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Non-UK orders may take longer to arrive due to customs processing. Published ebooks are delivered immediately by email.
The Good Immigrant
By Nikesh Shukla
21 writers reflect on race in contemporary Britain
Publication date: 22 September 2016
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‘We should recognise the courage that has been shown in producing these essays . . . Helps to open up a much-needed space of unflinching dialogue about race and racism in the UK’ Sandeep Parmar, Guardian
‘If I could, I’d push a copy of this through the letter box of every front door in Britain’ Independent
How does it feel to be constantly regarded as a potential threat, strip-searched at every airport?
Or be told that, as an actress, the part you’re most fitted to play is ‘wife of a terrorist’? How does it feel to have words from your native language misused, misappropriated and used aggressively towards you? How does it feel to hear a child of colour say in a classroom that stories can only be about white people? How does it feel to go ‘home’ to India when your home is really London? What is it like to feel you always have to be an ambassador for your race? How does it feel to always tick ‘Other’?
Bringing together 21 exciting black, Asian and minority ethnic voices emerging in Britain today, The Good Immigrant explores why immigrants come to the UK, why they stay and what it means to be ‘other’ in a country that doesn’t seem to want you, doesn’t truly accept you – however many generations you’ve been here – but still needs you for its diversity monitoring forms.
Inspired by discussion around why society appears to deem people of colour as bad immigrants – job stealers, benefit scroungers, undeserving refugees – until, by winning Olympic races or baking good cakes, or being conscientious doctors, they cross over and become good immigrants, editor Nikesh Shukla has compiled a collection of essays that are poignant, challenging, angry, humorous, heartbreaking, polemic, weary and – most importantly – real.
‘If I could, I’d push a copy of this through the letter box of every front door in Britain’ Independent
How does it feel to be constantly regarded as a potential threat, strip-searched at every airport?
Or be told that, as an actress, the part you’re most fitted to play is ‘wife of a terrorist’? How does it feel to have words from your native language misused, misappropriated and used aggressively towards you? How does it feel to hear a child of colour say in a classroom that stories can only be about white people? How does it feel to go ‘home’ to India when your home is really London? What is it like to feel you always have to be an ambassador for your race? How does it feel to always tick ‘Other’?
Bringing together 21 exciting black, Asian and minority ethnic voices emerging in Britain today, The Good Immigrant explores why immigrants come to the UK, why they stay and what it means to be ‘other’ in a country that doesn’t seem to want you, doesn’t truly accept you – however many generations you’ve been here – but still needs you for its diversity monitoring forms.
Inspired by discussion around why society appears to deem people of colour as bad immigrants – job stealers, benefit scroungers, undeserving refugees – until, by winning Olympic races or baking good cakes, or being conscientious doctors, they cross over and become good immigrants, editor Nikesh Shukla has compiled a collection of essays that are poignant, challenging, angry, humorous, heartbreaking, polemic, weary and – most importantly – real.
Not a question, but a comment. I am the eldest of three brothers, all now successful consultant doctors, with a barrister father forced to move to the UK following the 1971 civil war that formed Bangladesh, in which he and his new wife (mum) got trapped for a while in a city whilst the West Pakistani Army went on a killing spree of intelllectuals, who then didnt get much work in the London Law Chambers in the 1970s despite his Inner Temple training due to probably the skin colour he wore, who had to run a curry house (in which we lived above in two rooms during my run up to GCSEs as mum cooked in the kitchen next to the chefs) to get us three boys educated via a state grammar. Now my dad's grandchildren are shining and far away from the events of 1971 that led to this trajectory. My dad was too proud to claim for free school lunches even though we could have been entitled to it, and his determined attitude has been instilled in all his three boys. 'Work twice as hard to get the same outcome as someone with white skin' is what my dad told me in primary school. So we all did. All us 'Good Immigrants' have stories. Look forward to my copy.
Oh man, I love these 'twice as good' stories. I'd like to collect them on a Tumblr one day. All children of immigrants have one.