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'This is the book I’ve been waiting for – for years. It’s personal, historical, political, and it speaks to where we are now’

Benjamin Zephaniah

From the first time he was stopped and searched as a child, to the day he realised his mum was white, to his first encounters with racist teachers – race and class have shaped Akala’s life and outlook. In this unique book he takes his own experiences and widens them out to look at the social, historical and political factors that have left us where we are today.

Covering everything from the police, education and identity to politics, sexual objectification and the far right, Natives speaks directly to British denial and squeamishness when it comes to confronting issues of race and class that are at the heart of the legacy of Britain’s racialised empire. Natives is the searing modern polemic and Sunday Times bestseller from the BAFTA and MOBO award-winning musician and political commentator, Akala.

According to the Washington Post, no one who cares about contemporary African-American cultures can ignore bell hooks' electrifying feminist explorations. Targeting cultural icons as diverse as Madonna and Spike Lee, Outlaw Culture presents a collection of essays that pulls no punches. As hooks herself notes, interrogations of popular culture can be a ‘powerful site for intervention, challenge and change’. And intervene, challenge and change is what hooks does best.

When Nikki takes a creative writing job at her local temple, with visions of emancipating the women of the community she left behind as a self-important teenager, she’s shocked to discover a group of barely literate women who have no interest in her ideals.

Yet to her surprise, the white dupatta of the widow hides more than just their modesty – these are women who have spent their lives in the shadows of fathers, brothers and husbands; being dutiful, raising children and going to temple, but whose inner lives are as rich and fruitful as their untold stories. But as they begin to open up to each other about womanhood, sexuality, and the dark secrets within the community, Nikki realises that the illicit nature of the class may place them all in danger.

East meets west and tradition clashes with modernity in a thought-provoking cross-cultural novel that might make you look again at the women in your life…

Bukhosi has gone missing.

His father, Abed, and his mother, Agnes, cling to the hope that he has run away, rather than been murdered by government thugs. Only the lodger seems to have any idea...

Zamani has lived in the spare room for years now. Quiet, polite, well-read and well-heeled, he's almost part of the family - but almost isn't quite good enough for Zamani. Cajoling, coaxing and coercing Abed and Agnes into revealing their sometimes tender, often brutal life stories, Zamani aims to steep himself in borrowed family history, so that he can fully inherit and inhabit its uncertain future.

It's 3 a.m. and Elizabeth Gilbert is sobbing on the bathroom floor. She's in her thirties, she has a husband, a house, they're trying for a baby - and she doesn't want any of it. A bitter divorce and a turbulent love affair later, she emerges battered and bewildered and realises it is time to pursue her own journey in search of three things she has been missing: pleasure, devotion and balance. So she travels to Rome, where she learns Italian from handsome, brown-eyed identical twins and gains twenty-five pounds, an ashram in India, where she finds that enlightenment entails getting up in the middle of the night to scrub the temple floor, and Bali where a toothless medicine man of indeterminate age offers her a new path to peace: simply sit still and smile. And slowly happiness begins to creep up on her.

In this refreshingly entertaining how-to guide, bestselling author and world-travelling success coach, Jen Sincero, serves up 27 bitesized chapters full of hilariously inspiring stories, sage advice, easy exercises, and the occasional swear word.

Sunflowers Shine On Hidden Disabilities

I wonder how many of you have seen the eye-catching yellow sunflowers on lanyards around the office or about town and even wondered where you could get one. They are so much nicer than office lanyards, right? But do you know what they represent?

Wearing the Hidden Disabilities Sunflower discretely indicates to people around the wearer that they need additional support, help or a just little more time. A collaboration between Gatwick Airport Passenger Advisory Group, the Alzheimer’s Society, National Autistic Society and Visualise, since its launch in 2016 it has now been adopted globally by major airports and venues and in the UK, by many supermarkets, railway and coach stations, leisure facilities, the NHS, police, fire and ambulance services, and an increasing number of small and large businesses and organisations, in fact, anywhere where people meet. The Sunflower is available in UK, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Italy, Sweden, Lithuania, Australia, Canada, Argentina, New Zealand and US.

Hidden disabilities often don't have physical signs and may include things like:

Learning difficulties
Mental Health
Mobility, speech, visual or hearing impairments
Asthma, COPD, and other lung conditions
Chronic illnesses such as renal failure, diabetes, and sleep disorders when those diseases significantly impact day-to-day life.

In the UK, 1 in 5 people have a disability and 80% of these have a hidden disability; In the US a 2018 study by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention revealed that 1 in 4 American adults would qualify to wear a sunflower lanyard.

However according to a 2011 Canadian study, 88% of those with invisible disabilities and conditions shy away from sharing their struggles as people worry about being labelled.

Living with invisible conditions and disabilities can make daily life more demanding for many people. They affect each person in different ways and can be painful, exhausting, and isolating. Without visible evidence of the hidden disability, it is frequently difficult for others to acknowledge the challenges faced and as a consequence, empathy and understanding can often be in short supply.

The lanyard and personalised Sunflower card discreetly highlight the type of support, consideration, and care someone might need, along with emergency contact details.

So, while the sunflower lanyard may seem simple enough, next time you see it, you have the potential to make someone’s day that little bit easier. Enjoy the short video below to learn a little more.

Thank you for reading, and a big thank you to contributors from our Illuminate Teams group who suggested this topic for us to cover. If you have a suggested topic we’d love to hear from you, please reach out via email at illuminate@informa.com or join us on Teams by clicking HERE