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A review by helen
A Dutiful Boy by Mohsin Zaidi
5.0
Incredibly moving, insightful and uplifting memoir.
Zaidi writes about the sense of unbelonging he felt from growing up in a Muslim Pakistani family in a hostile England, from being a working class East Londoner at Oxford University, and from being a criminal barrister with brown skin, frequently mistaken for his clients. The only real sense of belonging he feels for a long time is within his religiously conservative family, which is why he struggles to come out to them as gay because he knows for certain that it will create a huge rift.
This is a compassionate and forgiving love letter to his parents, particularly his mother. He helped me to understand why his parents felt the need to cling to their traditional view of family. Not all of their attitudes are tied to religion or culture - they also stem from their experiences in a council house in 80s Britain in the face of economic and racial exclusion.
It deals with heavy subject matter, including bullying, racism, internalised homophobia and suicidal thoughts, but it's also uplifting and funny. He finds community with his friends, and hope in the changing attitudes of younger people. And he finds romantic love with the man who is now his husband.
To give an example of the humour in the book: Zaidi recounts an event for parents of LGBT South Asians which turns into a bragging contest about how successful their children are and his mum whispers to him "Shall I drop the Oxford bomb?".
Favourite quotes:
"Although I had never yelled at my parents at that moment I wanted to. I held back, reminding myself how isolated they must feel. I'd left my community, but I had found another. They did not have this option. They couldn't tell some of their siblings, their living parents, nor their network of friends. I had an instinctive need to protect them, which made it difficult to get angry."
Zaidi writes about the sense of unbelonging he felt from growing up in a Muslim Pakistani family in a hostile England, from being a working class East Londoner at Oxford University, and from being a criminal barrister with brown skin, frequently mistaken for his clients. The only real sense of belonging he feels for a long time is within his religiously conservative family, which is why he struggles to come out to them as gay because he knows for certain that it will create a huge rift.
This is a compassionate and forgiving love letter to his parents, particularly his mother. He helped me to understand why his parents felt the need to cling to their traditional view of family. Not all of their attitudes are tied to religion or culture - they also stem from their experiences in a council house in 80s Britain in the face of economic and racial exclusion.
It deals with heavy subject matter, including bullying, racism, internalised homophobia and suicidal thoughts, but it's also uplifting and funny. He finds community with his friends, and hope in the changing attitudes of younger people. And he finds romantic love with the man who is now his husband.
To give an example of the humour in the book: Zaidi recounts an event for parents of LGBT South Asians which turns into a bragging contest about how successful their children are and his mum whispers to him "Shall I drop the Oxford bomb?".
Favourite quotes:
"Although I had never yelled at my parents at that moment I wanted to. I held back, reminding myself how isolated they must feel. I'd left my community, but I had found another. They did not have this option. They couldn't tell some of their siblings, their living parents, nor their network of friends. I had an instinctive need to protect them, which made it difficult to get angry."