Anita Sethi begins her book I Belong Here with an account of racial abuse. Travelling on the TransPennine Express train, a man insults her, saying, amongst other things too vile to repeat, “to get back on the banana boat”. Sethi has the presence of mind to film part of the incident. With this evidence, she seeks out the guard and the man is later arrested by the police and prosecuted. Ironically, the incident occurred just after the train passed through Manchester, where Sethi was born and traverses a landscape that would otherwise be comfortingly familiar to her.

The emotional fallout from this event provides the impetus for this book. Weeks after the attack Sethi remains haunted by the experience. She decides to take herself off and walk across the backbone of England, along the Pennine Way. This trek is undertaken in defiance of the hate crime; it’s an attempt to claim her right to belong, to roam freely in the land of her birth and still her mind amidst the rugged landscapes she encounters.

As a small girl, Sethi’s family once had the opportunity to visit the Lake District – Asian families like hers didn’t often visit the countryside in those days. Here, amidst the mountains and lakes, Sethi responded to the awe of the wild.

Even from my one trip to the mountains and lakes, that landscape lived inside me. My heart had opened huge enough to be filled with those deep lakes and high mountains; my heart had opened up and fallen in love with the world all over again.

It is this sense of wonder and love of the world that Sethi hopes to rediscover on her walk across the Pennines. Emotions that she hopes will connect her with herself and anchor her in place.

Sethi freely admits that she is a novice at hiking long trails over challenging terrain and she is also inexperienced at walking alone. Early on she discovers the harshness of the journey. She recounts the challenge of climbing the 400 steps to Malham Cove in the rain, carrying her heavy backpack, wearing inadequate shoes that slip and slide and fill with water. Here, in the immediacy of her walking, she is like the soaring peregrine, she observes, living in the present moment, released from the hurt of her past.

As we accompany her on her journey, we share her frustration at getting lost, we feel the ache in her bones, and we understand how alone she feels at times. But we also watch her confidence grow and her anxiety decrease as she becomes more grounded. “Walking through such wild, ancient landscape brings a strong awareness of how we are all temporary guests on this earth. We take nothing with us.”

The reader follows not only Sethi’s physical adventure but is also party to her internal monologue on the nature of being and belonging, on race and prejudice, on language and the power of words, on history and the bias found in the selective telling of that history. Added to this she shares her accumulation of knowledge about the natural world. Perhaps these factual ramblings appear too frequently and some read like Wikipedia entries that jar against her otherwise lyrical writing style. However, the best of these asides pick up on her major themes and provide insight into the issues surrounding racism in contemporary Britain.

Towards the end of the book Sethi evaluates the “extent to which nature and walking can be ameliorative to symptoms of PTSD and trauma, and evolving notions of a so-called ‘nature cure’.”

Walking in nature seemed to make me more open and lessen that fear of trusting others, I say, and I also felt like it changed the neural pathways of my brain and made me more open to new experiences and to both remember and let go of the past.

Sethi spoke out on the train and she has spoken out in writing this book. “I will not stop speaking out”, she says, “and I will not stop walking through the world, my home.” It has to be hoped that along with asserting her right to belong, Sethi encourages more BAME and other disadvantaged British citizens to get out in nature and claim the countryside as their own.

Through the redemptive journey Sethi undertakes in I Belong Here, she finds connectivity with the land of her birth and the sense of belonging she craves. Her emotional turmoil is quietened and we, her readers, are left moved, enlightened and hopeful.

Review by Deborah Gray

How do you write about a book that means so much? How do you summarise a book that has so much to say? It’s easy to write about a bad book. It’s easy to talk about mediocre work. However, it’s hard to sound rational when something means so much to you. It is easy to summarise a single point book. However, it is harder to summarise books that meander wonderfully. This book is an example of that type of book. That’s why it has taken so long to review this work. I have now read it twice, and I have only recently found a way to talk about it.

This book is about a journey that meanders. It follows the Pennine Way, but sometimes leaves to explore interesting locations along the way.

The structure of this book follows its content. It could also be said to resemble a tree or a human nervous system. (The author speaks of the nervous system within the text). This book is rooted within the author’s experience of racial abuse, speaking of abuse that she encountered on a train and the trauma that followed the incident.

