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To Be Young, Gifted and Black: Longlisted for the 2026 Women's Prize for Non-Fiction
What does it mean – and how does it feel – to grow up as a Black artist today?
‘This exceptional book, written with a mother’s love for her seven creative children, sensitively offers profound and original insights and perspectives that enrich our culture. I feel so much wiser for reading it.’ Bernardine Evaristo
When Kadiatu Kanneh-Mason’s eldest daughter, Isata, made her solo debut at the BBC Proms in 2023, she could not have been prouder. Watching years of hard work transform into a transcendent performance was profoundly moving, both as music-lover and parent.
All fractured when her younger daughter turned to her in tears a few days later, having read online abuse about her sister. Isata, it was declared, did not deserve to be there. How do you prepare your child for the fact that no matter their talent, technique or dedication, they will be told they do not belong?
Through conversations with her extraordinarily gifted family, Kanneh-Mason explores what it’s like to come of age in these turbulent times, when Black artistic self-expression is so often met with disparagement and abuse online – and offers a hopeful, powerful way through.
‘This exceptional book, written with a mother’s love for her seven creative children, sensitively offers profound and original insights and perspectives that enrich our culture. I feel so much wiser for reading it.’ Bernardine Evaristo
When Kadiatu Kanneh-Mason’s eldest daughter, Isata, made her solo debut at the BBC Proms in 2023, she could not have been prouder. Watching years of hard work transform into a transcendent performance was profoundly moving, both as music-lover and parent.
All fractured when her younger daughter turned to her in tears a few days later, having read online abuse about her sister. Isata, it was declared, did not deserve to be there. How do you prepare your child for the fact that no matter their talent, technique or dedication, they will be told they do not belong?
Through conversations with her extraordinarily gifted family, Kanneh-Mason explores what it’s like to come of age in these turbulent times, when Black artistic self-expression is so often met with disparagement and abuse online – and offers a hopeful, powerful way through.
- GenresNonfictionMemoir
217 pages, Kindle Edition
Published May 8, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
July 29, 2025
Heartfelt, tough, family…. Very family.
How in the 2020’s can the general run of the mill public accept the racism shown to this incredibly talented family.
How can it be acceptable that a black person should forgo displaying their musical talent- well any talent- and accept that a white person - whether equally talented or not- has the overall right and expectance to be chosen ahead of a black person. Chosen solely based on colour…. ?!
Have we moved on at all in the last 70 odd years?
How in the 2020’s can the general run of the mill public accept the racism shown to this incredibly talented family.
How can it be acceptable that a black person should forgo displaying their musical talent- well any talent- and accept that a white person - whether equally talented or not- has the overall right and expectance to be chosen ahead of a black person. Chosen solely based on colour…. ?!
Have we moved on at all in the last 70 odd years?
February 18, 2026
3.5 rounded up
March 24, 2026
In this book, Kanneh-Mason explores Black artistic expression amid micro- and macro-racism im the UK today. She shares her experiences and the experiences of her family, many of her children are famous classical musicians and all are working in creative fields. This book is interesting in a way as often it collects the opinions and perspectives of her husband Stuart and all her seven children (Isata, Braimah, Sheku, Konya, Jeneba, Aminata and Mariatu), providing a sample size on each topic she considers. At the same time it does sometimes feel like a collection of opinions ot statements, which does not always have an authorial level of reflection or synthesis put on it.
Chapter 3 and 4 were excellent because in this chapter, the author gave more of herself, she used the perspectives of her family to root her own experiences and feelings around Britishness and Identity. In these chapter her linguistic skill shines. Chapter 3: Heritage and the Nation and Chapter 4: Creativity and Education. The rest of the book felt slightly uneven to me in terms of being a collection or thoughts vs. sharing a synthesis that was interesting to read.
