‘What are you?’ Tessa McWatt knows first-hand that the answer to this question, often asked by white people, is always more complicated than it seems. Is the answer English, Scottish, British, Caribbean, Portuguese, Indian, Amerindian, French, African, Chinese, Canadian? Like most families, hers is steeped in myth and the anecdotes of grandparents and parents who view their histories through the lens of desire, aspiration, loss, and shame.

In Shame On Me Tessa unspools all the interwoven strands of her inheritance, she dismantles her own body and examines it piece by piece to build a devastating and incisively subtle analysis of the race debate as it now stands, in this stunningly written exploration of who and what we truly are – Shortlisted for the 2020 OCM Bocas prize for Caribbean literature – join Tessa in conversation.

Talk organised by the Friends of Durning Library.

Details of online platform access will be sent out two days before the event.