The book’s spine explores the trauma of the event and the questions arising from it. The author asks, ‘what does it mean to belong in Britain’? The book branches out to explore issues of; identity, race, and trauma. She asks who has the right to roam in the English countryside, outlining the struggles to gain access to the English countryside. She furthers this by exploring how many are made to feel unwanted within Britain.

This book is grounded in personal experience but reaches into theoretical discussions and political analysis that enrich the discourse.
Have I said that I really love this book? Well, I do. I give it five stars and highly recommend that you read it.

Thank you to the publisher for letting me see a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review

This book was written after a horrible experience with a thug on a train journey. I read as much as I could but did not finish. The tone was abrasive, hectoring and very disjointed. Rambling on from one subject to another with very fanciful descriptions. I appreciate it was a nasty ordeal but this book wasn’t the answer or at least not how it’s been written.

Although I find the concept of this book remarkable, I didn't enjoy the writing. Racism is a huge problem in the UK, and there should be more and more books on this issue. But with better writing abilities.

This is a very needed story, and I loved the nature writing in parts, but I just did not get on with the author's style of writing. That said, we've now got it out on a display of 'political walking' books because it's definitely going to be someone's cup of tea.

The different experiences are interesting and some moments are heartbreaking but the travelogue part, the political part and the personal trauma seems to be part of different books and I was a bit confused at times.
It's full of interesting ideas but it was all mixed.
Not my cup of tea.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

My thanks to #Netgalley and #BloomsburyWildlife publishing for the opportunity to review this book.

An interesting book, but not for me. Beautifully written and researched but didn’t hold my interest. Perhaps it’s the downside of Black Lives Matter. I know that racism is a problem and unfortunately it needs education and more basic kindness but at the moment I just feel that it’s everything and everywhere. Not the naturalistic adventure I was expecting.

Two things are certain: 1) BIPOC writers should appear more frequently on prize lists, so it’s wonderful that Sethi is on the Wainwright Prize shortlist; but 2) this book was poorly put together. It’s part memoir of an incident of racial abuse on a train, part political manifesto, and part quite nice travelogue. The parts don’t make a whole. The contents are repetitive and generic (including definitions and overstretched metaphors involving place names), with name dropping of her achievements and travel books she’s read. Sethi had a couple of strong articles here (e.g. the Prologue is a good standalone), not a whole book. I blame her editors for not eliciting better. The actual landscape and walking writing is quite good, but too often she tries generalizing and ends up with cringe-inducing passages (e.g. “Everyone needs to feel a sense of belonging, and without it arises a deep loneliness and isolation that can affect the mental health – and such loneliness has seeped through my life since childhood”). In places, the prose is just plain shaky: “I felt the familiar connection to be stopped here in my hometown and the inevitable flood of memories at this station” and “I can’t remember what I saw and bore first. … I will have witnessed the dark amniotic fluid within my mother’s body”.

After Anita Sethi experienced a horrendous racial attack while travelling on a train in 2019, she suffered from debilitating anxiety, claustrophobia and panic attacks. Determined not to let this experience make her afraid to travel or explore, she decided to walk the Pennines, otherwise known as the backbone of Britain, to reclaim her sense of safety and belonging in her country. This is a multi-layered, courageous and important book about the healing power of nature, the right to personal safety and belonging, reclaiming history and public space, and a timely reminder that we must always keep walking forwards.

With thanks to the author, Netgalley and the publisher for an ARC.

DNF

As an ardent advocate for social justice, equality and human rights, and someone with a passion for hiking, this book would seem to have been written for me. Quality writing though is a prerequisite and that is where this book fell short.

I enjoyed this book.well some of it,it was well written but made me think how some people behave to others.I treat people how I want to be treated and it isn’t right people should abused for any reason

Instead of the linear narrative you might expect, from damage to healing, this book takes what is probably a far more realistic view on the process of healing (and also of grieving, which there is quite a lot of in the book, too). She spirals around the subject of the attack and also other topics, whether that’s the life-giving properties of sphagnum moss, the intricacies of a limestone pavement, her difficult and abusive childhood or the theme of spines and resilience. At first I kind of pushed against this, slightly resenting spiralling off into another musing on spines, skin, grass when I wanted to get on with the walking, but I feel I might have been institutionalised by the other nature/travel writing I’ve read – and I’ve read a lot of it – primarily but not always written by men, and more linear, maybe more confident, maybe less questioning (Sethi remarks several times that a bird has gone too fast for her to ID it, or she just can’t recognise a species – not that common in the more standard works). So again, massive fair play to her, writing this as she wants to, claiming her place, thinking her thoughts.

