This is a brilliant memoir. This is such a honest book. The writing is wonderful. It is very well paced. A great read.

Thank you to Netgalley, the publishers and of course the author for gifting me this advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

An autobiographical book depicting the life of Colin Grant, a black Briton born to parents from Jamaica who came to the UK to create a 'better life', told in 8 sections each one linked to a person who has played an important part of his life.

Colin Grant trained to be a doctor, moving from his home town of Luton to live in London with his uncle allowing him to try and make his own identity in the world and explaining throughout how he has had to adapt and change to enable him to succeed in a world run by white privilege, by learning how to adapt behaviours depending on who you are with. Although I am white british myself, my husband is Nigerian (grew up in Nigeria until he came to the UK with his family when he was 12 and still has strong roots and connections to Nigeria) and in the 8 years we have been together (and with friends prior to being with him) I have witnessed first hand the changes in treatment and behaviours people will exhibit to him compared to me which saddens and disgusts me. I also feel sad after discussions with my afro caribbean friends who explain similar situations and also sadly working as a nurse when my black colleagues have suffered racism from patients not wanting to be treated by them amongst other things. Now we are parents to 2 beautiful daughters and I am having to learn and adapt my way of parenting and learn how to navigate them through life when I know that unfortunately as some point they will be on the receiving end of racism and I know I won't always be there to protect them.

This book is beautifully rounded off when Colin's own children reunite him with his roots and his caribbean identity by taking him back to Jamaica.

There needs to be more awareness and more education on racism especially in schools, as I remember in school the only thing we were taught was one lesson on slavery tied in with the english history - almost as though it was fine and part and parcel of the english history - and classified as 'black history' - that is not black history - that is history that happened to black people. There needs to be more positive education on the endless and extensive black history and all the amazing black people that have made history that are overlooked and not acknowledged due to the white privileged world we live in.

Thanks again to Netgalley and the publisher and of course, Colin Grant ,for sharing his story.

Grant takes eight different people - family members plus one medical school colleague and one man in the community and hospital who is living with severe mental health issues - and tells stories of his interactions with them, then giving us a composite portrait of his own life from many different angles.

We meet his difficult and demanding dad, about whom he's already written a book, running through life from Grant's youth to Bageye's death and funeral, his mum, and in particular her return trip to Jamaica after many years away, his enterprising and uncompromising sister, who recreated herself and ended up a Ghanaian princess rather than the daughter of Caribbean immigrants living in Luton, and his uncle and mentor, who provided him with the title of the book, pointing out that the first wave of his family and their friends did the hard work, to allow him and his generation to, for example (shockingly to them), move to Brighton, allow their children to address them by their first names and enjoy eating lentil dishes.

Many of the characters are prickly and difficult, and there are some challenging scenes, particularly in the chapter on Charlie, his White activist medical school friend, with whom he bonds over dissection class (I knocked half a star off for this, really: I'd have rather known it was coming) ... The final chapter takes us through to his children and the way in which they embrace the Caribbean heritage he's not been so keen on, and the lessons he's learned from them.

This completes what is a humble and self-effacing - and fascinating - journey through recent Black British history, complete with its still-existing institutional racism (his experiences at the BBC are horrible but not surprising, maybe, having read around this topic a fair bit). A charming and compelling read indeed!

My blog review: https://librofulltime.wordpress.com/2023/01/29/book-review-colin-grant-im-black-so-you-dont-have-to-be/

When the personal becomes collective

Colin Grant’s wonderfully structured, non linear autobiography is both a laying out of his own story, as a black Briton, whose parents came from Jamaica, in the late 50s, and a laying out of the experiences of his parent’s generation, his own, and onwards.

It is a joyous, bleak, celebration of individual lives, and also a story which demands that white readers pay attention. From time to time events happen which make us do just that, but then, perhaps, we forget the petty, daily, evidences of our colonial thinking.

Colin Grant tells the stories of others, primarily his parents, a sibling, and the extended family of his parent’s generation, but also, of a stranger whose life crossed his during his training as a doctor. The first story starts as he leaves Luton, where he grew up, and stayed for a while with an uncle in London, when he started his medical training. So this is a young man, leaving home, beginning to find his identity outside his family. The final story is that of his own children, who beautifully bring him home to embrace his Caribbean identity.

The whole point about this journey being that – to succeed in a white world, black Britons have to learn to ‘code-switch’ There is a way to be within a white world, and a different way to be with other black people.

I have read a few books this year, by other black writers exploring their own personal journeys, but, depressingly, there are these common experiences of white privilege everywhere and all around.

This is a fabulous read, and, by revealing through showing and celebrating individual lives, the messages land more precisely and devastatingly – including for Grant himself – than any polemic could do

I'm Black So You Don't Have To Be is easily my favourite memoir of the year.

I love how Grant puts different people from his life at the heart of each vignette: it's such a smart way to add depth and perspective to autobiographical writing. There is real warmth and honesty in his narration, even through the complex subjects he touches upon, such as domestic abuse, institutional racism and familial alienation. And his storytelling is wonderful - so immediate and well-paced that I found myself reading carefully so as not to skip a word.

It's rare to read a memoir so well-crafted; this is an astute and absorbing read.

A very powerful and gripping story that is difficult to read in some parts but worth sticking with. This is a first for me by the author and one I enjoyed and would read more of their work. The book cover is eye-catching and appealing and would spark my interest if in a bookshop. Thank you very much to the author, publisher and Netgalley for this ARC.