Shame On Me

Shame On Me was shortlisted for the 2020 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature.

'What are you?' This question, often posed by white people to individuals of colour, is never as simple as it seems. Tessa McWatt, with a rich heritage encompassing English, Scottish, British, Caribbean, Portuguese, Indian, Amerindian, French, African, Chinese, and Canadian roots, understands this complexity first-hand. Her family history, like many others, is woven with myth and tales from grandparents and parents, viewed through lenses of desire, aspiration, loss, and shame.

In Shame On Me, McWatt unravels the threads of her ancestry, then weaves them together anew, adding strands from literature and history to reinforce her reconstructed narrative. She examines her own body part by part, building a powerful and subtle critique of the current race discussion. This stunningly composed exploration delves deep into our true identities.

'Beautifully written, profoundly moving, and deeply reflective.' - 2020 OCM Bocas Prize jury citation

'Beautifully written and courageously told.' - 2020 Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction jury citation

'This remarkable meditation on beautiful, human bodies formed by the violence of slavery and by colonial shame resists categorisation, even as it shows up the ways in which categories of race and identity are no more than empty methods of social control. Reading this book, I felt a profound sense of relief that someone as wise as Tessa McWatt had the compassion and courage to write it. Though she doesn't spare us, her ancestors, or herself, as she travels from British Guiana to China, India, and Scotland, we must go with her and realise the power of recovering female lineage, and realise that there is no centre, except the one we ourselves can make with all the various stories we contain. It is a deeply moving, urgent, and important book.' - Preti Taneja, author of We That Are Young