A Review of The Good Immigrant – an exposé on dire race relations in the UK by Ysy Lees

MA student Ysy Lees reviews The Good Immigrant - an anthology of twenty-one essays that expertly reveal Britain’s concept of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ immigrants while trying to identify what lies in the space in between.

Described by Zadie Smith as a ‘must-read’, The Good Immigrant has been used as a key source by white audiences in the educating of today’s hugely biased racial narratives [1]. This anthology of essays exposes the bastardisation of yoga, Indian takeaways, and fashion through its twenty-one minority authors, each exploring ‘what it means to be black, Asian and minority ethnic in Britain today’ and ‘what it’s like to live in a country that doesn’t trust you…unless you win an Olympic gold medal’ [2].

The Good Immigrant began after editor, Nikesh Shukla, read a comment underneath one of his interviews in the Guardian online that questioned his validity as a writer. They even suggested that he was only there because the interviewer was Asian too. Shukla states in the editor’s note of the book that ‘this constant anxiety we feel as people of colour to justify our space, to show that we have earned our place at the table, continues to hound us. There were writers I knew coming up against the same barriers I felt coming up. Doing the book allowed me to create a platform for them’ [3].

It came into existence thanks to the crowdfunded publishing platform Unbound, after just three days of advertising and endorsement on Twitter from none other than JK Rowling, who tweeted ‘I think this will be an important timely read’. Rowling also donated £5000 towards the cause, boosting its conceptual development into a published and now best-selling book. Twenty-one minority ethnic figures were established as the authors, and The Good Immigrant was born. It has since found its place among other revered race-central titles: How To Be An Antiracist by Ibram X Kendi (2019) and Why I’m No Longer Talking To White People About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge (2017), just one of the impeccably articulate authors who also features in The Good Immigrant.

This collection makes a successful effort in exposing the full range of individuals and industries that Britain’s underlying and overt racism continues to affect. In addition to Eddo-Lodge, other writers include comedian Nish Kumar, actor Riz Ahmed, Guardian editor Coco Khan, and actress Vera Chok. Each chapter invites the reader into that specific author’s life growing up in Britain as a minority, with every writer approaching their perspectives in different, yet equally expository ways. Hari Kunzru states ‘each essay is like another new friend standing up and saying to the reader, “I see you”’ [3]. Ahmed’s chapter, ‘Airports and Auditions’ highlights his life in purgatory as he lives in the space between good and bad immigrant, through language that shockingly transforms the racism he faces into an occurrence that for me would be as everyday as eating toast for breakfast. When describing his experiences at the airport he states, ‘he started calling me ‘beta’, or son…this veered dangerously close to incest every time he had to frisk my crotch’ [3, p. 168]. As a known actor who was not yet famous enough to qualify as a ‘good immigrant’, and perhaps, more importantly, to bypass security pat-down, Ahmed injects this otherwise routine display of racism with humour, throwing the normality of prejudice into the faces of white audiences. This chapter whips off the invisibility cloak chucked over race-related micro-aggressions within its brilliantly critical yet subtle internal monologue that targets stereotyping and racial bias.

Other chapters are far more overt in their prose, yet they continue to deliver poignant and searing minority perspectives with Mishal Husain describing the contributors as ‘a stunning collection of original voices, challenging how we see race and difference’ [3]. Filmmaker Daniel York Loh reveals in his chapter ‘Kendo Nagasaki and Me’ that he had to go to school with ‘kids calling me a chink or a Jap’, while actress Miss L states in ‘The Wife of a Terrorist’ that in drama school she was told she would indeed only ever be cast as the wife of a terrorist [3, pp. 49,199]. These hard-hitting chapters expose the racism hidden within our institutions that actively reinforces stereotypes and consequent misrepresentations in popular culture. The remainder of Miss L’s excerpt savagely exemplifies the lack of opportunities in the film sector for minorities, continually fuelling the narrative that this is all she, and the millions of minority individuals in the audience watching, are worth.

In the wake of George Floyd’s tragic murder by a white police officer in 2020 and the subsequent Black Lives Matter movement, The Good Immigrant is an essential and timely text for white audiences looking to improve their recognition of racism and its microaggressions. Shazia Mirza calls The Good Immigrant ‘a book of our time which everyone must read’ while the Independent stated ‘if I could, I’d push a copy of this through the letterbox of every front door in Britain’, demonstrating the vitality of its publication [4]. The anthology tackles one of the largest systemic issues in history through its brave, no holding back approach that is completely necessary in today’s toxic apartheid. The twenty-one chapters are each unique and superbly apt in demonstrating the injustice that many of us have never had to experience without conveying a victimised ‘woe is me’ narrative. The Good Immigrant is an essential book in understanding race relations in Britain that should be read with the greatest urgency and shared everywhere, from schools to suburbs.

References

[1] CHRISTIAN, Kayti. 2021.‘Make These 27 Books Part Of Your Anti-Racism Education’. The Good Trade. Available at: https://www.thegoodtrade.com/features/books-on-race [accessed 10 November 2021].

[2] SHUKLA, Nikesh, et al. 2016. The Good Immigrant. 1st edn. London: Unbound

[3] SOUTHBANK CENTRE. 2021. ‘Nikesh Shukla on curating The Good Immigrant’. Southbank Centre. Available at: https://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/blog/articles/nikesh-shukla-the-good-immigrant [accessed 10 November 2021].

[4] BARNETT, David. 2016. ‘The Good Immigrant, edited by Nikesh Shukla, review: ‘I’d push a copy of this through the letterbox of every front door in Britain’’. The Independent [online]. Available at: https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/the-good-immigrant-nikesh-shukla-riz-ahmed-a7346916.html [accessed 12 November 2021].

Edited by Tia Jade Woolcock