Antoinette Lattouf on writing a guide to anti-racism: ‘I was sitting there and sobbing’
When Antoinette Lattouf’s father suggested she pursue hairdressing instead of journalism, he warned people may not like a woman like her. “Especially not one who has so many opinions,” he had said.
In her nonfiction debut, the Australian journalist responds with the benefit of hindsight: “Dammit, dad. Maybe you were right.”
How to Lose Friends and Influence White People was borne of changing times. The Black Lives Matter movement landed on Australian shores in 2020, and Lattouf, co-founder of Media Diversity Australia and former Network 10 reporter, sensed a shift in public awareness and an appetite for change.
“People are looking and listening who had ignored the issue before,” she says. And her book, which plays off Dale Carnegie’s 1936 How
