This Place Called Home: Colin Grant and Aasmah Mir

Home is a complicated idea, especially as it shifts across generations. 

Aasmah Mir’s memoir, A Pebble in the Throat, chronicles both her childhood living in Glasgow in the 1970s and her mother’s childhood growing up in Pakistan in the 1950s. It travels the highs and lows of growing up between two cultures and how home becomes a haven when you’re unsure where you belong.

Colin Grant’s book, I’m Black So You Don’t Have to Be, is a memoir told through a series of intimate intergenerational portraits. We meet his mother, his father, his sister and his great-uncle, each person’s life affecting his own shifting sense of identity alongside the false promises of life in Britain offered to families like his making the move from Jamaica to the UK.

Chaired by Professor Thomas Glave.