The Sunday Times bestseller that reveals the uncomfortable truth about race in Britain today - and calls for urgent change
Afua Hirsch is a writer, filmmaker, and journalist. She is the author of Brit(ish), the Sunday Times bestseller that explores Britishness, identity and belonging, for which she was awarded the Royal Society of Literature Jerwood Prize for Non-Fiction. She co-presented Enslaved, a 6-part series about the transatlantic slave trade with Samuel L Jackson. She is the presenter of the Audible podcast series We Need To Talk About the British Empire, and Africa Rising, an ongoing flagship series about art and culture for the BBC, through her production company Born in Me Productions. She is a longtime columnist for the Guardian and is a professor of journalism at the University of Southern California.
Brit(ish) is a wonderful, important, courageous book, and it could
not be more timely: a vital and necessary point of reference for
our troubled age in a country that seems to have lost its bearings.
It’s about identity and belonging in 21st-century Britain: intimate
and troubling; forensic but warm, funny and wise.
*Philippe Sands*
Brit(ish) brings together a thoughtful, intelligent, accessible,
informative investigation on Britain as a nation not only in the
midst of an identity crisis but in denial of what it has been and
still is.
*Dolly Alderton*
Memoir, social analysis and an incisively argued challenge to
unconscious biases: this is a truly stunning book on racial
identity by a remarkable woman.
*Helena Kennedy*
[A] bracing and brilliant exploration of national identity …
Through her often intensely personal investigations, she exposes
the everyday racism that plagues British society, caused by our
awkward, troubled relationship to our history, arguing that liberal
attempts to be colour-blind have caused more problems than they
have solved. A book everyone should read: especially comfy, white,
middle-class liberals.
*The Bookseller, Editor's Choice*
This is less a polemic about the past than an attempt to illuminate
the problems of the present. Hirsch is exacting in her observations
of how this history manifests itself today... This is a fierce,
thought-provoking and fervent take on the most urgent questions
facing us today.
*Financial Times*
A warm, informative and occasionally heart-wrenching blend of the
personal and the political, and the messiness in between the two...
She asks some uncomfortable questions, challenging us as
individuals, the government, institutions and society at large, to
think carefully about what constitutes Britishness and how it can
be a term that embraces communities of colour in the UK... Hirsch’s
book is more than a countrywide conversation-starter, though: it’s
a deeply personal look at who she always knew she was, but didn’t
feel ready to say yet.
*Observer*
Skilfully blending memoir, history and social commentary around
race, culture and identity. Hirsch writes with an incisive honesty
that disproves the idea that privilege can be easily reduced to
racial binaries... Hirsch shows us that the issues are complicated,
that blackness is no more homogeneous than whiteness, and that we
do need to talk about it if anything is to change.
*Times Literary Supplement*
A dazzling book of stories ... Brit(ish) is, despite everything, a
hopeful book ... It is impossible to do justice to the scope of
this book ... The book teems with fascinating and uplifting as well
as tragic stories ... This is writing that really shines.
*Irish Times*
Brit(ish) is the work of a confident social guide ... The power of
her writing matches that of other important black writers, among
them [Paul] Gilroy and, going back two centuries, the American
abolitionist John Brown Russwurm.
*Guardian*
Searing ... Afua Hirsch's memoir adds a new chapter to the body of
work on race in the UK.
*New Statesman*
|
Ask a Question About this Product More... |
|
