Bernardine Evaristo's thoroughly deserved Booker triumph for Girl, Woman, Other cemented her reputation as one of the finest British authors of her generation. Below, she recommends her favourite black British non-fiction books of 2019, each one adding immeasurably to the vibrant discourse surrounding race, identity and belonging in the twenty-first century.
It’s astonishing how many black British non-fiction books have been published this year, each one contributing to the conversation about our presence on these here isles. My choices are among the best for anyone who is interested in exploring what it means to be British.
A ground-breaking take on race and sport framed between the Brixton Riots and Brexit. It’s both political and personal, part memoir and part-social commentary, as it unpicks issues around identity that challenge our complacencies.
Also a ground-breaking book of interviews, edited by two recent university graduates, about the experiences of women of colour in predominantly white universities. It’s an indictment of the structural racism inherent in our academic institutions, which fail to treat students of colour as equally as other students, and fail to provide inclusive curricula.
A surprisingly entertaining lexical romp around race in the UK. He has amassed all kinds of descriptors, contemporary and historical, some of them offensive, many of them simply cultural, and presented them in an accessible dictionary format in order to illuminate what it means to be black and British.
One might think that black women’s hair is a superficial topic to write about, but far from it. Dabiri’s book is an in-depth exploration of all the historical, cultural, political, philosophical, practical and racial issues around our hair – which is all so much more than the aesthetics of our protein filaments!
Unsurprisingly a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week this year. It’s a book full of wonderful voices who tell the stories of the Windrush Generation from multiple perspectives, not only from those who travelled to Britain from the Caribbean having cherished the myth of the motherland, but also contemporaneous politicians and proud racists. This book ensures their voices are not lost.
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