Disorientation: Being Black in the World

By Ian Williams

A FINALIST FOR THE 2021 HILARY WESTON WRITERS' TRUST PRIZE FOR NONFICTION
 
Bestselling, Scotiabank Giller Award-winning writer Ian Williams brings fresh eyes and new insights to today's urgent conversation on race and racism in startling, illuminating essays that grow out of his own experience as a Black man moving through the world.
 

    With that one eloquent word, disorientation, Ian Williams captures the impact of racial encounters on racialized people—the whiplash of race that occurs while minding one's own business. Sometimes the consequences are only irritating, but sometimes they are deadly. Spurred by the police killings and street protests of 2020, Williams realized he could offer a perspective distinct from the almost exclusively America-centric books on race topping the bestseller lists, because of one salient fact: he has lived in Trinidad (where he was never the only Black person in the room), in Canada (where he often was), and in the United States (where as a Black man from the Caribbean, he was a different kind of "only").

    Inspired by the essays of James Baldwin, in which the personal becomes the gateway to larger ideas, Williams explores such things as the unmistakable moment when a child realizes they are Black; the ten characteristics of institutional whiteness; how friendship forms a bulwark against being a target of racism; the meaning and uses of a Black person's smile; and blame culture—or how do we make meaningful change when no one feels responsible for the systemic structures of the past. With these essays, Williams wants to reach a multi-racial audience of people who believe that civil conversation on even the most charged subjects is possible. Examining the past and the present in order to speak to the future, he offers new thinking, honest feeling, and his astonishing, piercing gift of language.
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Sep 21, 2021
• ISBN: 9781039000230

Ian Williams

Ian Williams was foreign correspondent for Channel 4 News, based in Russia (1992–1995) and then Asia (1995–2006). He then joined NBC News as Asia Correspondent (2006–2015), when he was based in Bangkok and Beijing. As well as reporting from China over the last 25 years, he has also covered conflicts in the Balkans, the Middle East and Ukraine. He won an Emmy and BAFTA awards for his discovery and reporting on the Serb detention camps during the war in Bosnia. He is currently a doctoral student in the War Studies department at King’s College, London, focusing on cyber issues.

Reviews for Disorientation

[pomo58 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Disorientation: Being Black in the World by Ian Williams is a collection of essays that should make every reader think and, more important, be at least a little uncomfortable.Williams manages what many try (with varying degrees of success), which is to not only make the personal political but to make all of it important. While there is very little confrontational in the presentation that does not mean that he watered down his critiques to appease anyone. And for some of the more "sensitive" it will appear confrontational, but that will just be their defense mechanism kicking in when truth invades their space.I think that most readers will take different things away from the book. Maybe not in the sense of a big picture view but in what will likely reverberate with them. One of my takeaways has to do with the interpersonal and the societal. I think many people who don't consider themselves overtly racist feel that how they treat people is the best thing they can do to make the world better. When in fact that should simply be normal, we should treat people the same regardless of any aspect of their personhood. Because of the society we live in, read a white supremacist one, what passes for normal behavior can often be racist (as well as sexist, etc), so doing the best one can interpersonally is important. But change has to be made in the structures and policies of society/government/business/etc. Without that, we aren't so much making change by being good human beings to fellow human beings as we are pretending that by doing so everything will get better. It won't. It hasn't. There have to be institutional changes. There have to be infrastructure changes. While many of the points in this book, other than his personal stories, are not new, Williams helps us to see where the hidden (to whites) anti-Black obstacles are. So while it is important on the personal level to make our interactions as antiracist as possible, we can't be satisfied with that. That should be the very beginning. And listening (or reading) to what others have to say about their experiences with an open mind and an open heart is a great place to start.I don't care how many other books on anti-Black racism you've read, and I don't care how much you already "know" about the ills of our society, reading this book will offer more insight. Until we make the change necessary, we need to keep listening and keep striving. More perspectives can only help, even if you only take a couple of key points away. Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.