 Cover | |
| Author | Reni Eddo-Lodge |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Subjects | Race, racism, feminism |
| Published | 1 June 2017 |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
| Publication place | United Kingdom |
| Media type | |
| ISBN | 978-1-4088-7056-3 paperback |
Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race is a 2017 debut book by British writer Reni Eddo-Lodge that was published by Bloomsbury Publishing. [1] [2] [3]
 |
The book explores the links between gender, class and race in Britain and other countries.
The book begins with a summary of the experience of Black and Asian people in the UK, including the Atlantic slave trade, Indian soldiers in World War I, the Bristol Bus Boycott, the 1981 riots and Labour Party Black Sections.
The book also covers institutional racism in British society, White feminism, and definitions of class which only include White people.
In Books in the Media , a site that aggregates critic reviews of books, the book received 4.77 out of 5 from the site which was based on 8 critic reviews. [4]
Trevor Phillips reviewed the work for The Times . [5] In The Times Literary Supplement , Bernardine Evaristo described the book's title as "gloriously provocative", noting that it was "marketing gold" in the climate surrounding the Black Lives Matter movement. Evaristo described the work as "timely and accessible", "comprehensive and journalistic" as well as "resolutely unacademic", comparing it to the work of African-American writer Roxane Gay, whose 2014 anthology Bad Feminist "treads some of the same ground". However, she critiques Eddo-Lodge for not engaging in enough "rigorous research, particularly into the past" and for the fact that she "completely overlooks" the work of Black British feminist writers like Beverley Bryan, Stella Dadzie and Suzanne Scafe. Evaristo also noted that the book leaves open further questions, such as "What is the responsibility of black people in creating change for ourselves? Without also taking responsibility, we are dependent and powerless. What about the numerous positive developments since Windrush?" [6]
Arifa Akbar reviewed the work for the Financial Times , noting that Eddo-Lodge "builds on a critical tradition drawn from black American writers" like W. E. B. Du Bois, James Baldwin, and bell hooks. Akbar notes that "Not everyone will find the answer to racial inequality in Eddo-Lodge's reliance on White consciousness-raising, but it is an important shift that undermines the idea that racism is the BAME (Black, Asian, and minority ethnic) community's burden to carry. The liberation that this book offers is in the reversal of responsibilities." [7]
Writing for The Guardian , Colin Grant places the book within a wider tradition of "angry warnings to an ignorant white readership", the majority of which have been produced by African-American rather than Black British writers. [8] Grant opined that "Eddo-Lodge accurately takes the temperature of racial discussions in the UK" but that several sections, such as its discussion of the murder of Stephen Lawrence, are too brief, stating that "this kind of book is not designed to delve beyond the headlines in order to draw lessons from the past". [2] The book was chosen as number one in a public poll of the "Top Ten Books by Women that Changed the World" in 2018, as part of the Bookseller's Association of the UK and Ireland's Academic Book Week. [9]
Reviewing the work for NPR, the journalist Silvia Viñas stated that the work's "boldness" and "straight talk" is what makes it "memorable", also noting that while focusing "on events in Britain, it's still accessible to readers of black American history." [10]
Following the murder of George Floyd, the book became the first by a Black British author to reach No. 1 on the Nielsen BookScan's UK top 50 book sales chart. [11]
On the cover, the text "to White People" appears in white text on the white background, making it invisible from a distance. The rest of the text is black.
Paul Beatty is an American author and an associate professor of writing at Columbia University. In 2016, he won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Booker Prize for his novel The Sellout. It was the first time a writer from the United States was honored with the Man Booker.
Peepal Tree Press is a publisher based in Leeds, England which publishes Caribbean, Black British, and South Asian fiction, non-fiction, poetry, drama and academic books. Poet Kwame Dawes has said, "Peepal Tree Press's position as the leading publisher of Caribbean literature, and especially of Caribbean poetry, is unassailable."
Bernardine Anne Mobolaji Evaristo is an English author and academic. Her novel Girl, Woman, Other jointly won the Booker Prize in 2019 alongside Margaret Atwood's The Testaments, making her the first Black woman to win the Booker. Evaristo is Professor of Creative Writing at Brunel University London and President of the Royal Society of Literature, the second woman and the first black person to hold the role since it was founded in 1820.
Nadifa Mohamed is a Somali-British novelist. She featured on Granta magazine's list "Best of Young British Novelists" in 2013, and in 2014 on the Africa39 list of writers aged under 40 with potential and talent to define future trends in African literature. Her 2021 novel, The Fortune Men, was shortlisted for the 2021 Booker Prize, making her the first British Somali novelist to get this honour. She has also written short stories, essays, memoirs and articles in outlets including The Guardian, and contributed poetry to the anthology New Daughters of Africa. Mohamed was also a lecturer in Creative Writing in the Department of English at Royal Holloway, University of London until 2021. She became Distinguished Writer in Residence at New York University in Spring 2022.
Unbound, the online trading name of United Authors Publishing Ltd, is a privately held international crowdfunded publishing company. It is based in London, UK. The company was founded by John Mitchinson, director of research for the British television panel game QI; Justin Pollard, historian and QI researcher; and author Dan Kieran.
