Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race

Written By Linda Malek
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Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race by Reni Eddo Lodge
Reviewed by Linda
📗📕📘📒📙

Point 1: Don’t judge this book by its title;
Point 2: This book is NOT racist;
Point 3: Racism is very much alive in the UK - no point in denying it.

I first heard Reni’s distinct and clear voice surrounding her debut novel, back in June around the time of the general election, at the Emerald Street Litfest. I was taken aback then by Reni’s founded anger, because I have been desensitised by this whole situation myself. Now having actually read WHY I’m, I feel enlightened and educated. The race discussion in the UK is nothing new, but here we are given a running commentary historically defended and profound. It’s going to be uncomfortable, at some points awkward, and challenging mainly towards white people, but never in a defamatory manner. On the whole, we are well-versed with the issues of race and racism in the USA, with the work of Martin Luther King and the famous I Have A Dream speech at the forefront of our knowledge, but here on our little island in Western Europe, we actually know very little. With lots of sticky notes to hand, I would advise reading this and The Good Immigrant back-to-back, to recalibrate your position on this and face this exponentially growing problem head on.

Linda Malek

I've always had the urge to set up a forum and voice my thoughts after each read, but never had the confidence to do so alone. 18 months ago, I got my fellow book-loving friends involved and formed The Candid Book Club! Aside from having an exponentially growing to-read pile and deteriorating shortsightedness, we've been lucky to have been invited to publisher events and have attended several talks with our favourite authors (Thank you and long may they continue!) To take a break from the pressures of PhD Chemistry, Jess and I exchanged books all the time and in my youth, I was that kid with the first editions of Harry Potter having already read Gulliver’s travels and some Charles Dickens. At work, my desk is a library and luckily for me I sit next to another bookworm Jack who entertains all the photo-taking. I'm suffering from a chronic case of wanderlust (age-related crisis) so books which are set as far away from home as possible tend to float my boat: Middle East, Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Asia...you name it. But if it's got anything to do with Egypt then I'm all over it. So you get the drift...I read all the time, everywhere (on the tube mostly), everyday, a book a week, and very quickly I'm onto the next! And then sometimes there is a book that stops me in my tracks, makes me want to swallow the pages whole, and have it next to me at all times, with some sentences staying with me forever: Shantaram by David Gregory Roberts, anything by Khaled Hosseini, The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, Stay With Me by Ayobami Adebayo (absolute gem of a woman), A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara, A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry, The Good Immigrant edited by Nikesh Shuklaand and anything by Naguib Mahfouz.

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