Manish Chauhan: a holiday on Valentia Island was the first time he felt he 'stood out'

Manish Chauhan wrote that when he was 24, in the autumn after he graduated, he went to Valentia Island, Ireland, and for the first time felt he "stood out" as a person of colour. He said a friend who had won an award for her dissertation used the prize money to rent a stone beach hut on the island so they could spend a week working on their novels.

The hut was close to the water’s edge on the island’s western tip, overlooking the Atlantic; Chauhan described the island as rugged, with cliffs, rainforest and cold frothing water, and noted the tranquillity they had gone in search of. When they were not writing, his friend drove them around the country, through Killarney and down to Derrynane beach where they rode horses along the coast.

After a week he realised they had yet to see a person of colour. Stopping at a convenience store one afternoon, he said the look of shock on the young woman behind the till gave him the impression he might be the first person of colour she had ever seen in person; it was, he wrote, the first time he felt he stood out.

Chauhan reflected on his upbringing in Leicester, which he described as one of the first "super diverse" cities in England, with school photographs showing a "sea of brown faces" and a sense that Leicester was a blueprint of England.

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