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Yasmin Alibhai-Brown writes a weekly column for the Independent and has also written for the New York Times, the Guardian, the New Statesman, and the Observer.

Bevat de naam: Yasmi Alibhai-Brown

Fotografie: Yasmin Alibhai-Brown. Photo by Photo by Simon Veit-Wilson | http://www.veit-wilson.co.uk

Werken van Yasmin Alibhai-Brown

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The Alternative: Towards a New Progressive Politics (2016) — Medewerker — 8 exemplaren

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Quite a well-written and intersting account of Alibhai-Brown's childhood and teens growing up in an Indian community in Uganda...and their subsequent eviction by Idi Amin.
Accustomed as we are to the 'typical' Indian muslim lifestyle, those ex-pats who settled in Africa, seem to have had a much less constrained upbringing. Surrounded by black Africans, whites, and other Indian ethnic groups, religious observance seems to have been optional, and teenage life, while more supervised than in the West, was nonetheless filled with the dates and dances that we regard as the norm.
The author describes a dysfunctional family, headed by a 'difficult' and notably unsuccessful father; she looks at the Indians' rather arrogant, dismissive attitude toward native Ugandans...and the creeping realization that they were gradually taking back the power ...
I am not a fan of Ms Alibhai-Brown's political views, and this perhaps made me slightly less sympathetic to the events of her life. But nonetheless an engaging read.
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starbox | Jan 30, 2019 |
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown is an outspoken journalist and commentator, with a focus on issues around race and diversity. In the prologue to The Settler's Cookbook, she explains that, coming to the UK from Uganda shortly before Idi Amin's explusion of the Asian community, she left behind her treasured collection of vinyl, her books, even her photographs, but did bring a collection of kitchen paraphernalia for her student flat. She has never been able to throw any of this away. The reader might initially be tempted to see this as a simple fear of losing possessions when so much has already gone - but then Alibhai-Brown lists the items, and for each one tells a memory that goes with it, and you realise that it's far more than a collection of pots and pans.

In the rest of the book, YAB interweaves the story of the Ugandan Asians with her own memories, growing up in the early 1950s under the British Empire, getting into miniskirts and rebellion in the 1960s (while the community does well in the early years of independence), and then the growing intolerance and hardships of Idi Amin's era followed by transportation to an intermittently-welcoming UK. Scattered through the narrative are recipes, for each item of food that she mentions in her memories.

All this should be very interesting, and it often is. The problem is that it reads a bit like a first draft, or as if someone was sitting there telling you their life story: there are abrupt leaps in the subject matter, lurches in tone from spiky to lyrical, florid description to mile-a-minute honesty about very private details including the break-up of YAB's first marriage or her postnatal depression.

In a way, I think this is extremely real: both in the sense that in our own lives, our attention is often elsewhere during what turn out to be important moments, and in the sense that you feel this is YAB's authentic voice, proudly outspoken, with her intelligence leading her to jump to a new subject before you have quite figured out what she is saying. But reading it was sometimes disconcerting.

Recommended for: readers interested in how one person actually experienced the process of migration, or in the story of the Ugandan Asian community.
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wandering_star | Jan 8, 2011 |

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Werken
15
Ook door
1
Leden
123
Populariteit
#162,201
Waardering
½ 3.3
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3
ISBNs
24
Talen
1

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