Quotes:
“This is not a book of answers, but a series of stories, anecdotes, memories and perspectives that hope to enrich and frustrate already accepted ideas of who we are as Black people, as musicians, as creatives and as young - or older - individuals. There is a tricky and unsolved relationship between identity and politics, and between creativity and disorder. The stories we tell have to be contradictory, new, repeated, continuous and broken, respectful and defiant in order to be open and free. And we have to listen - however unbearably - to what we each have to say.”
Chapter 1:
“In order to be able to do or to become anything, you have to imagine yourself, to dream yourself there, and that dreaming needs to form a picture in your mind. You need an image to find, a reflection to strive for. And if it's not there, you have to be the first to elbow your way in and be the thing you want to imagine. But it's difficult to be the first, or the only, or one of the very few. And sometimes the media - or the people you encounter - don't know what to do with you if you don't fit in the 'right' box.”
Chapter 2:
“Added to the paranoia seeping out of this idea of 'either them or us, was the subliminal notion that 'we' -as White people- deserve this more because we are actually good at what we do. And we are good because we are not diverse. This logic, that can at once place White neutrality in the same space as White superiority with barely a muscle twitch, is familiar to all of us who are accused of being unworthy either because we don't get a place, a job, a position, or because we do. Both outcomes can become proof of the same thing. Blackness cancels out everything else. Aminata had to sit, effaced by this utterly unselfconscious display of mental gymnastics. Black people had never been a threat before because they were simply not there, and not allowed in. Now, it was a scandal that any of them were there because - minority or not - they should not be allowed in. Any place taken by them was taken from a White candidate. The assumption, then, was that any Black candidate had no merit and no talent that justified them taking a place at the school. Aminata was in the wrong, successful or not. And if not successful, she must be really bad at acting!”
“That's terrifying because it's not a reflection of reality at all. If Black people are perceived as capable of occupying an elite space only because of positive action, their talent is effectively denied. There's a kind of determined, energetic logic at work here. The very fact there are so few Black people in a space also proves they should not be there and are only there due to a policy that is denying White appointments. What's frightening about this is the unspoken and largely unconscious statement that Black people have little intrinsic worth.”
“Having to defend ourselves as Black people is wearisome and annoying because none of us chose the identity we can't, and wouldn't, escape anyway. To be White is to be able to slip into a fantasy of universality.
It's often seen as a neutral state. You don't have to define being White. There's little to defend, most of the time, and little to assert because it's so obviously, invisibly central. It's a position of enviable peace and easy complacency, And it contains the luxury of always being able to focus on something else.”
Chapter 3:
“National identity is not a straightforward concept and carries with it so many vested interests, and a mountain of perceived historical truths. Somehow, it continues to make our presence here a matter of daily calculation. We - as Black British citizens - are tenuously and precariously British. Or, rather, we are British if we remain carefully silent about a Britishness that often seems to be resolutely defined against us.
Many rows in music and art have been sparked by a clash between tradition and the new. An effective way to halt change and keep certain spaces faithfully monocultural is to reinforce barriers against newcomers. Many arts institutions are working to examine these barricades and focus hard on how to welcome new voices, new talent and wider audiences.”
“That didn't mean that we forgot. It didn't mean we didn't care, or that we let it go in our minds and guts. To render a person unwelcome in a space and made to feel their very presence a violation is an act of aggression.”
“Similarly, that 'we' that sings the chorus every year to the high and impressive ceiling of the Royal Albert Hall, that 'Britons never, never, never will be slaves' is not and cannot be a neutral, comprehensive, inclusive 'we, unless we - as Black citizens - are not present at all, and it seems, we are mostly not: "The Union flag-waving masses inside the Albert Hall each year are celebrating their pride in their Britishness. Look closely, and you'll see
barely a single non-white face.
