Shame On Me: a memoir of race and belonging by Tessa McWatt Paperback Book

Description: Shame On Me by Tessa McWatt NON-FICTION WINNER OF THE OCM BOCAS PRIZE FOR CARIBBEAN LITERATURE AND A FINALIST FOR THE HILARY WESTON WRITERS TRUST PRIZE FOR NON-FICTIONWhat 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. FORMAT Paperback CONDITION Brand New Author Biography Tessa McWatt is the author of seven novels and two books for young people. Her fiction has been nominated for the Governor Generals Award, the City of Toronto Book Awards, the OCM Bocas Prize, and the Society of Authors Volcano Prize. She is one of the winners of the Eccles British Library Award 2018, for her memoir:Shame on Me: an anatomy of race and belonging, which won the Bocas Prize for Non-Fiction 2020 and was shortlisted for the Hilary Weston Prize and the Governor Generals Award. She has been a resident at the Sacatar Institute in Brazil and the Rockefeller Foundations Bellagio Center. Professor of Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia, she is also a librettist, and works on interdisciplinary projects and community-based life writing. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Review Eloquent and moving. -- Barbara Taylor * The Guardian *Political, personal, intellectual, and critical. -- Bernardine Evaristo, author of Girl, Woman, OtherThis remarkable meditation on beautiful, human bodies formed by the violence of slavery and by colonial shame resists categorisation, even as it shows up the ways in which categories of race and identity are no more than empty methods of social control. Reading this book I felt a profound sense of relief: that someone as wise as Tessa McWatt had the compassion and courage to write it. Though she doesnt spare us, her ancestors or herself, as she travels from British Guiana to China, India and Scotland, we must go with her: and realise the power of recovering female lineage, and realise that there is no centre, except the one we ourselves can make with all the various stories we contain. It is a deeply moving, urgent and important book. -- Preti Taneja, author of We That Are YoungShe is one of our greatest black female writers … Shes a deeply thoughtful woman and deeply radical in her thinking. Shes not on the fence about her politics. -- Monique Roffey * The Observer *Interrogating our ideas of race through the lens of her own multi-racial identity, critically acclaimed novelist Tessa McWatt turns her eye on herself, her body and this world in a powerful new work of non-fiction. -- Layla Saad, author of Me and White SupremacySuperb. -- Emma Dabiri, author of Dont Touch My HairStunningly 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. -- Becky Long * The Irish Times *Shame on Me offers alternative routes into black life and suggests that theres still space for … reflections on the politics of race presented in tangential ways. -- Colin Grant * TLS *Executed with mellifluous scholarship and an eagles eye for affecting detail. -- Stephanie Sy-Quia * Brixton Review of Books *Heartstopping and wise, exquisitely written, compellingly told, Shame on Me rises to a crescendo of such beauty and grace in its final chapter — a call to activism and resistance — that it left me breathless with the intensity of my own listening. -- Rebecca Stott, author of In the Days of RainA brave indictment, both passionate and reflective, of the category of race and the prison that identity can become. -- Lisa Appignanesi, author of Mad, Bad, and SadThere have been many books about race and identity in recent years, but none quite like this one. Shame On Me is part memoir, part essay, and partly a challenge to think beyond the current parameters of "identity" in our contemporary world. Told from the perspective of a writer whose own inheritance confounds established identities at every turn, it is a perceptive, poignant and deeply profound meditation on how the race-thinking of the plantation continues to structure our sense of ourselves "all the way down". It is an essential intervention on behalf of those of us who wish to confront and overcome the resurgence of racism today. -- Anshuman Mondal, Professor of Modern Literature at UEAShame on Me is one of the most moving and intellectually profound books of its kind. As an anatomy, it operates with surgical precision upon the necrotic legacies of race, affirming kinship and solidarity against the ongoing violence of silence and denigration. Courageously intimate and beautifully written, it is everything I admire in Tessa McWatt. -- David Chariandy, author of Ive Been Meaning to Tell YouPoignant, provocative, beautifully written, Tessa McWatts new memoir Shame on Me is an important, original and deeply thoughtful book. McWatt asks the toughest, most searching of questions about race and belonging and offers answers that surprise and challenge us. I loved it. -- Jill Dawson, author of The Language of BirdsHer 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 masters house and the field". Shame on Me is a tale of our time, yet also timeless. -- Shu-Ling Chua * 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. -- Susan Dale * 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 * Details ISBN1913348229 Publisher Scribe Publications Year 2021 ISBN-10 1913348229 ISBN-13 9781913348229 Publication Date 2021-03-11 Pages 272 UK Release Date 2021-03-11 Format Paperback Imprint Scribe Publications Place of Publication London Country of Publication United Kingdom AU Release Date 2021-03-11 NZ Release Date 2021-03-11 Author Tessa McWatt Subtitle a memoir of race and belonging Alternative 9781947534889 DEWEY 813.6 Audience General We've got this At The Nile, if you're looking for it, we've got it. 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