Leone Ross FRSL is a British novelist, short story writer, editor, journalist and academic, who is of Jamaican and Scottish ancestry.
Afua Hirsch FRSL is a British writer and broadcaster. She has worked as a journalist for The Guardian newspaper, and was the Social Affairs and Education Editor for Sky News from 2014 until 2017. She is the author of the 2018 book Brit(ish): On Race, Identity and Belonging, receiving a Jerwood Award while writing it. Hirsch was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2024.
Reni Eddo-Lodge is a British journalist and author, whose writing primarily focuses on feminism and exposing structural racism. She has written for a range of publications, including The New York Times, The Guardian, The Independent, The Daily Telegraph, The Voice, BuzzFeed, Vice, i-D and Dazed & Confused, and is a contributor to the 2019 anthology New Daughters of Africa, edited by Margaret Busby.
Stephen Bourne is a British writer, film and social historian specialising in Black heritage and gay culture.
The Sellout is a 2015 novel by Paul Beatty published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and in the UK by Oneworld Publications in 2016. The novel takes place in and around Los Angeles, California, and muses about the state of racial relations in the U.S. today. In October 2016, it won the Booker Prize, making Beatty the first US writer to win that award.
Jacaranda Books is a Black-owned British independent book publishing firm launched in 2012 and known for their effort promoting diversity in United Kingdom's publishing industry.
Chidera Eggerue is a British Nigerian writer and fashion blogger. She is best known for her book, What a Time to Be Alone, and the online campaign #SaggyBoobsMatter.
The Good Immigrant is an anthology of twenty-one essays edited by Nikesh Shukla and first published by Unbound in the UK in 2016 after a crowd-funding campaign endorsed by celebrities. Written by British authors who identify as BAME, the essays concern race, immigration, identity, 'otherness', exploring the experience of immigrant and ethnic minority life in the United Kingdom from their perspective. Contributors include actor/musician Riz Ahmed, journalist Reni Eddo-Lodge, comedian Nish Kumar and playwright Vinay Patel. The compilation inspired the American sequel The Good Immigrant USA, published in 2017, which featured BAME authors from the United States.
Nikesh ShuklaFRSL is a British author and screenwriter. His writing focuses on race, racism, identity, and immigration. He is the editor of the 2016 collection of essays The Good Immigrant, which features contributions from Riz Ahmed, Musa Okwonga, Bim Adewunmi, and Reni Eddo-Lodge, among others. With Chimène Suleyman, he co-edited the 2019 follow-up collection called The Good Immigrant: 26 Writers Reflect On America.
Lara is a semi-autobiographical novel-in-verse written by Bernardine Evaristo. It was originally published in 1997 by Angela Royal Publishing and won the EMMA Best Book Award in 1999. Drawing on family life, childhood and an inter-racial marriage, Lara explores the struggles of London living in the 1960s and '70s, travelling through seven generations of predecessors, spanning over 150 years to follow their lives in England, Nigeria, Ireland, Germany and Brazil. In 2009 a new, revised and expanded edition was published by Bloodaxe Books, with a photograph of the author's parents on their wedding day in Camberwell, London, 1955, as the cover.
Theatre of Black Women (1982–1988) was Britain's first black women's theatre company. It was founded by Bernardine Evaristo, Patricia Hilaire and Paulette Randall upon leaving the Rose Bruford College of Speech and Drama, where they had trained as actors and theatre-makers on the Community Theatre Arts course from 1979 to 1982. The course was a progressive, innovative drama course aimed at producing individuals who would be equipped to create their own theatre and be a force for change in society. The company, based in London, was forced to disband in 1988 when Arts Council funding ceased.
The Emperor's Babe is a verse novel written by British author Bernardine Evaristo. Published by Penguin in 2001, it is Evaristo's second work of fiction. Based in London around 1800 years ago, it follows the story of black Nubian teenage girl, Zuleika, who comes of age in the Roman period. The Emperor's Babe won the Arts Council Writers Award in 2000, a NESTA Fellowship Award in 2003 and was chosen by The Times as one of the 100 Best Books of the Decade in 2010. In 2013, it was also adapted into a BBC Radio 4 play.
Girl, Woman, Other is the eighth novel by Bernardine Evaristo. Published in 2019 by Hamish Hamilton, it follows the lives of 12 characters in the United Kingdom over the course of several decades. The book was the co-winner of the 2019 Booker Prize, alongside Margaret Atwood's The Testaments.
Brit(ish): On Race, Identity and Belonging is a 2018 book by the journalist Afua Hirsch. The book is part-memoir and discusses black history, culture and politics in the context of Britain, Senegal and Ghana. It received mixed critical reception.
Queenie is a new adult novel written by British author Candice Carty-Williams and published by Trapeze, an imprint of Orion, in 2019. The novel is about the life and loves of Queenie Jenkins, a vibrant, troubled 25-year-old British-Jamaican woman who is not having a very good year. In 2023, Channel 4 announced that Queenie had been made into a television drama, created and executive produced by Carty-Williams which aired in June 2024.