" Any suggestion that we don't all stand in the
same place in regards to slavery and colonialism is met with deafening calls to keep quiet, or to get out.” ⭐️
“I had mistakenly thought a binding, legal security lay beneath my walking to school, sleeping in bed, collecting my passport. Aside from appearances, I was, after all, British. But the earth itself had turned to sand and I could, just like that, drift out to sea. Different laws existed for subjects of White South Africa, Canada, Australia, where a 'subject' seemed to stand on firmer ground. But for me, as a subject from the Black colonies, a 'subject' was not, entirely, a 'citizen, and I was not the permanent thing I had thought myself to be. Naming me a 'Subject of the Colonies' marked me for uncertainty and kept me in the 'not quite' sub-set of 'almost' British, or British in some ways, up to a point. And it was that point, that limit, looming ahead like a cliff-edge that made me feel in a state of constant vertigo. It seemed that citizenship was not one thing but many, and handed out unequally. First-class, second-class... was there a third-class citizenship? And which one was I?”⭐️
“Although there are those ofus more perilously placed than others, perhaps we should all remain sceptical. After all, before the end of January 2020, UK citizenship meant the right to abode in almost every country in Western Europe. And then it was taken away. Land shifts. Nationhood is a warped and shaky territory. All here beware.” ⭐️
“The stories that flow from grandparents to grandchildren are important.
Grandparents fill in the gaps and tell the narrative of your own parents. They help you know who you are. In Braimah's words, they have a 'similar perspective but different stories from your parents; for Sheku, grandparents act as valuable source material on parents: 'It's like trusting the source of the thing you trust most.' Stories coming from two generations ago build one's own firm founda-tions, providing a living link to the past. In Isata's words, they forge a deep understanding of parents and family as a whole! So what happens when that source material is lost? Konya reflects on the passing of her beloved grandad;
'If I lose a grandparent, I lose a whole part of Dad, a time period that went with Grandad. That scares me.”
“At the frontline of responsibility, parenting is often a tense mission with little chance to pause and meditate on a far horizon. Between youth and parenthood, no gap opens for wisdom, and we all sigh with relief that grandparents were and are there to minister the balm of the long view. Standing as proof that perhaps all will be okay, that life can be withstood, and that most problems are not new, grandparents are a port in a storm, even as the memories they bring bear witness to that storm.” ⭐️
“Perhaps, though, it's a more realistic response to all these concepts
-heritage, nationhood, culture - that they are never fixed or solid anyway.
I'm always embarrassed to say I'm anything at all because I'm so obviously on the edge of different things, and how people perceive me depends on where I am. I'm as used as I can be to standing with one foot in one place and the other elsewhere. Can British identity offer the possibility of a more expan-sive, open and elastic accommodation of heritage and history, allowing all these fractured pieces to come together seamlessly?” ⭐️
Chapter 4:
“A memory is a work of active choice, and their choices were always surprising.” ⭐️
“Many of our British national icons are creative artists, from Wordsworth to Elgar to Dame Judi Dench, and yet the number of people who have access to arts education - ever more increasingly over the last decade - is shrinking, and it's a number concentrated more and more exclusively in private education. The question is how those cut off from the flow of this funding and knowledge can inhabit the identity of an artist.
Will future British artists emerge only from a more privileged education, and therefore with a different outlook on life? Stuart says: "The creative arts are massively political. They give you another lens to look at the world. Great people of the past are often those in the creative arts, like Shakespeare, Vaughan Williams, etc. The message seems to be that great people can only come from the private sector.' It's as though a national story of who our heroes are - the admired great writers, poets, musicians, painters - cannot include those who do not get the right education. There's a strange misfit between the icons we are told to admire and the ambitions we are encouraged to fulfil.” ⭐️
“It's impossible to look at the culture and history of a place without looking at the arts. They are the biggest vehicle for understanding a culture.
It's a skill to be taught. It's an important way of learning.'” ⭐️
Chapter 5:
“Language has the effect of creating its own reality, and the language around immigration has its own hypnotic, self- referential, enduring lexicon.
