Afro-Sweden. Becoming Black in a Color-Blind Country

Violetta Ravagnoli of Emmanuel College reviews Afro-Sweden. Becoming Black in a Color-Blind Country by Ryan Thomas Skinner. In this book, Skinner contributes to the debate on diasporas and diasporic lives by vividly portraying Afro-Swedish lives with the use of an interesting methodology that the author himself describes as an “episodic” approach to ethnography. The aim is to create “thin descriptions” of the Swedish Black diaspora as opposed to the “thick descriptions.” The book complicates the picture of Swedish modern history, crafting one that goes beyond a simplified and idealized notion of a colorblind and post-racial nation. Ravagnoli states that the book could be a great reading for classes in different fields.

Read the book review at https://doi.org/10.1177/01979183231161034.