Reni Eddo-Lodge has become the first Black British author to top the U.K.’s bestseller charts, the Guardian reports.
Eddo-Lodge’s Why I’m No Longer Taking to White People About Raceis officially the No. 1 bestselling book in the country. The book, born out of a viral blog post the author wrote six years ago, argues that white people need to examine their own privileges in order to dismantle racism. A reviewer for Kirkus called the book “sharp, compelling, and impassioned.”
“Feels absolutely wild to have broken this record,” Eddo-Lodge wrote on Twitter. “My work stands on the shoulders of so many Black British literary giants—Bernadine Evaristo, Benjamin Zephaniah, Zadie Smith, Andrea Levy, Stella Dadzie, Stuart Hall, Linton K Johnson, Jackie Kay, Gary Younge—to name a few.”
Feels absolutely wild to have broken this record 🤯 My work stands on the shoulders of so many Black British literary giants - Bernadine Evaristo, Benjamin Zephaniah, Zadie Smith, Andrea Levy, Stella Dadzie, Stuart Hall, Linton K Johnson, Jackie Kay, Gary Younge - to name a few. https://t.co/uf2yOhSfwm
— Reni Eddo-Lodge (@renireni) June 16, 2020
The last Black author to have a book top the Nielsen BookScan U.K. Top 50 was Michelle Obama, who scored the No. 1 spot in 2018 for Becoming, her blockbuster memoir.
Eddo-Lodge’s achievement comes as books about antiracism are seeing huge upticks in sales after the worldwide protests against white supremacy that followed the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
As of Wednesday morning, Eddo-Lodge’s book was also the No. 1 bestseller on Amazon U.K.’s charts.
Michael Schaub is a Texas-based journalist and regular contributor to NPR.
