'I Belong Here' by Anita Sethi – for Caught by the River

Book review: 'I Belong Here' – for Caught by the River https://www.caughtbytheriver.net/2021/06/i-belong-here/ "Trauma sticks. It comes back again and again in the form of anxiety, stress, panic attacks, depression and more. Stifling anxiety and claustrophobia after the attack causes Sethi to feel a longing for the great outdoors and a desire not to let her experience stop her from travelling freely, and so she sets out to reclaim her land, to walk through the world and assert her right to exist. She chooses to walk along the Pennine Way, the very first national trail in England, also known as the “backbone of Britain” — a trail which encompasses the place she knows as home. I Belong Here is an education in so many ways, and Sethi often prompts me to look back to my own cultural history. Like Sethi, I do not fit neatly into one box. Asian, African, European, British — it’s a mixed heritage that makes me feel deeply connected to the world and simultaneously that I don’t belong in any one part of it. ‘I don’t remember being taught anything about why I — a brown-skinned girl — was sitting in a classroom in northern England.’ I see myself reflected with almost exact precision in the entire book."