We know, instinctively, what words used in these contexts really mean. We know, from repeated headlines, what these words signify when referring to those we don't want to include in the closed project of nationhood. A 'Briton' used in these contexts is something fundamentally, solidly British-to-the-core, in a way that a migrant cannot become, unless they silence their voice in public, speak our language in 'our' way, and somehow lose the group - or individual - threat of aggressive masculinity. Words like immigrant, Black, terrorist, criminal, mugger, gang-member, adult male, asylum seeker and rapist become an overlay, interchangeable in populist speech, and the twin * sides of fear and violence are justified.”
“And the way things are leads us to believe that 'Real' Britons do not feel alienated when crowds of impassioned subjects sing, 'Rule, Britannia!' To be honest, most British people pay absolutely no attention to the whole event until someone who cares deeply about the Proms and classical music, tells us otherwise. If Britons 'never, never, never will be slaves, then those Caribbean communities can never be Britons, and perhaps that's why they 'lack optimism'. Asked to bear witness to how these things feel, and then to be told your feelings are mere phantoms of history that deserve to be marginalised can only cement that pessimism.”
Chapter 6:
“Stuart and I remind them of the blurred differences between the swirling paranoia of youth and actual, measurable danger. To be young is, in every generation, to be smothered with a generational fear. As Stuart observes, echoing Braimah's point, 'The world is always, eternally, going to end.' When we were their age, we knew, with infallible rigidity, that an atomic bomb was coming. Life as we knew it swung on a pendulum between the US and Russia, and a nuclear holocaust hovered like a gathering storm on our horizon. Then, as now, the bond between physical annihilation and ungovernable politics seemed fused in a way none of us could control. Our need for imagined landscapes of stability and peace stretching before us had not changed. The desperate vulnerability of the future was the legacy, passed on from old to young, that linked us all together, and the only change was the face of that fear.”
“When I was my children's age, I watched nature programme after news programme, complaining about African natives who were hunting animals for food or trade, or who were cutting down trees and damaging nature for their own ends, with no thought for the wildlife or environment. These were humans whose own survival and habitat were completely inconsequential, and somehow divorced from the global economies that necessitated their actions. They also needed to eat, trade, feed their families and respond to the economies created by colonial and imperialist greed. But Nature was separately and suddenly important. And it was all their fault. And all their responsibility. And history - even present-day economics - was impressively forgotten.”
Chapter 3 and 4 were excellent because in this chapter, the author gave more of herself, she used the perspectives of her family to root her own experiences and feelings around Britishness and Identity. In these chapter her linguistic skill shines. Chapter 3: Heritage and the Nation and Chapter 4: Creativity and Education. The rest of the book felt slightly uneven to me in terms of being a collection or thoughts vs. sharing a synthesis that was interesting to read.
Quotes:
“This is not a book of answers, but a series of stories, anecdotes, memories and perspectives that hope to enrich and frustrate already accepted ideas of who we are as Black people, as musicians, as creatives and as young - or older - individuals. There is a tricky and unsolved relationship between identity and politics, and between creativity and disorder. The stories we tell have to be contradictory, new, repeated, continuous and broken, respectful and defiant in order to be open and free. And we have to listen - however unbearably - to what we each have to say.”
Chapter 1:
“In order to be able to do or to become anything, you have to imagine yourself, to dream yourself there, and that dreaming needs to form a picture in your mind. You need an image to find, a reflection to strive for. And if it's not there, you have to be the first to elbow your way in and be the thing you want to imagine. But it's difficult to be the first, or the only, or one of the very few. And sometimes the media - or the people you encounter - don't know what to do with you if you don't fit in the 'right' box.”
Chapter 2:
“Added to the paranoia seeping out of this idea of 'either them or us, was the subliminal notion that 'we' -as White people- deserve this more because we are actually good at what we do. And we are good because we are not diverse. This logic, that can at once place White neutrality in the same space as White superiority with barely a muscle twitch, is familiar to all of us who are accused of being unworthy either because we don't get a place, a job, a position, or because we do. Both outcomes can become proof of the same thing. Blackness cancels out everything else. Aminata had to sit, effaced by this utterly unselfconscious display of mental gymnastics. Black people had never been a threat before because they were simply not there, and not allowed in. Now, it was a scandal that any of them were there because - minority or not - they should not be allowed in. Any place taken by them was taken from a White candidate. The assumption, then, was that any Black candidate had no merit and no talent that justified them taking a place at the school. Aminata was in the wrong, successful or not. And if not successful, she must be really bad at acting!”
