Levy’s recent novels, Fruit of the Lemon (1999), Small Island (2004), and The Long Song (2010), this article argues that Levy’s interest in bringing these histories to light is brought about by the loss of commemorative and narrative tradition caused by post-war migration. On the one hand, the dominant regimes of representation have positioned and constructed the West Indian colonial experience as external to mainstream British history. On the other hand, however, post-war West Indian migration to Britain was often accompanied by a desire to forget the traumatic histories of slavery and colonial subordination. Such postcolonial amnesia, this article argues, is confronted by Levy in passing on stories. In order to engage critically with the remembering and commemoration of trauma, this essay begins with a discussion of how collective traumas can be understood and memorialised. The notion of postmemory, as articulated by Marianne Hirsch, serves as a starting point for a dialogue about the relations between contemporary trauma theory and certain aspects of black British cultural theory. Bringing these two perspectives together can help to elucidate Levy’s approach to the representation of repression and trauma. Ultimately, this article suggests that Levy’s writing in itself is a performative act of postmemorialisation.