Color Me English: Reflections on Migration and Belonging - Softcover

Phillips, Caryl

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1595588353 ISBN 13: 9781595588357

Publisher: The New Press, 2013

Synopsis

An arresting . . . bracing and affecting volume” (Booklist) that brims with curiosity and cosmopolitanism” (Publishers Weekly), Color Me English was hailed in the Guardian as one of the best books of 2011 by Blake Morrison. This compilation of essays from award-winning author Caryl Phillps is 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” (The Independent).

A bold reflection on race and culture across national boundaries, Color Me English includes touching stories from Phillips’s childhood in England; his years living and teaching in the United States during the turbulent times of 9/11; and his travels across Europe and Africa, where he engages with legendary writers James Baldwin, Richard Wright, Chinua Achebe, and Ha Jin. Featured on radio programs including The Leonard Lopate Show and The Diane Rehm Show and covered in Salon, the Huffington Post, and Essence, Color Me English is a stunning collection from Phillips, who writes wonderfully crafted, deeply meditative treatises . . . [that are] always interesting and informative” (Quarterly Black Review).

About this title

About the Author

Caryl Phillips is the author of numerous works of fiction and nonfiction. His novel A Distant Shore won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, and his other awards include the Martin Luther King Memorial Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. Phillips was recently named a 2011 Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He lives in New York City.

Review

Named one of the 20 Most Anticipated Books of Summer 2011 by The Huffington Post

"[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.
Quarterly Black Review

In these nearly 40 essays on migration, literature, and politics, novelist Phillips (A Distant Shore) revisits his youth in Leeds, recalls visits with other writers (e.g., Chinua Achebe, James Baldwin), recollects travels in disparate lands (Israel, France, Sierra Leone, Belgium), and meditates on the perspectives of the displaced exiles, refugees, immigrants. He reassesses writers as diverse as Lafcadio Hearn, Claude McKay, and Shusaku Endo, along with a number of British writers. While most essays are compelling, two groupings stand out: "Beginners" for what it shares about Phillips's writing process, and "Homeland Security," the book's most memorable section, which moves from a personal and very moving account of September 11 to a blistering account of the "discriminatory legislation enacted in [its] wake" and the "changes in the national mood" that threaten American pluralism. All of the essays, regardless of topic, reflect upon Phillips's "triple heritage" "British, African diasporan, Caribbean" and brim with curiosity and cosmopolitanism.
Publishers Weekly

About this edition

• Publisher: The New Press
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1595588353
• ISBN 13: 9781595588357
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 352