“That's terrifying because it's not a reflection of reality at all. If Black people are perceived as capable of occupying an elite space only because of positive action, their talent is effectively denied. There's a kind of determined, energetic logic at work here. The very fact there are so few Black people in a space also proves they should not be there and are only there due to a policy that is denying White appointments. What's frightening about this is the unspoken and largely unconscious statement that Black people have little intrinsic worth.”
“Having to defend ourselves as Black people is wearisome and annoying because none of us chose the identity we can't, and wouldn't, escape anyway. To be White is to be able to slip into a fantasy of universality.
It's often seen as a neutral state. You don't have to define being White. There's little to defend, most of the time, and little to assert because it's so obviously, invisibly central. It's a position of enviable peace and easy complacency, And it contains the luxury of always being able to focus on something else.”
Chapter 3:
“National identity is not a straightforward concept and carries with it so many vested interests, and a mountain of perceived historical truths. Somehow, it continues to make our presence here a matter of daily calculation. We - as Black British citizens - are tenuously and precariously British. Or, rather, we are British if we remain carefully silent about a Britishness that often seems to be resolutely defined against us.
Many rows in music and art have been sparked by a clash between tradition and the new. An effective way to halt change and keep certain spaces faithfully monocultural is to reinforce barriers against newcomers. Many arts institutions are working to examine these barricades and focus hard on how to welcome new voices, new talent and wider audiences.”
“That didn't mean that we forgot. It didn't mean we didn't care, or that we let it go in our minds and guts. To render a person unwelcome in a space and made to feel their very presence a violation is an act of aggression.”
“Similarly, that 'we' that sings the chorus every year to the high and impressive ceiling of the Royal Albert Hall, that 'Britons never, never, never will be slaves' is not and cannot be a neutral, comprehensive, inclusive 'we, unless we - as Black citizens - are not present at all, and it seems, we are mostly not: "The Union flag-waving masses inside the Albert Hall each year are celebrating their pride in their Britishness. Look closely, and you'll see
barely a single non-white face.
" Any suggestion that we don't all stand in the
same place in regards to slavery and colonialism is met with deafening calls to keep quiet, or to get out.” ⭐️
“I had mistakenly thought a binding, legal security lay beneath my walking to school, sleeping in bed, collecting my passport. Aside from appearances, I was, after all, British. But the earth itself had turned to sand and I could, just like that, drift out to sea. Different laws existed for subjects of White South Africa, Canada, Australia, where a 'subject' seemed to stand on firmer ground. But for me, as a subject from the Black colonies, a 'subject' was not, entirely, a 'citizen, and I was not the permanent thing I had thought myself to be. Naming me a 'Subject of the Colonies' marked me for uncertainty and kept me in the 'not quite' sub-set of 'almost' British, or British in some ways, up to a point. And it was that point, that limit, looming ahead like a cliff-edge that made me feel in a state of constant vertigo. It seemed that citizenship was not one thing but many, and handed out unequally. First-class, second-class... was there a third-class citizenship? And which one was I?”⭐️
“Although there are those ofus more perilously placed than others, perhaps we should all remain sceptical. After all, before the end of January 2020, UK citizenship meant the right to abode in almost every country in Western Europe. And then it was taken away. Land shifts. Nationhood is a warped and shaky territory. All here beware.” ⭐️
“The stories that flow from grandparents to grandchildren are important.
