"Sajid Javid's memoir traces his journey from being a frightened child in racist 1970s Rochdale to becoming a leading member of a political party that attacks and marginalises people like him. However, it is an intimate, and sometimes moving, family portrait as well as a social history of race, class and aspiration in late 20thcentury Britain. The opening chapters, with their ubiquitous skinheads and Run, Paki, run taunts, contain the book's most arresting scenes."
"Racism is continuous and targeted: from graffiti on his father's shop windows to the everyday humiliations at school, and on the buses where his father had bravely fought an informal colour bar to become a bus driver. Javid doesn't shy away from showing the cruelty of 1970s and 80s Britain for brown and black kids. White neighbours and coworkers help the family inhabit the same space as racists, and the book makes it clear that the system is hostile even when individuals can be kind."
A frightened child in 1970s Rochdale endured skinheads, 'Run, Paki, run' taunts, graffiti on his father's shop, and humiliations at school and on buses. His father fought an informal colour bar to become a bus driver and repeatedly launched small clothing businesses that mostly failed. His mother was illiterate but fiercely committed to her sons' education through spotless uniforms, regimented homework and regular trips to Rochdale Library. Playground racism produced traumatic scenes, from a boy trying to rub the black off his arm with sandpaper to a shame-soaked rejection of a Black classmate. Intellectual ignition arrived through a volunteer tutor and the pink pages of the Financial Times abandoned on a bus, making reading a reliable means of escape. Strongest moments capture Dickensian domestic precariousness and an affecting family portrait.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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