Book review: Honest coming of age memoir

The book is written in a careful, compelling, conversational style accessible to its intended teenage audience, and copies ought to sit in every secondary school library in the country

Leon Diop’s memoir is a compelling and accessible read that shines a light on growing up in Ireland and seeking a sense of belonging.

• Mixed Up 
• Leon Diop 
• Little Island, €10.99

We’ve all heard the phrase you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but book covers do matter, just like the text printed on them. 

The subtitle of 31-year-old Leon Diop’s memoir, Mixed Up, reads: “An Irish Boy’s Journey to Belonging,” and appears under a childhood snap of Diop wearing striped dungarees and a wide, cheeky smile. 

Just like the autobiography within, the cover is a subtle yet powerful signal that Irishness has not a thing to do with skin colour. 

Growing up as a mixed-race kid in Tallaght, born to an Irish mother and Senegalese father, Diop encountered incidents of racist abuse from a young age, ranging from taunts and micro-aggressions to a shocking, violent attack. 

These are recounted in sharp detail, yet Mixed Up is ultimately a book of hope — we learn of the author negotiating his identity, his reckoning with turmoil, and the many ways in which he has helped others to thrive — from his time in student politics through to the foundation of his non-profit organisation, Black & Irish. 

It is also an uplifting, funny read, with chucklesome moments including Diop performing an excruciatingly extended moonwalk for a Gaeltacht talent show: 

“I forgot how wide the hall was. I had gone across and back already and was starting to tire … ” 

I’m pretty sure that Michael Jackson never had to do the moonwalk for this long, never mind on a céilí floor in T90 runners made for astroturf.

One night there is a “racist-ass house light” threatening to give him away while he crouches from danger in a garden in Tallaght, and his mam studiously explaining the “N-word” via playing him an Ice Cube song. 

Other moments are shocking, both the violent and banal: Diop and a friend were told while applying to rent a house in college that it “wasn’t suitable for people of African origin”. 

Diop is a victim of racial abuse, but this is not a bleak read. He is compassionate to himself and others and generous even to those who have hurt him. 

We learn how he struggled prior to excelling in education, how he rejected his Senegalese heritage before ultimately embracing it, how he attempted to control his anger at the mistreatment he faced: 

“Those of you who have experienced racism in its many forms will know it can be traumatic. It can be painful to revisit those moments so it often feels better to bury them. But this pain can manifest in other ways.” 

The memoir is written in a careful, compelling, conversational style accessible to its intended teenage audience, and copies ought to sit in every secondary school library in the country. 

Yet its appeal is far-reaching — as a white thirty-something I found it incredibly moving and comforting. It’s a book for kids of colour, white kids, curious adults, a book for anybody who has ever felt out of place or mispresented: 

“When bullies can’t get to you, they will try to distort other people’s view of you,” Diop writes. “What’s important is to always be able to stand over who you are and the work you do.” 

Mixed Up is a startingly honest account of coming of age in a country that still has work to do in protecting its people of colour. 

Diop does not hold back, and in his generosity in sharing his story will likely help many others to reflect on and process theirs. 

Warmth, humour, and understanding shine through the grim realities outlined in the book, along with a determination that an Ireland where every person can feel safe and supported is genuinely possible. 

I get the feeling there is no better man to lead the moonwalk in the direction of that future.