Not Quite White by Laila Woozeer
Not Quite White by writer Laila Woozeer (published by Simon & Schuster) is an eye-opening, funny and moving memoir that sheds much-needed light on what it’s like growing up mixed race in the UK.
Our PR campaign was designed to offer a national platform to an underrepresented voice, while helping this timely book reach UK’s fastest growing mixed-race population. We worked closely with the author to generate interviews, opinion articles and book reviews, in addition to speaking opportunities that explored themes in the book and sparked national debate about how we approach the topics of race, ethnicity and belonging.
Highlights included a thought-provoking opinion piece in The Guardian exploring the harmful language used to define the mixed population and a first person piece in Stylist on how 90's pop culture fetishised mixed race people. Meanwhile, a write up for Aurelia magazine debated why we should stop using fractions for mixed race people, an inspiring first person account for gal-dem discussed having a ‘mixed race religion’, and two controversial articles on dating and fake featured in the Metro, with the latter trending on Twitter for two days. Interviews and extracts were also secured in Dazed, Mashable, BBC Radio London, and Wales Arts Review, among other relevant media targets, blogs, and social media accounts.
The book performed well in sales in comparison with similar titles and continues to generate media interest in the author.