The bestselling author Caryl Phillips has for years written about and explored the experience of migration through his spellbinding and award-winning novels, plays, and essays. In this fascinating collection he looks at the notion of belonging prior to and following 9/11, beginning with a reflection on his own experience as one of the only black boys in his school in the UK alongside his first interaction with a British Muslim boy who joined the school. Phillips turns to his years of living and teaching in the United States--including a riveting chronicle of the day the two towers fell--as well as historical and literary reflections with James Baldwin, Richard Wright, and other writers who grappled with notions of migration and belonging in their own day.
"[A] polymorphous delight that always retains at its core the notion of identity: how it is constructed, how it is thrust upon us, how we can change it....Though Phillips writes specifically here about racism and the experiences of immigrants, his cogent argument is equally applicable to the climate in which we find ourselves."
The Independent (UK)
"With the elegance and maturity of a prize-winning author . . . Phillips lives, breathes, and masterfully teases into prose the singular dilemma of the outsider."
The Boston Globe
"[Phillips is] an insightful and sympathetic chronicler of race, British identity, and the immigrant experience.The Christian Science Monitor[Phillips] writes wonderfully crafted, deeply meditative treatises on the black experience in a global and historical sense . . . . [He is] intellectual and reflective but always interesting and informative."
