Mixed feelings about identity

In the first chapter of Manifesto: On Never Giving Up (Penguin, 2022), titled “Heritage, Childhood, Family, Origins”, the 2019 Booker Prize-winning author Bernardine Evaristo notes that growing up she was labelled “half-caste” ­— a “term for biracial people at that time”.

Ms Evaristo was born in 1959 to a Nigerian father and an English mother. The British actor, writer and filmmaker Jassa Ahluwalia was born in 1990 to an English mother and a Punjabi father. The three decades