Date: Fri, 6 Dec 1996 16:04:07 +0800 From: salil-AT-singnet.com.sg (Salil Tripathi) Subject: Re: black british writers Thanks Dr Walia for your note. >South Asians are classified as blacks in U.K. Interesting! Didn't know that. >Hanif Kureishi's father is Pakistani and mother is white British. >Pakistanis and Indians are classified as Caucasians by physical >anthropologists. This makes Hanif Kureishi all Caucasian, not half >Caucasian as you suggest. You are right. I stand corrected. I was trying to be cautious and p.c. and refer to Hanif's mother in terms other than 'white'. Clarity is always the best policy! >A few years ago, I interviewed Hanif one-on-one for the San Francisco >Review of Books, when he came here to promote his book "The Buddha of >Suburbia." He is medium-brown complected. Of course, in U.K. he would be >classified as black. Yes, I met him in 87 for a story in Bombay, and he enjoyed running up huge bills that he said "Maggie Thatcher will have to pay" -- he was on a British Council junket to India and Pakistan. He looked Parsi to me, if you know what I mean. >During this interview he mentioned that when he visited India and Pakistan >on a book tour in the company of several white Britishers, both he and they >were amused that in restaurants the waiters would always serve the whites >first. Well, the street urchins in Bombay thought he was "white" all right; when we stepped out of the Taj Mahal Hotel for a photo shoot, they followed him saying "Saar, dallar change?" - Salil --- from list postcolonial-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005