Posts tagged ‘Identity’
London Evening Standard, 8 December 2011
Last year, only one Afro-Caribbean British student was accepted at any of Oxford‘s 38 colleges to study as an undergraduate. Only 27 British students from any origin defining themselves as black were admitted as undergraduates.
This, along with other similarly disquieting information, has been uncovered by David Lammy MP through a series of freedom of information requests.
Through him, we now know that more than 20 Oxbridge colleges made no undergraduate offers to black British candidates of Afro-Caribbean descent last year and that Merton College has not admitted a black student for the past five years — and just three in the past decade.
The colleges have their own rationale for the figures. Black students apply disproportionately for the three most oversubscribed undergraduate courses — economics and management, medicine and maths — which, says a spokesperson, “goes a very long way” to explaining the stats. This is staggeringly complacent. more
Ekow Eshun understands what it means to be multicultural. Born in Britain but spending part of his childhood in Ghana, he felt caught between two cultures whilst never belonging to either one. In Black Gold of the Sun: Searching for home in England and Africa, he sets out to trace his past in Britain and Africa in the hope of discovering a sense of place in modern life.
The result is an exploration of modern identity that straddles two continents and forces us to understand ourselves in ways that look beyond the colour of our skin. It also proves that we are not always who we think we are.
Black Gold of the Sun was nominated for the Orwell Prize for political writing, 2005.
It was described by The Independent as “ambitious in scope, impressive in execution and wide in appeal, a beautifully written, intellectually vigorous study of belonging.”
You can read reviews of Black Gold of the Sun here, here and here.
The Independent, 3 June 2005
Review by Diana Evans
That question – ‘Where are you from?’ – has hounded and perplexed the black diaspora for decades and even centuries. It is a question that is asked everywhere, in conversation and inside the head. It has infinite responses at the same time as having no answer. It’s such a simple, obvious, exhausted question, that to use it as a basis for a memoir about black identity becomes an outrageously brave thing to do.
That question – ‘Where are you from?’ – has hounded and perplexed the black diaspora for decades and even centuries. It is a question that is asked everywhere, in conversation and inside the head. It has infinite responses at the same time as having no answer. It’s such a simple, obvious, exhausted question, that to use it as a basis for a memoir about black identity becomes an outrageously brave thing to do. more
The Observer, Sunday 23 November 2003
Ekow Eshun says Michael Jackson presents himself as the victim of a vengeful media
When the world’s most famous pop star stands before a state of California judge in January, he faces the final verdict of a public trial that has lasted for two decades.
The singer is accused of multiple counts of lewd and lascivious conduct with a child under 14. Innocent or guilty, what will be revealed in the courtroom is the real face of Michael Jackson.
For the moment, with the singer out on a bail of £2 million, it’s still hard to say who he truly is. Not that we’re short of choices. Through the tabloids we have become familiar with ‘Wacko Jacko’ who sleeps in a hyperbaric chamber, dangles his baby out of a window, dyes his skin and shares a bed with young boys. Jackson himself would prefer that we saw him as the real-life Peter Pan, at his happiest riding the Ferris wheel in his 2,600-acre version of Never Never Land. more
New Statesman, 10 April 2000
London should stop selling faded pomp and circumstance to tourists and get modern. Ekow Eshun offers his personal itinerary
How is it that London chooses to advertise itself on the basis of its historic monuments rather than its vibrant contemporary culture? Millions of tourists arrive each year only to be herded like dumb cattle in the direction of Madame Tussaud’s, Big Ben and Buckingham Palace. Little wonder that, despite vociferous attempts at rebranding, Britain is still seen from abroad as uptight, insular and tradition-bound. Capital-dwellers know that the London tourist’s visit, with its narratives of pageantry and past empire, bears little relationship to the complex, culturally diverse modern city in which they live and work. So what should be on the map for the discerning 21st-century tourist? more
