Dispatches from the Diaspora: From Nelson Mandela to Black Lives Matter

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Gary Younge is an award-winning author, broadcaster and a professor of sociology at the University of Manchester in England. No single journalist has done more to shape my understanding of Black diaspora’s experiences in the world today – Gary Younge’s is not a first draft of history, but storytelling that will survive us all. From Nobel Laureates Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter to theatre greats Tom Stoppard and Alan Bennett to rising stars Polly Stenham and Florian Zeller, Faber Drama presents the very best theatre has to offer. Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor “Gary Younge has borne witness to some of the most critical events in the black diaspora in recent times with an honest and humane eye. Gary Younge is an award-winning author, broadcaster and a professor of sociology at the University of Manchester.

The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. His writing has appeared in the New York Times , the New York Review of Books , the Financial Times, GQ, Granta , and beyond. A journalist who throughout his career has shown a commitment to exploring, explaining and challenging his audience. Faber Members get access to live and online author events and receive regular e-newsletters with book previews, promotional offers, articles and quizzes. Gary Younge has borne witness to some of the most critical events in the black diaspora in recent times with an honest and humane eye.

He reports from New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, joins revelers on Chicago's South Side for the evening of Barack Obama's first presidential victory, files from Ferguson as the Black Lives Matter movement starts to make waves around the world, and visits Zimbabwe during the country's descent into crisis. Or as the artist Chris Ofili told me, when I asked him during an interview how he responded to the threat of pigeon-holing: ‘Well, pigeons can fly. One of the first columns I wrote for the Guardian, about the NATO bombing of Bosnia, was spiked because the comment editor at the time thought I should stick to subjects closer to home. A powerful collection of journalism on race, racism and black life and death from one of the nation's leading political voices.

After several years of reporting from all over Europe, Africa, the US and the Caribbean Gary was appointed The Guardian’s New York correspondent in 2003. Reflecting on three decades of his remarkable career as a journalist, Dispatches from the Diaspora is a powerful collection of his writings on race, racism, and Black life and death. This book draws on my journalism from or about the African diaspora, including the Caribbean, Zimbabwe, Sierra Leone and Europe, as well as Britain and the US. A fear of being ‘pigeon-holed’ is one of the most common crippling anxieties of any minority in any profession.

Gary Younge is a journalist who throughout his career has shown a commitment to exploring, explaining and challenging his audience - his work … takes us to uncomfortable places but with clarity, humanity and empathy. Race in particular, and Black people in general, were a couple of the subjects I wanted to focus on. Formerly a columnist at The Guardian he is an editorial board member of the Nation magazine, the Alfred Knobler Fellow for Type Media and winner of the 2023 Orwell Prize for Journalism. Gary Younge is an award-winning author, broadcaster and professor of sociology at the University of Manchester in Britain. And Should it Matter in the 21st century, Stranger in a Strange Land, Travels in the Disunited States and No Place Like Home, A Black Briton’s Journey Through the Deep South.