My full review on my blog here: https://librofulltime.wordpress.com/2021/06/30/book-review-anita-sethi-i-belong-here/

This book was a bit of a mixed bag. I like the premise - but I didn't like how it was executed at times.
Anita Sethi is a victim of a racist attack on a train, and it inspires her to go back to the landscapes of her region - the Pennine Way, near Manchester. I can see how she really tried to use that long walk to share her experience of racism growing up in the UK as the child of immigrants from the Commonwealth. But it felt clumsy and forced - she crosses a bridge, and that's her transition to talk about building bridges between communities; the colours "of creatures in the natural world - bright green parakeets, kingfisher blue, golden tigers, raven black" inspires her to talk about skin colour; She tried to cram too much in this book and it didn't quite work for me. I liked her descriptions of nature (it did make me want to go and do that same walk), I found her comments on race especially in the countryside and outdoors interesting, but they were not linked together in a way that made for an enjoyable read.

I Belong Here is a rich and evocative piece of nature writing in which Sethi explores identity, nature, place and belonging as well as the link between mother nature and a horrifying hate crime she was subjected to. During a trip through Northern England Anita Sethi became the victim of a race-hate crime. The crime was a vicious attack on her right to exist in a place on account of her race. After the attack, Anita experienced panic attacks and anxiety. A crushing sense of claustrophobia made her long for wide open spaces, to breathe deeply in the great outdoors. She was intent on not letting her experience stop her travelling freely and without fear. In her new book, I Belong Here: a Journey Along the Backbone of Britain, the first of her nature writing trilogy, Anita transforms her personal experience into one of universal resonance.

By offering a call to action, to keep walking onwards, forging a path through and beyond pain, every footstep taken is an act of persistence. Every word written is an act of resistance. Anita's journey through the natural landscapes of the North is one of reclamation, a way of saying that this is her land too and she belongs in the UK as a brown woman, as much as a white man does. Her journey transforms what began as an ugly experience of hate into one offering hope and finding beauty after brutality. A fascinating, insightful and powerful exploration of how nature has the power to ground and to heal, and Sethi illustrates that even despite the despicable actions of others, solace can be sought and found. Highly recommended especially to those suffering from any kind of trauma. I am already eagerly anticipating the sequel.

With thanks to the publishers and NetGalley for an advance review copy.

I am an immigrant and I now live in the Peak District, prime walking country, and I thought the concept of this book sounded fascinating. The author, victim of a shocking racist crime in spite of having been born and bred in Manchester, tells the tale of how she set out to reclaim her sense of self and belonging by walking the Pennine Way. The book is structured around sections named for parts of the body, with a correlation made with the Pennines as the backbone of England, and an emphasis on the awakening of the senses in nature that restore our sense of belonging in our world.

I was expecting the book to be mainly an account of being in nature, of the restorative power of rebuilding the relationship with the landscape that many of us have lost in our busy lives, and of rediscovering a sense that we are a part of nature and thus have a place on earth. And it sort of is that, I suppose. But it failed to grip me, and I’m afraid I gave up about halfway in.

At the root of my problem with it, I think, is the fact that Anita Sethi is a journalist, and her writing ability does not stretch to a convincingly written longer book. As a ‘brown woman’ in England, she has been subjected to macro and micro aggressions her whole life, to the extent of feeling physically silenced for many years. Unfortunately, her authorial voice fails to do justice to the enormous racial disparities in our society, and her musings feel trite and laboured. So, for example, the grass she walks over is the earth’s green skin, prompting the thought that in nature it is easy to forget her brown skin. Walking across a bridge prompts thoughts about - you guessed it - building bridges across cultural divides. She eats a full English breakfast and considers that her identity as fully English is questioned. And so on, most repetitively and predictably. I am by no means negating the truth of what she says, but the way she makes her points sounds preachy, stilted and cliched. There are also slightly random info dumps which only have a tenuous relationship to the narrative and interrupt the flow. Her technique of taking a feature of the landscape and extrapolating an analogy with social phenomena, with a bit of research she’s carried out thrown in, rapidly becomes laboured and repetitive.

