Annie Yellowe Palma

Annie Yellowe Palma (born 18 April 1962) is a British poet, author and child protection advocate. She has written about her experiences growing up as a black woman in Northern Ireland at the height of the Troubles.
Biography.
Palma was born in Liverpool to an Irish mother and Nigerian father, the only girl among her mother's six children by various men. She grew up in her mother's native Portadown, County Armagh in a staunchly Protestants family one of six siblings. Her parents separated when she was four; she never saw her father, who died just two years later, again. Palma was regularly bullied at school because of her mixed race, while her alcoholic mother frequently neglected her children
She moved to London in 1986 and became a qualified social worker with a Diploma in Social Work and a BSc in Applied Social Science. She later believed that had she not left Northern Ireland, she might have contemplated suicide. Palma has worked with several children's centres and helped improve their child protection services. She has criticised the government's austerity cuts against public services, believing they would leave child protection services with too much work.
Writing.
Palma has published several collections of poetry and an autobiography, "For the Love of a Mother: The Black Children of Ulster". The book documents her growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, and how her black family coped with the sectarianism and violence at that time.