My White Best Friend

(And Other Letters Left Unsaid)

Rachel De-lahay

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781786829016
• eBook ISBN: 9781786829009
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: British Drama
• Index: Literature

"Could you put your white best friend on stage and remind them that they're part of the problem? Even if you love them? Even if you never want anyone to feel for even a moment how you feel living in this world every day? Would - could - a white person finally hear what you have to say?"

Originally commissioned by The Bunker Theatre as a critically-acclaimed festival that ran in 2019, My White Best Friend collects 23 letters that engage with a range of topics, from racial tensions, microaggressions and emotional labour, to queer desire, prejudice and otherness. Expressing feelings and thoughts often stifled or ignored, the pieces here transform letter writing into a provocative act of candour.

Funny, heartfelt, wry and heart-breaking, whether a letter to their younger self or an ode to the writer's tongue, this anthology of exceptional writing is always engaging and thought-provoking.

Featuring different letters from some of the most exciting voices in the UK and beyond, My White Best Friend (And Other Letters Left Unsaid) includes work from: Zia Ahmed, Travis Alabanza, Fatimah Asghar, Nathan Bryon, Matilda Ibini, Jammz, Iman Qureshi, Anya Reiss, Somalia Seaton, Nina Segal, Tolani Shoneye, Lena Dunham, Inua Ellams, Rabiah Hussain, Mika Johnson, Jasmine Lee-Jones, Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan, Shireen Mula, Ash Sarkar, Jack Thorne and Joel Tan.

ZIA AHMED

NOTE: Where directions are in italics, please don’t read them, do them. Everything else should be read out loud.

PIECE OF PAPER 1

a request from zia.

can all black + brown people who are working class come to the front

white + working class in the middle

everyone else back row

please be honest

please wait until the audience has moved before reading on

zainab

not gona lie

uhh

i watched the video

of my white best friend

and i was caught in two minds

it’s a bit of a headfuck

cos i’m torn

course the piece speaks to a lot of people

but there’s something about it

i can’t put my finger on like

i duno

did white people respond to it

because a white person was saying it?

cos maybe intentionally or not

it centres the white person

and does that mean

they only listen to things when a white person’s saying it?

you know

like

like online when bare things go viral when it’s a white person saying racism is bad

but people who actually experience it get told like calm down or stop playing the race card

or i duno

so i’m so glad you’re on stage

a brown woman

my fucking mate

i love you

you’re sick

we come up to see you in stratford-upon-avon

you killed it on stage

we went back to yours

you made a banging daal

in the room 4 south asian actors/writers

you me h + s

and we jus talk for ages

about how things are changing

about how things aren’t changing

about changing shit

about the joy + the pain of it

this industry it’s hard

being brown being working class +

how we go on

how we’ve known each other for so long

sometimes it feels like

let’s talk about something else

but the talking helps

i know there’s bare whatsapp groups

sending the tweets the articles the good news the grievances the support in these allegiances

in these chats

in knowing there’s people who got your back

just some of the things we talked about

opened out

please open the ice cream tub, and read the cards in order, one by one

*

CARD 1

dear

insert name

‘Half of what I say is meaningless; but I say it so that the other half may reach you.’

white ppl love khalil gibran

badly translated rumi quotes

‘The wound is where the light enters you.’

CARD 2

this is a good white

this is a good red

this is a good brown

swirl around your mouth

CARD 3

please adopt the ‘tory power stance’ ¹

try it a few times on different parts of the stage

pick a part of the stage you like and hold

CARD 4

‘Did Mohindra feel that it was empowering to overturn that stereotype in the final episode?

“It did feel empowering,” she says, “even just from a feminist perspective: women are constantly undermined.”

She continues: “We have this idea that women who wear hijabs are oppressed and do so not at their own will and that is something that we need to think about and take stock of because that is absolutely not the case.”

Mohindra is not Muslim herself, her Indian family, she says, are Punjabi-Hindus, but she adds, “My grandparents grew up before the Partition, so we have a lot of family friends who are Muslim and also I have Muslim family on my mum’s side, too – both my cousins are Muslim.”’²

CARD 5

so someone racist’s jus shouted it out at them

their response is

‘but i’m not even from pakistan’

this ain’t a quiz

bonus question

you think they give a shit?

you want your racism to come w nuance?

CARD 6

please read in what you imagine to be sajid javid’s voice

@sajidjavid

‘These sick Asian paedophiles are finally facing justice. I want to commend the bravery of the victims. For too long, they were ignored. Not on my watch. There will be no no-go areas’

5:27 PM – Oct 19, 2018

CARD 7

‘David Cameron described Javid as “the brilliant Asian man who I asked to join the Cabinet” and said “I want to hear that title Prime Minister followed by a British Asian name.”’³

CARD 8

please read in new york queens accent

‘Oh, great. Great. Yeah. And I try to be very vocal about that effect. That, first off, I’m whatever, a working class then middle class Indian kid, that rap is a black art form, and that I am guilty of appropriation. And that it makes me feel very strange....

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Foreword
• Rachel De-lahay
• Zia Ahmed
• Travis Alabanza
• Fatimah Asghar
• Nathan Bryon
• Lena Dunham
• Inua Ellams
• Rabiah Hussain
• MFI
• Jammz
• Mika Onyx Johnson
• Jasmine Lee-Jones
• Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan
• Shireen Mula
• Iman Qureshi
• Anya Reiss
• Ash Sarkar
• Somalia Seaton
• Nina Segal
• Tolani Shoneye
• Joel Tan
• Jack Thorne
• Rachel De-lahay et al.
• eCopyright Page