Книга Shame On Me: a memoir of race and belonging
NON-FICTION WINNER OF THE OCM BOCAS PRIZE FOR CARIBBEAN LITERATURE AND A FINALIST FOR THE HILARY WESTON WRITERS’ TRUST PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION
What does it mean to belong?
All her life, Tessa McWatt has been asked, ‘What are you?’ Born in Guyana to a family with Scottish, African, French, Chinese, Indian, Portuguese, and Native American heritage, she grew up in a white suburb, out of place, longing to fit in. As an adult, she moved to the UK, still pursued by questions about her identity.
In this deeply personal reckoning with race and belonging, Tessa interweaves her own experiences as a mixed-race woman with a stark and unvarnished history of slavery and indenture, as well as observations on literature and popular culture.
This powerful memoir of being mixed race in a predominantly white society is a necessary exploration of who and what we truly are.
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‘Eloquent and moving.’
" - The Guardian"
‘She is one of our greatest black female writers … She’s a deeply thoughtful woman and deeply radical in her thinking. She’s not on the fence about her politics.’
" - The Observer"
‘Stunningly beautiful … Her flowing, lyrical first-person prose is as close to poetry as prose can be, deeply evocative and laden with imagery without weighing the narrative down … Deeply compelling and strikingly original.’
" - The Irish Times"
‘Shame on Me offers alternative routes into black life and suggests that there’s still space for … reflections on the politics of race presented in tangential ways.’
" - TLS"
‘Executed with mellifluous scholarship and an eagle’s eye for affecting detail.’
" - Brixton Review of Books"
‘Her prose is lyrical and haunting ... McWatt forcefully demonstrates how we all have a stake in dismantling the status quo and creating new paths towards true freedom: “a place outside both the master’s house and the field”. Shame on Me is a tale of our time, yet also timeless.’
" - The Saturday Paper"
‘Powerful and provocative.’
" - Sunday Life"
‘Beautifully written, profoundly moving, and deeply reflective.’
" - 2020 OCM Bocas Prize jury citation"
‘Beautifully written and courageously told.’
" - 2020 Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction jury citation"
‘This is a fierce, remarkable and poetic take on racial identity.’
" - Bad Form"
‘A personal and powerful exploration of history and identity.’
" - The Globe and Mail ‘Books of the Year’"
Praise for Higher Ed:
‘[C]ombines campus novel (historically a distinctly white-male genre) with a Zadie Smith-like sense of a thoroughly multicultural London … satirises with sharp wit the precariousness of academic life.’
" - The Age"
Praise for Higher Ed:
‘A wryly passionate, slyly political and engrossing concatenation of London lives, that only a Londoner by choice could have written.’
" - China Miéville