Reviews

This book really opened my eyes to the treatment of immigrants in the UK. The stories are varied but also very similar, going from xenophobia, to history, to humour that makes the writing feel informal yet powerful.
The people who talked about being type cast as "Wife of a Terrorist" or "Wife in miserable arranged Marriage" made me laugh, but also made me very aware of how little representation women from the Middle East have in UK media. The idea of having to justify having a person of colour in your show/film/book is mentioned a lot, and one story reminds us how important the simple things are like having flesh tone crayons in a range of shades so that school kids can create self-portraits that look like them.
Funnily enough, as I was reading this book, Tesco announced the launch of their new plasters in brown shades. Some of the dismissive, mocking, and just plain racist responses to this basic bit of inclusion on Twitter, made me realise how important this book is.