This book’s heart is undoubtedly in the right place, but it’s about powerful feelings and societal wrongs, and needs a powerful voice to make an impact, and Anita Sethi’s is sadly not that voice.

This book is both about walking in the English countryside and about the experience of life as a racialised woman in Britain. Sethi's is a journey of claiming back her belonging through connecting with the land of home, Northern England. A vicious racist attack on a train is at the start of the book but it is not the first time something like this has happened to the author. These attacks have shaken and undermined her belief in her right to belong, and demonstrated the opinions and preconceptions of so many of her fellow English people who do not seem to think that she belongs. One of these people was the Prince of Wales, who once told her that she did not look like she came from Manchester, the town she had identified to him as her home. What an incredibly painful, horrible experience to have to live through, again and again. Sethi sets off to walk along the Pennine Way, on which she admires the beauty and power of nature and reclaims her identity as a Northener, and her belonging to the place of this part of England. The sanctity of the land and nature is protected by law, and she draws a parallel to the Equalities Act, which protects certain characteristics of human beings. For some reason, I had expected this to be a book of natural history, which might be similar to the work of Robert Macfarlane for example. Instead it is a deep and important contemplation of the meaning of belonging to a place, how it can be corrupted by repeated attacks, and reclaimed by connecting with the land. Reading it was a transformative journey for me, coming from my experience as a white person living in a country that is not 'mine' originally, but in which people only very rarely question my belonging. It has been a real education for me and I hope it will be for many other people, too. We have a very long way to go when it comes to making everyone feel like they belong here. This book will help me work harder towards that.

The book has definitely made me want to explore the nature of the North, as well!

Thank you NetGalley and Bloomsbury Publishing for an ebook ARC in exchange for an honest and unbiased review.

I Belong Here is an emotional, informative memoir looking at what it means to belong. Anita Sethi set out to walk the Pennine Way following a race hate crime on a train. Sethi's physical exploration of Northern Britain is beautifully described and as someone that also takes great solace in walking amongst nature I found a lot of comfort in these pages. There is a blend of travel writing, natural history, social justice and psychology. This was especially helpful to read whilst also suffering with anxiety. I found myself remembering the advice Sethi repeated to herself and applying it to my life. It was one of those books that I just happened to read when I really needed it. Definitely recommend!

What this does excellently is put you in the shoes of someone who’s been facing racism and accusations of not belonging their entire life. Following an incident of racial abuse on a train, and already dealing with anxiety and PTSD, Anita Sethi decides to walk the Pennine Way - to take comfort in nature and to reclaim her sense of belonging in the North of England.

Where this works is in what it feels like when no-one else takes a stand, or others diminish your experience. As a white woman living in predominantly white areas of rural Britain, it’s given me plenty to think on as to my behaviours and the support I do/don’t show.

She also covers her journey, nature and environmental topics, language, history, psychology and so on. At times her research sits heavily, and I didn’t always love the writing. But I would wholeheartedly recommend you read the book.

As someone who is obsessed with "belonging" to a place and loves to read writer's thoughts on this subject and how they create a sense of belonging, I was really looking forward to reading this book. In fact, this was my most anticipated non-fiction of the year. And sadly, this book just did not work for me. I found her train of thoughts utterly confusing, the ponderings on word definitions and her analogies especially were driving me nearly to distraction. The first part of the book worked better for me, but the other 2/3 of the book were just a slog.

A description of Anita Sethi´s walk along the Pennines in the North of England after having suffered under a racially motivated hate crime on a train, thus trying to recover from her PSD and anxiety by interacting with nature.

I can imagine (or not) that it must have been awful to suffer this crime with its impact on her life, so I understand that the author wanted to write something about her experience and dealing with it. But...

The rather small parts of this book about her walk are combined with thoughts about her experience on the train, general racism, colonialism, but also psychotherapy by water and other natural phenomena, preservation of nature etc. etc. All these themes get a bit too much in this description, and are further augmented by explanations of certain words, plants, body parts, history, which everyone could easily have looked up.

Good intention, but not very well written and overloaded with these signs of "knowledge". Though she as a Brit has studied history she doesn´t even know when the year of the three Kings was. I also thought that she was badly prepared for a such a long walk over days and weeks, f.e. concerning her shoes.

Those are only small parts, but they add to my disappointment with this book. And editor/co-writer would perhaps have helped.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for an ebook ARC in exchange for an honest review.