Highlights so much of the systematic racism apparent in the UK that I was not aware of before reading. I found it particularly poignant reading about Akala’s experiences in school and as a youth from the perspective of a teacher. Essential reading.

A beautifully written book dissecting a million ugly truths, Natives is Akala at his levelheaded, eloquent best. Such important work.

A beautifully written book dissecting a million ugly truths, Natives is Akala at his levelheaded, eloquent best. Such important work.

Akala is a musician and poet who has won MOBO awards and founded the Hip Hop Shakespeare Company. He was born in the 1980s into a world where casual (and institutional) racism was common - bananas thrown at black footballers, the National Front had just spawned the BNP, and the British Nationality Act 1981 decreed that people from our former colonies, including the Windrush generation, became Commonwealth citizens rather than British subjects. While my white contemporaries were singing about Feeding the World Nelson Mandela was still imprisoned in a South Africa built on apartheid and parts of Britain experienced riots in predominantly black areas - life was not as fair as it seemed to me. In this book Akala talks about what life was like growing up in multicultural Camden in a single-parent family - the good as well as the bad. He witnessed violence and prejudice but was also supported by the wider Afro-Carribean community. He was an intelligent, enquiring child (a fact which often seemed to disturb some teachers - which was, oddly, the part which I found the most upsetting) and is now an intelligent writer. This is not just an account of Akala's own life but also that of that wider community - the history of British Imperialism, the Commonwealth and worldwide racial issues - and it doesn't just look at attitudes to race. Akala is mixed race - his mother is Scottish - and is now part of the middle classes but he had a working class upbringing. His assertion seems to be that while there is some sense of 'otherness' about people of different races racism is not innate. But this otherness is often used by those in positions of power (either real or assumed) to focus the fears of those who have no power. This book is a powerfully argued plea for a fairer world. One where nobody is judged by the circumstances of their birth - either by class, race, religion or skin colour - and everyone has a chance to realise their potential. I was, once again, reminded of the privileges I enjoy but was never made to feel that I didn't have the right to make the most of them. What I was left with was a desire to work with and for those who are less fortunate and the reminder that what that work should involve isn't my decision to make.

Nothing I write here will convey how fantastic Natives is. This book is extremely relevant, well researched, compelling and heartbreaking. This is the history that should be taught in schools and Akala's voice is desperately needed in the current landscape. It's even managed to reignite my love of learning which is a miracle in itself. I'm off to read it again to make sure I didn't miss anything....