Disorientation

Ian Williams uses the word disorientation for the jolt of a racial encounter, the whiplash that can hit a person while minding their own business. Sometimes the effect is only irritating, and sometimes it is deadly. The essays were prompted by the 2020 killings by police and the street protests that followed, and they offer a view that differs from much US writing on similar themes.

Williams draws on his life in Trinidad, Canada and the United States, where his experience as a Black man from the Caribbean differed in each place. Inspired by James Baldwin's essays, in which the personal becomes a route to larger ideas, he looks at the moment a child realises they are Black, the features of institutional whiteness, how friendship protects against racism, and what blame culture does to efforts at change.

The book is for readers who believe a civil conversation about difficult subjects is possible. Edition note: published by Random House Canada in 2021, 216 pages, ISBN-13: 9781039000223.