‘I am Ghanaian. This is my legal label. I was born there. It is my inheritance.’
My father left me no nation. It is hard to blame him for this, but he could have offered more sustained concepts of home and nationalism. I have inherited this absence of home and will now pass it on, somehow, to my children. The facts alone, which I sometimes rehearse to baffle strangers, offer som…
Sign in to Granta.com.
‘I think there should be a National Service of Hospitality. The best way to see the true face of humanity is to serve it a plate of chips.’
Camilla Grudova on bad-mannered customers.
‘Anyone who has ever worked night shifts will understand the vertiginous feeling that comes with staring down the day from the wrong end.’
A.K. Blakemore on working nights.
‘I was constantly reading job ads, trying to find my holy grail – a job I could stand to do, and someone foolish enough to hire me.’
Sandra Newman on learning how to play professional blackjack.
‘I loved being a receptionist. What I loved about it was playing the part of being a receptionist.’
Emily Berry on being a temporary office worker.
‘Every part of you would swell, including your eyeballs, and no matter how much water you drank, you were always dehydrated.’
Junot Díaz on working for a steel mill.
‘She is thorough in a way that is off putting to people. It makes for a good secretary, not a good conversationalist.’
Fiction by Madeline Cash.
“I’m from here. I grew up here. In fact, that’s why the government invited me back for this work.”
Short fiction by Karan Mahajan.
‘He is an ancestor, he has had his son, he has lost possession of the world.’
Fiction by Allen Bratton.
‘The place we come from, the place we call home, is the home of our suffering.’
Jamaica Kincaid talks about finding her way to writing.
‘At the entrance to the gynaecology clinic, I ring the bell.’
Fiction by Agnes Chew.
‘The man on the other end told me he was looking for sexual fantasies that were about eleven sentences long.’
