I’m Black So You Don’t Have to Be

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What to expect

Brought to you by Penguin.

'I'm black, so you don't have to be,' Colin Grant's uncle Castus used to tell him. For Colin, born in Britain to Jamaican parents, things were supposed to be different. If he worked hard and became a doctor, he was told, his race would become invisible; he would shake off the burden he believed his parents' generation had carried. The reality turned out to be very different.

This is a memoir told through a series of intimate intergenerational portraits. We meet Grant's mother Ethlyn, disappointed by working-class life in Luton, who dreams of returning to Jamaica; his father Bageye, a small-time criminal with a violent temper; his sister Selma, who refashioned herself as an African princess; his great uncle Percy, estranged from his family through his own pride.

Each character we meet is navigating their own path. Each life informs Grant's own shifting sense of his identity. Collectively these stories build into poignant and insightful testimony of black British experience. Written the intrigue, nuance, beauty and wit of short stories, and with the veracity and painful revelation of memoir, I'M BLACK, SO YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE is a unforgettable exploration of family, identity, race and generational change.

© Colin Grant 2022 (P) Penguin Audio 2022

Critics Review

  • Colin Grant writes about the characters in his family with the mischievous, dramatic flair of a natural storyteller. This is a compelling and charming read.

    Bernardine Evaristo, Booker Prize-winning author Girl, Woman, Other

  • An important and timely book for an increasingly diverse and diffuse set of communities, a reminder of those questions of home and belonging, an invitation to parse them.

    Guardian

  • This outstanding memoir contains a beautiful tenderness and a courageous realness. Vibrant, poignant and brutally frank, it is rooted in authenticity and wisdom, the details of a world well-observed. Grant’s work here is powerful, evocative, empowered and forthright.

    Salena Godden, author of Mrs Death Misses Death

  • Grant’s most revealing work… This compelling and poignant book gives a convincing answer to the first question: that there is more than one way to be black.

    New Statesman

  • A memoir told through Grant’s interaction with his family and others, but presented in impeccable prose and woven together with all the tensions and humour of the best fiction. A hugely enjoyable read. Get it now.

    Roger Robinson, author of A Portable Paradise

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