was influenced to think that men are meant to be tough, thick skinned and unemotional and so supressed all of his emotions throughout childhood to adulthood. It was only after his dad passed that he was forced into learning how to deal with emotion and UNSPOKEN shares the inspirational journey he faced to get there.  

UNSPOKEN is a book for all young people, but writing from a black man’s perspective, Guvna B understands what young black men have to face in today’s society and hopes to open up the conversation. 

Guvna B entered the world of a musician in his teens and released his first album The Narrow Road in 2008 at just 19-years-old. A grime and hip-hop artist, he has gone onto winning two MOBO awards and three Urban Music Awards and work with some of the music industry’s biggest names, including Michelle Williams from Destiny’s Child, Keisha Buchanan formerly of the Sugababes, and rising stars such as Sam Henshaw and Nick Brewer. Using his music to spread a positive message led to Guvna B becoming one of the UK’s highest-charting ‘clean’ rappers. 

Author of UNSPOKEN, Guvna B says:  

‘After the loss of my father, I realised that I wasn’t as well put together as I thought. I believed that crying was wrong throughout my childhood, which I now realise had a perilous impact on my mental health. I want to help other young men struggling to process their emotions. I know what it’s like to feel lost and hopeless and I think that it’s so important for young people to understand how to deal with that pain. 

I hope this book will inspire, educate, and spark conversations that should be happening already.’ 

Notes to Editors: 

About Harper Inspire 

Harper Inspire is a UK-based inspirational imprint, publishing fiction and non-fiction titles that engage readers through insight and imagination. Harper Inspire is part of the HarperCollins   Publishers organization. For more information, please visit www.harperinspire.co.uk.  

About HARPERCOLLINS UK 

HarperCollins UK is a division of HarperCollins Publishers, the second largest consumer book publisher in the world, with operations in 17 countries, and was named Publisher of the Year at the British Book Awards 2018. With over two hundred years of history and more than 120 unique imprints around the world, HarperCollins publishes approximately 10,000 new books every year, in 16 languages, and has a print and digital catalogue of more than 200,000 titles.  Writing across dozens of genres, HarperCollins authors include winners of the Nobel Prize, the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the Newbery and Caldecott Medals and the Man Booker Prize.  HarperCollins UK has offices in London, Glasgow and Honley, and can be found online at www.harpercollins.co.uk.