Reviews with content warning for Police brutality - Natives

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Natives by Akala

15 reviews

epellicci's review against another edition

challenging informative reflective slow-paced

3.5

I struggled to keep up with some of the history in Natives. There is a lot of it and I’m very bad with keeping timelines organised in my head, so it did make the beginning of this book, where these details are most focused, a little tricky. But that is not a reflection of the writing.

Natives is impassioned, which made it a brilliantly engaging audiobook. Superbly preformed and packed with individual testimony alongside the fact, it presents the human cost of class and racism in a way that could only be ignored by wilful ignorance. I found it reflective, uncomfortable, and engaging.

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esme_may's review against another edition

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challenging emotional funny informative medium-paced

4.5

Everyone in the UK should read this. It would make a great introduction to reading about race as well, it's petty accessible and the narrative voice is delightfully sarcastic

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flowingleaves's review against another edition

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emotional informative reflective medium-paced

4.5

A very interesting part biography, part history book that shines a very important light on many aspects of Britian and its culture and history. The author's experiences were very visceral and you could tell how much they shaped him. The writing was a bit not up to par in some places, but overall it was a very informative and important read.

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readingthroughinfinity's review against another edition

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challenging informative reflective medium-paced

4.5

This is an excellent, insightful piece of nonfiction about the history of racism and empire in the UK. It's clear that a lot of research went into this, as Akala delves into the Britain's colonial past and the damaging legacy it left behind for the countries colonised and in the way people of colour are treated in he UK today. He also discusses his childhood and own experiences of racism, weaving these anecdotes and stories together with the wider discussion of the issues faced by global African communities. A fantastic piece of nonfiction and one that I wish everyone (but especially white people) in the UK would read.

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beca_reads's review against another edition

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informative reflective medium-paced

5.0

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britgirlreading's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

5.0

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lukerik's review against another edition

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funny informative reflective fast-paced

4.0

If Zack de la Rocha were British and wrote a book.

It’s a hard piece of writing to categorise. Political and personal and polemical. It’s almost like a personal work of sociology, properly referenced and with an interesting bibliography. Akala is obviously a very intelligent man with a finely tuned bullshit detector and a laser-like intellect that he turns on some very confusing issues. Thorough, precise, and sensible arguments and he never takes rhetorical shortcuts even when he’s angry. I didn’t agree with all his conclusions, but if we’re all going to agree we may as well give up and stop thinking now. A very thought-provoking book. I often found it sending my mind off at tangents so that reading it is almost like engaging in a dialogue. Also very funny at times.

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emcatbee's review against another edition

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challenging funny hopeful informative reflective fast-paced

5.0

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charleygxrl's review against another edition

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challenging informative reflective medium-paced

5.0

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librarianjess's review against another edition

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informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

5.0

This book was so educational and so thorough. I couldn't put it down. Akala has such an eloquent and emphatic style with his part-autobiography, part-polemic, of racism in the UK.

His book discusses the insidiousness of racism in the UK, but how colourism and racism differs in varying degrees in different countries - tying them altogether. It is true that international events and occurrences in the Commonwealth and the Global South resonated with African and Caribbean communities here in Britain. His book demonstrated how the interconnectedness of the world allowed black Britons to feel connected to black culture, yet so far from it, whilst being racially excluded from their home in the UK.

His accounts of how 'liberal' white people in the UK perpetuate racism continually, and that it is this type of oppression that hits the UK the hardest. One of the parts that intrigued me the most was his discussions and his own personal experiences with racism within the school system. Teachers, and the institution of education itself, holds its hand up to say that the system purposefully disadvantages those of non-white backgrounds, yet equally does nothing about it.

Every single page in this book gave me an extremely poignant and heartbreaking personal account of racism, yet intertwined with statistics and studies that backed up these experiences. Akala is one of many.

This book for me was 5 stars and there is no force on earth that would let me give it any less. I was fully astounded by this book and I am going to read it again and again.

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