Grandparents fill in the gaps and tell the narrative of your own parents. They help you know who you are. In Braimah's words, they have a 'similar perspective but different stories from your parents; for Sheku, grandparents act as valuable source material on parents: 'It's like trusting the source of the thing you trust most.' Stories coming from two generations ago build one's own firm founda-tions, providing a living link to the past. In Isata's words, they forge a deep understanding of parents and family as a whole! So what happens when that source material is lost? Konya reflects on the passing of her beloved grandad;
'If I lose a grandparent, I lose a whole part of Dad, a time period that went with Grandad. That scares me.”
“At the frontline of responsibility, parenting is often a tense mission with little chance to pause and meditate on a far horizon. Between youth and parenthood, no gap opens for wisdom, and we all sigh with relief that grandparents were and are there to minister the balm of the long view. Standing as proof that perhaps all will be okay, that life can be withstood, and that most problems are not new, grandparents are a port in a storm, even as the memories they bring bear witness to that storm.” ⭐️
“Perhaps, though, it's a more realistic response to all these concepts
-heritage, nationhood, culture - that they are never fixed or solid anyway.
I'm always embarrassed to say I'm anything at all because I'm so obviously on the edge of different things, and how people perceive me depends on where I am. I'm as used as I can be to standing with one foot in one place and the other elsewhere. Can British identity offer the possibility of a more expan-sive, open and elastic accommodation of heritage and history, allowing all these fractured pieces to come together seamlessly?” ⭐️
Chapter 4:
“A memory is a work of active choice, and their choices were always surprising.” ⭐️
“Many of our British national icons are creative artists, from Wordsworth to Elgar to Dame Judi Dench, and yet the number of people who have access to arts education - ever more increasingly over the last decade - is shrinking, and it's a number concentrated more and more exclusively in private education. The question is how those cut off from the flow of this funding and knowledge can inhabit the identity of an artist.
Will future British artists emerge only from a more privileged education, and therefore with a different outlook on life? Stuart says: "The creative arts are massively political. They give you another lens to look at the world. Great people of the past are often those in the creative arts, like Shakespeare, Vaughan Williams, etc. The message seems to be that great people can only come from the private sector.' It's as though a national story of who our heroes are - the admired great writers, poets, musicians, painters - cannot include those who do not get the right education. There's a strange misfit between the icons we are told to admire and the ambitions we are encouraged to fulfil.” ⭐️
“It's impossible to look at the culture and history of a place without looking at the arts. They are the biggest vehicle for understanding a culture.
It's a skill to be taught. It's an important way of learning.'” ⭐️
Chapter 5:
“Language has the effect of creating its own reality, and the language around immigration has its own hypnotic, self- referential, enduring lexicon.
We know, instinctively, what words used in these contexts really mean. We know, from repeated headlines, what these words signify when referring to those we don't want to include in the closed project of nationhood. A 'Briton' used in these contexts is something fundamentally, solidly British-to-the-core, in a way that a migrant cannot become, unless they silence their voice in public, speak our language in 'our' way, and somehow lose the group - or individual - threat of aggressive masculinity. Words like immigrant, Black, terrorist, criminal, mugger, gang-member, adult male, asylum seeker and rapist become an overlay, interchangeable in populist speech, and the twin * sides of fear and violence are justified.”
“And the way things are leads us to believe that 'Real' Britons do not feel alienated when crowds of impassioned subjects sing, 'Rule, Britannia!' To be honest, most British people pay absolutely no attention to the whole event until someone who cares deeply about the Proms and classical music, tells us otherwise. If Britons 'never, never, never will be slaves, then those Caribbean communities can never be Britons, and perhaps that's why they 'lack optimism'. Asked to bear witness to how these things feel, and then to be told your feelings are mere phantoms of history that deserve to be marginalised can only cement that pessimism.”
