Natives

Best book about colonialism for non-historians.

This book is a fantastic, enjoyable, informative and enlightening read. The personal accounts and experience combined with the extensive research and reference to historical accounts, culture and contemporary events creates a multi-dimensional understanding of the workings, perceptions and experience of race and class in Britain. I would recommend this to everyone.

After listening to Akala on YouTube I was more than intrigued by his literary prowess displayed in this book. Akala integrates so many different fields of knowledge as he passionately affirms his points on race and class. He is very much on point when he argues that the suffering of black people in Britain is as real as the suffering of African Americans. Natives succeeds at showing up the hypocrisy of Britain in relation to its ideals and its actual treatment of colonial subjects. I would heartily recommend this book to any one interested in race relations in the colonial and modern era.

Very easy read while also being very informative. This read showed me experiences I did not know about. I recommend!

This absolutely fascinating book brings us into the reality if a racialised world and its rocky future. Great analysis mixed with personal experiences and data makes it a must read for all who are interested in a peaceful future with equal rights and justice for all!

This book was well written and researched. Thoroughly enjoyed this book, Thanks Akala ,Well done!

Highly recommend for a book club or educational setting. This personal account filled with historical facts really cuts away the fog of keeping calm about historical injustice, racisms supported by a class system shrouded in the trappings of pomp.

Everybody should read this book and think about the habits that make them see the world in ways so rigid that changing our opinions is far harder than it ever needed to be.

Excellent work.

A jog for Britain’s selective amnesia. As well as an education to anyone alive, and to be born. Eloquently and poignantly written. Akala hasn’t missed a beat. A well worth purchase and time spent.

Da leggere! Molto interessante, scritto molto bene

Thank you for this book. It has become all too easy to slip back into lazy stereotypical thinking, especially during these coma inducing COVID times we have been forced to live through during 'lockdown'. It is so refreshing to read a book that so eloquently echoes my own lingering fears for humanity . Akala has detailed his own experiences growing up in multicultural London in the eighties and nineties with factual evidence and parallels with American and Jamaican experience happening at the same time. We have Akala the intellectual struggling to get is voice heard with bigoted school systems and racist police alongside Akala the rapper learning his craft and helping to stamp the London brand on a traditionally American music scene. Akala is also a very sharp political commentator with his views on race, class and gender brilliantly interspersed with thoughtful, witty and often first hand evidence that leaves you wanting to find out more. Akala is unapologetic for his views and demonstrates his sharp intellect to dispel many of the infuriating myths and often racist tropes that are hauled out every day in the media and on social media. Akala forces us to confront our own prejudices and lazy thinking and energises you into wanting to do something, no matter how small, to try and end the lunacy that the current political climate seems to be taking us towards. He has put down his thoughts and his own experiences side by side in such an easy to read yet thought provoking way that you wonder why you have not heard more about him or the people and stories he talks about before and that perhaps our invidious white dominated culture is affecting us on a subconscious level much more than we realise. My only gripe with this book is that sometimes he does not go far enough and that he lets some of his protagonists get away with too much, for example, he sees Trump for what he is , a white supremacist, but I would like to see more analysis of the type of person who actually supports Trump and this would help those of us who furiously try to argue with such brick walls on social media when we get accused time and time again of being 'snowflakes' brainwashed by woke liberals etc. This is a great book and recommended reading for anyone interested in the relationship between race and class and the direction of travel for humanity in the 21st century.

Omg I’ve learnt so many facts from this book. Akala is such a knowledgeable man with a beautiful mind. The way he speaks of history does not bore you, instead you can capture his personality by the way he writes. The information that he speaks of is so relevant to this day and age, and it has given me a deeper understanding of the society we live in as a whole. Very inspiring and insightful, I totally recommend for anyone and everyone.