Reluctant Neighbours

DIVDIVThe acclaimed author of To Sir, With Love recalls his lifelong struggle against ignorance and racism while sharing a train ride with a bigoted white neighbor/div On a commuter train traveling from New Canaan, Connecticut, to New York’s Grand Central Station, a well-heeled white suburbanite reluctantly takes the only available seat and eventually strikes up a conversation with the black man sitting next to him. The white businessman’s verbal barrage of insensitive questions and offensive remarks incites a rage in his black neighbor that can barely be suppressed. But the offended rider is E. R. Braithwaite—former Royal Air Force pilot, Cambridge graduate, schoolteacher, social worker, diplomat, and bestselling author—and he has triumphed over prejudice and hatred throughout his truly extraordinary life and multifaceted career.DIV Against the backdrop of a short railway commute, E. R. Braithwaite powerfully recounts a personal history of remarkable accomplishments in the face of bigotry and hatred. Part memoir, part treatise on racial intolerance and oppression, and the ignorance that engenders them, Reluctant Neighbors is the unforgettable story of one man’s continuous struggle against injustice and his unwavering dedication to the pursuit of human dignity./div/div

The book consists of 2 sections. Section 1 is an interview with, what else, a reluctant jihadist. The second section is a collection of 99 posted blogs with a few interesting twists.

" ... Documents the history and development of [Post-colonial literatures in English, together with English and American literature] and includes original research relating to the literatures of some 50 countries and territories. In more than 1,600 entries written by more than 600 internationally recognized scholars, it explores the effect of the colonial and post-colonial experience on literatures in English worldwide.

In June 1949 the Soviet state arrested seven farmers from the village of Bila Tserkva. Not wealthy or powerful, the men were unknown outside their community, and few had ever heard of their small, isolated village on the southwestern border of Soviet Ukraine. Nevertheless, the state decided they were dangerous traitors who threatened to undermine public order, and a regional court sentenced them to twenty-five years of imprisonment for treason. In To Make a Village Soviet Emily Baran explores why a powerful state singled out these individuals for removal from society. Bila Tserkva had to become a space in which Soviet laws and institutions reigned supreme, yet Sovietization was an aspiration as much it was a reality. The arrested men belonged to a small and misunderstood religious minority, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and both Witnesses and their neighbours challenged the government’s attempts to fully integrate the village into socialist society. Drawing from the case file and interviews with the families of survivors, Baran argues that what happened in Bila Tserkva demonstrates the sheer ambition of the state’s plans for the Sovietization of borderland communities. A compelling history, To Make a Village Soviet looks to Bila Tserkva to explore the power and the limits of state control – and the possibilities created by communities that resist assimilation.