Chapter 6:
“Stuart and I remind them of the blurred differences between the swirling paranoia of youth and actual, measurable danger. To be young is, in every generation, to be smothered with a generational fear. As Stuart observes, echoing Braimah's point, 'The world is always, eternally, going to end.' When we were their age, we knew, with infallible rigidity, that an atomic bomb was coming. Life as we knew it swung on a pendulum between the US and Russia, and a nuclear holocaust hovered like a gathering storm on our horizon. Then, as now, the bond between physical annihilation and ungovernable politics seemed fused in a way none of us could control. Our need for imagined landscapes of stability and peace stretching before us had not changed. The desperate vulnerability of the future was the legacy, passed on from old to young, that linked us all together, and the only change was the face of that fear.”
“When I was my children's age, I watched nature programme after news programme, complaining about African natives who were hunting animals for food or trade, or who were cutting down trees and damaging nature for their own ends, with no thought for the wildlife or environment. These were humans whose own survival and habitat were completely inconsequential, and somehow divorced from the global economies that necessitated their actions. They also needed to eat, trade, feed their families and respond to the economies created by colonial and imperialist greed. But Nature was separately and suddenly important. And it was all their fault. And all their responsibility. And history - even present-day economics - was impressively forgotten.”
March 27, 2026
This is, on one level - as the title suggests - an exploration of what it means to be a young talented Black musician, examining all three aspects and how they intersect. In a very balanced and eloquent way, it covers everything from the impact of colonialism (and what school the school curriculum even now continues to omit on this topic) and the racism which all the members of this famous family have encountered with and without reference to their music. Surely one's eligibility for any course or job - whether in the performing arts or not - should depend purely on one's aptitude for that branch of study or one's qualifications, skills and experience for a particular role in the workplace, be that an orchestra, an office or anywhere else. Why should any other considerations be taken into account?
From this point of view the book could be categorised as a work of sociology or the social sciences and offers a thought provoking read. Yet to classify it only in this way would be to do it an injustice because it also provides an intimate portrait of a remarkable musical family with quotes from all of Kadiatu Kaneh-Mason's all seven children and her husband, Stuart. For me personally, this was a very successful mix of insight into the personalities of the subjects and the difficulties for a Black person of entering the arts.
I am delighted 'To Be Young Gifted and Black' made the Women's Prize for Non-Fiction long list and would gladly have seen it included in the shortlist. In the course of reading this, I have discovered that this is the author's second book about her family, so I shall be adding 'The House of Music' to my TBR list.
From this point of view the book could be categorised as a work of sociology or the social sciences and offers a thought provoking read. Yet to classify it only in this way would be to do it an injustice because it also provides an intimate portrait of a remarkable musical family with quotes from all of Kadiatu Kaneh-Mason's all seven children and her husband, Stuart. For me personally, this was a very successful mix of insight into the personalities of the subjects and the difficulties for a Black person of entering the arts.
I am delighted 'To Be Young Gifted and Black' made the Women's Prize for Non-Fiction long list and would gladly have seen it included in the shortlist. In the course of reading this, I have discovered that this is the author's second book about her family, so I shall be adding 'The House of Music' to my TBR list.
February 25, 2026
Like a lot of people, I cam to know the Kanneh-Mason family through the royal wedding and if I'm honest, I haven't given them much thought since then. But I am a classical music fan and I have listened to numerous songs by them and the talent in the family is wonderful, and their music just makes me feel happy. As a white woman, I cannot pretend to know how race and racism can affect an upbringing, a career, a life, and so I found that element interesting. And so whilst I admit it wouldn't have been a book I'd have picked myself, I am pleased I did because I found it interesting and enjoyable.
March 2, 2026
This was an exceptional read. Divided into seven sections. The author attempts to explore each of them through lived experiences and also through the lens of her growing children.
I can’t help but notice certain similarities to my own lived experiences in my own country as a minority. This was such a relatable book for me.
Overall, this is a must read book by all.
I can’t help but notice certain similarities to my own lived experiences in my own country as a minority. This was such a relatable book for me.
Overall, this is a must read book by all.
November 27, 2025
Thought provoking
Read
March 5, 2026Family. Racism. Music. Privilege. Thought-provoking.
