A touching and often funny set of stories of immigration in the UK, with many parallels to how we've approached immigration and treated immigrants in the US, both historically and currently. Similarities include how we accept most immigrants who are "gifted" and truly exceptional (think of women doing "twice as much to be thought half as good") and how Asian, African/Black, and other ethnic minorities face remarkable and brutal harassment, especially in our schools, and generally with White perp...

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.These beautiful, powerful, unapologetic essays collect twenty-one universal experiences: “feelings of anger, displacement, defen...

4.75⭐️ White people debate it. We live it. MY NAME IS MY NAME - Chimene SuleymanBut tradition is an inescapable trait of our communities - those who cannot rely on land or home for their identity. Our parents, and their parents, and theirs before, have little more to leave us beyond their names, beyond their language. We have inherited the knowledge that community means to remain. When we cannot return to our homes - or are waiting for them to be taken from us again - we must get the hang of h...

A really fun and insightful look at what being a 'good immigrant' is like in Britain today. Not the doctors, or dentists. Just a regular bunch of people, who live everyday lives, but with a much higher standard put on them. I laughed and despaired at the similar situations each of these writers experienced. I recognised some of what was said, but leant a lot of new things too. Which is exactly how it should be. I'd highly recommend this book to anyone. Especially if you're wanting to diversify y...

I have come to this book late, so have little to add to the many other reviews, other than to strongly recommend it. It is an anthology and inevitably some pieces work better than others for each reader but actually one of the collection's strengths is the different, and in some cases differing, perspectives on experiences of race in contemporary Britain.I read this book in the 5th anniversary edition, with a new preface from Nikesh Shukla. In it he refers to a text Musa Okwonga sent him when he...

Initial thoughts: Teetering between 4.5 and 5 stars. This is an excellent book containing a lot of insight into the lives of immigrants originating from many different countries. The reason I'm not entirely bent on 5 stars is that the essayists are by and large working in the media and/or entertainment industry. Nikesh Shukla does admit in his preface that the contributors generally know each other. With a general title referring to the immigrant, I expected a more cohesive narrative representin...

Short review: absolutely essential reading, a real eye-opening account of living in modern Britain.Long review:Some context. I grew up near Bath, in Somerset. This is a part of the UK that, according to recent data, is 94.5% white. In my secondary school there were perhaps ten students out of a year of over two hundred students who were anything other than pasty, northern European white. In other words, growing up I was surrounded by an almost overwhelming hegemony of whiteness. This was barely

For some one who is a person of colour and an immigrant to boot, I felt that the rhetoric here, that of lives and narratives of BAME being marginalised came across slightly shriller than warranted. Much of this can be blamed on the cohort of professionals rounded up to give their versions of the "immigrant experience". Being actors, essayists, published raconteurs, novelists: the heightened sensitivity to lived experience and then the talent to mine this into a performance of sorts-either writte...

This is one of the most important books I’ve read in a long time, and everyone should read it. It’s a collection of essays about British immigrant experience, all of them fascinating, informative, funny, angry. The essays are each specific and detailed, with huge variety and breadth in the ways they talk about the subject, but the common threads of how immigrants are treated here come through in a way that makes me, frankly, pretty bloody ashamed. This was shockingly eye opening to me as a white...

* This book was sent to me for review by the publisher (AND I AM SO VERY GLAD IT WAS!) *I LOVED THIS. Literally, this is THE BEST essay collection I've ever read by a million miles. I tabbed over 60 lines and pages within this, not a single essay doesn't have a tab or something that moved me, hit me or infuriated me. This is passion, raw and simple. It billows out onto the pages as these people share their stories and their experiences in an honest, clear, yet VITAL way. These stories struck me

It's hard to review a book written by so many different people - there are inevitably some I enjoyed more than others, some that were better-written or which touched me more - but as a collection this is a must-read. I thought I knew about immigration in my country but these stories showed me I have no idea what fellow Britons of all skin tones and backgrounds have to go through. It opened my eyes and more people should read this and take that chance to walk in someone else's shoes. I read it sl...

The Good Immigrant is a collection of 21 essays by persons belonging to black, Asian and ethnic minority communities of UK.In his editorial note, Nikesh Shukla quotes Musa Okwona in his essay The Ungrateful country –“…Society deems us bad immigrants – job stealers, benefit-scroungers, girlfriend-thieves, refugees – until we cross over in their consciousness, through popular culture, winning races, baking good cakes, being conscientious doctors, to become good immigrants.Nikesh Shukla adds – “And...

Debating between 3 and 4 stars for this book, but in the end the strong essays outweighed the mediocre ones (not to mention the truly great ones). These are all British BAME writers (Black, Asian, minority ethnic) discussing their experiences of being "othered" in the UK. An insightful (and often surprisingly funny) look at race, colorism, religion, fashion, film, airport security, education, and so much more. Like I said, some of the essays are noticeably weaker (and for some reason those ones

I wanted to like this more than I did, but that doesn't mean that I didn't like it. That being said, my favourite essays were definitely My Name is My Name, Airports and Auditions, and Shade. (To be honest, I had hoped that this anthology would speak to my own immigrant experiences, but the fact that it didn't doesn't mean that I didn't like it, or that it failed as a book about immigrants or something. There's more than one immigrant experience, and it doesn't follow that if a book is "unrelata...

Some of these essays were 5 stars, some 3 and a couple 2 stars, so overall 3.5 stars (rounded down) seems fitting. A very timely collection given what has happened in the UK since the EU referendum last June.

I didn't like this book but it's probably my own fault. I bought it because I wanted to read interesting stories by high achievers, stories about overcoming odds, or I don't know, interesting anecdotes about their parents and navigating two worlds, one of which doesn't accept you. Unfortunately, I got a lot of repetitive, overbroad, and unsourced essays. Only 3/21 of the essays provided a new perspective or novel idea: - (1) Darren Chetty's "You can't say that. Stories have to be about white peo...

the world would be a much better place if everyone in the world read this book

Nov 2016: "I've said a few times that I was looking for a British equivalent of the Ta-Nehisi Coates book, and some others were interested in the idea too. This appears to be the closest thing so far, although it's a multi-author essay collection." [Somehow that bit got 9 likes.]December 2018: Detailed comments I made about The Good Immigrant (after reading) in a discussion thread about In Our Mad & Furious City (N.B., thread contains major spoilers for the last third of Mad & Furious City): htt...

Frequent followers of this blog know I was born in Canada. My parents moved there, from Malta in 1974, mainly for political reasons ( that’s a story for another day). The first 9 years were spent in an North American Indian reservation. The remaining 4 years were spent in a small town in Ontario. That’s were problems started for me.The first sign was when on my first week, some of my classmates heard my parents speak in Maltese and behind their backs made turkey noises at me, indicating the rapi...

Can we have more of this book please?Im sick and tired of watching white rom-coms, I’m sick and tired of watching white people acting as all other races in all movies and shows, while god forbid Idris Elba portrays 007, like 007 can lick Elba’s boots, I’m sick of able bodied people representing the disabled community. Are you telling us that there are no people from these communities to represent them? And why are all the POCs and LGBTQ+ people are only in movies if there is something happening