The good immigrant

Originally published: 2016. Paperback edition 2017.

Namaste / Nikesh Shukla -- A guide to being black / Varaidzo -- My name is my name / Chimene Suleyman -- Yellow / Vera Chok -- Kendo Nagasaki and me / Daniel York Loh -- Window of opportunity / Himesh Patel -- Is Nish Kumar a confused Muslim? / Nish Kumar -- Forming blackness through a screen / Reni Eddo-Lodge -- Beyond 'good' immigrants / Wei Ming Kam -- 'You can't say that! Stories have to be about white people' / Darren Chetty -- On going home / Kieran Yates -- Flags / Coco Khan -- Cutting through (on black barbershops and masculinity) / Inua Ellams -- Wearing where you're at: immigration and UK fashion / Sabrina Mahfouz -- Airports and auditions / Riz Ahmed -- Perpetuating casteism / Sarah Sahim -- Shade / Salena Godden -- The wife of a terrorist / Miss L -- What we talk about when we talk about tokenism / Bim Adewunmi -- Death is a many-headed monster / Vinay Patel -- The ungrateful country / Musa Okwonga.

How does it feel to be constantly regarded as a potential threat, strip-searched at every airport?

Or be told that, as an actress, the part you’re most fitted to play is ‘wife of a terrorist’? How does it feel to have words from your native language misused, misappropriated and used aggressively towards you? How does it feel to hear a child of colour say in a classroom that stories can only be about white people? How does it feel to go ‘home’ to India when your home is really London? What is it like to feel you always have to be an ambassador for your race? How does it feel to always tick ‘Other’?

Bringing together 21 exciting black, Asian and minority ethnic voices emerging in Britain today, The Good Immigrant explores why immigrants come to the UK, why they stay and what it means to be ‘other’ in a country that doesn’t seem to want you, doesn’t truly accept you – however many generations you’ve been here – but still needs you for its diversity monitoring forms.

Inspired by discussion around why society appears to deem people of colour as bad immigrants – job stealers, benefit scroungers, undeserving refugees – until, by winning Olympic races or baking good cakes, or being conscientious doctors, they cross over and become good immigrants, editor Nikesh Shukla has compiled a collection of essays that are poignant, challenging, angry, humorous, heartbreaking, polemic, weary and – most importantly – real.