Brit(ish)

On Race, Identity and Belonging

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From Afua Hirsch - co-presenter of Samuel L. Jackson's major BBC TV series Enslaved - the Sunday Times bestseller that reveals the uncomfortable truth about race and identity in Britain today.

You're British.

Your parents are British.

Your partner, your children and most of your friends are British.

So why do people keep asking where you're from?

We are a nation in denial about our imperial past and the racism that plagues our present. Brit(ish) is Afua Hirsch's personal and provocative exploration of how this came to be - and an urgent call for change.

'The book for our divided and dangerous times'
David Olusoga

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

[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.

Caroline Sanderson, The Bookseller, Editor's Choice

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.

Nikesh Shukla, 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.

Bernardine Evaristo, Times Literary Supplement

About Afua Hirsch

Afua Hirsch is a writer, filmmaker, and journalist. She is the author of Brit(ish), the Sunday Times bestselling book 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 also 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 the production company she founded, Born in Me Productions. She is a longtime columnist for the Guardian and is a professor of journalism at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.

Details

Imprint: Vintage
Published: 04/10/2018
ISBN: 9781784705039
Length: 384 pages
Dimensions: 196mm x 32mm x 126mm
Weight: 280g
Price: £12.99

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Brit(ish)

On Race, Identity and Belonging

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About Afua Hirsch

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