March 30, 2026
In a Sentence:
A heartfelt blend of memoir and reflection on race and belonging in classical music that may feel familiar if you read a lot of nonfiction on the topic, but will resonate with readers who enjoy personal storytelling.
TLDR Review:
I picked up To Be Young, Gifted and Black because I wanted to read something from the Women’s Prize for Nonfiction longlist, and I specifically wanted to choose a nonfiction book by a black author in honor of Black History Month. This one stood out immediately. The premise follows Kadiatu Kanneh‑Mason as she reflects on her family’s life in classical music, the pressures and joys of raising seven children who are all musicians, and the complicated realities of navigating race, belonging, and public scrutiny in a world that still resists full inclusion.
The book moves between personal storytelling and broader reflections on identity. Kanneh‑Mason writes about her daughter Isata’s Proms debut and the racist backlash that followed, and she uses those moments to explore who is allowed to take up space in classical music and who is questioned at every turn. The structure felt to me like a blend of memoir and essay collection, shifting between intimate scenes and larger cultural conversations about race, art, and the weight of being visibly different in a traditionally white space.
The story is well‑told and heartfelt. Even though memoirs aren’t usually my favorite, I appreciated the essay‑like quality of the writing and the way she uses her family’s experiences to open up bigger questions. I found the sections about classical music especially compelling, and I liked how she wove her reflections on identity into the narrative without losing the emotional core of her family’s story.
My main criticism is that if you’ve read a lot of nonfiction about race, there isn’t much here that feels new beyond the specific lived experiences she shares. The broader points are important, but they’re familiar, and I’ve seen them explored with more depth or nuance in other works. That’s less a flaw in the book and more a mismatch between my reading history and what this particular book offers. For readers who haven’t read widely in this area, these ideas will likely feel more impactful.
I do recommend it, especially for readers who enjoy memoirs or like having memoir woven into their nonfiction. If you don’t read a lot of nonfiction but appreciate personal storytelling, this is a thoughtful and accessible book that raises meaningful questions about race, identity, and who gets to belong in the arts.
A heartfelt blend of memoir and reflection on race and belonging in classical music that may feel familiar if you read a lot of nonfiction on the topic, but will resonate with readers who enjoy personal storytelling.
TLDR Review:
I picked up To Be Young, Gifted and Black because I wanted to read something from the Women’s Prize for Nonfiction longlist, and I specifically wanted to choose a nonfiction book by a black author in honor of Black History Month. This one stood out immediately. The premise follows Kadiatu Kanneh‑Mason as she reflects on her family’s life in classical music, the pressures and joys of raising seven children who are all musicians, and the complicated realities of navigating race, belonging, and public scrutiny in a world that still resists full inclusion.
The book moves between personal storytelling and broader reflections on identity. Kanneh‑Mason writes about her daughter Isata’s Proms debut and the racist backlash that followed, and she uses those moments to explore who is allowed to take up space in classical music and who is questioned at every turn. The structure felt to me like a blend of memoir and essay collection, shifting between intimate scenes and larger cultural conversations about race, art, and the weight of being visibly different in a traditionally white space.
The story is well‑told and heartfelt. Even though memoirs aren’t usually my favorite, I appreciated the essay‑like quality of the writing and the way she uses her family’s experiences to open up bigger questions. I found the sections about classical music especially compelling, and I liked how she wove her reflections on identity into the narrative without losing the emotional core of her family’s story.
My main criticism is that if you’ve read a lot of nonfiction about race, there isn’t much here that feels new beyond the specific lived experiences she shares. The broader points are important, but they’re familiar, and I’ve seen them explored with more depth or nuance in other works. That’s less a flaw in the book and more a mismatch between my reading history and what this particular book offers. For readers who haven’t read widely in this area, these ideas will likely feel more impactful.
I do recommend it, especially for readers who enjoy memoirs or like having memoir woven into their nonfiction. If you don’t read a lot of nonfiction but appreciate personal storytelling, this is a thoughtful and accessible book that raises meaningful questions about race, identity, and who gets to belong in the arts.
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