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Gary Younge

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Gary Younge

FAcSS FRSL
Younge in 2014
Younge in 2014
BornGary Andrew Younge
January 1969 (age 55)
Stevenage, Hertfordshire, England
Occupation
  • Columnist
  • academic
  • author
  • broadcaster
Alma materHeriot-Watt University
City, University of London
Subject
Notable works
  1. No Place Like Home: A Black Briton's Journey Through the American South (2002)
  2. The Speech: The Story Behind Dr Martin Luther King Jr's Dream (2013)
  3. Another Day in the Death of America (2016)
SpouseTara Mack
Children2
Website
www.garyyounge.com

Gary Andrew Younge FAcSS, FRSL (born January 1969)[1][2] is a British journalist, author, broadcaster and academic. He was editor-at-large for The Guardian newspaper, which he joined in 1993. In November 2019, it was announced that Younge had been appointed as professor of sociology at the University of Manchester and would be leaving his post at The Guardian, where he was a columnist for two decades, although he continued to write for the newspaper.[3] He also writes for the New Statesman.

Younge is the author of the books No Place Like Home (2002), Stranger in a Strange Land (2006), and Who Are We – And Should It Matter in the 21st Century? (2011), The Speech: The Story Behind Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s Dream (2013), and Another Day in the Death of America (2016).

Early years and education

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Younge grew up in Stevenage, Hertfordshire, where he was born.[4] He is of Barbadian extraction.[5]

In 1984, aged 15, he briefly joined the Young Socialists, the youth section of the Workers Revolutionary Party, but left a year later after harassment from other party members, including allegedly being accused of working for MI5 and claims that he supported Fidel Castro only because of his ethnicity.[6] At the age of 17, Younge went to teach English in a United Nations Eritrean refugee school in Sudan with the educational charity Project Trust.[7]

From 1987 to 1992, he attended Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland, where he studied French and Russian,[8][9] and was elected vice president (welfare) of the student association, a paid sabbatical post that he held for a year.[9]

Career

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In his final year at university, Younge was awarded a bursary from The Guardian to study journalism at The City University in London, and after a short internship at Yorkshire Television he joined The Guardian in 1993, and has since reported from all over Europe, and Africa, the US and the Caribbean.[7]

His 1999 debut book, No Place Like Home, in which he retraced the route of the civil rights Freedom Riders, was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award. His subsequent books are Stranger in a Strange Land: Encounters in the Disunited States (2006), Who Are We – And Should It Matter in the 21st Century? (2011), The Speech: The Story Behind Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s Dream (2013), and most recently Another Day in the Death of America: A Chronicle of Ten Short Lives (2016), a "deeply affecting" account of everyday fatalities among young people across the US,[10] which in 2017 won the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize from Columbia Journalism School and the Nieman Foundation for Journalism.[7] Younge also wrote a monthly column for The Nation magazine, "Beneath the Radar".[11]

In 2019, Younge was appointed a professor of sociology in the School of Social Sciences at Manchester University, writing his last column for The Guardian in January 2020.[3][12]

Younge was named on the 2020 list of 100 Great Black Britons.[13] In addition, on the 2020 and 2021 Powerlist, Younge was listed among the Top 100 of the most influential people in the UK of African/African-Caribbean descent.[14]

His 2023 book, Dispatches from the Diaspora: From Nelson Mandela to Black Lives Matter, a collection of his journalism covering four decades of reporting from Britain, the US, and South Africa, was described in the New Statesman as "a reminder of how much racism has changed and how much it has stayed the same."[15] It was said by the TLS reviewer to "offer compelling, nuanced reflections on politics, history and culture".[16]

Personal life

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In 2011, Younge relocated to Chicago, Illinois, where he lived with his immediate family until returning to the UK in 2015.[7] In 2015, he announced his intention to move to Hackney in London,[17] with his wife and two children.[7] His brother Pat Younge was chief creative officer of BBC Vision,[18] becoming chair of the council at Cardiff University in 2022.[19]

Awards and honours

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Bibliography

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  • No Place Like Home: A Black Briton's Journey Through the American South. Jackson, Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi. 2002. ISBN 9781578064885. OCLC 49226176.
  • Stranger in a Strange Land: Encounters in the Disunited States. New York: New Press. 2006. ISBN 9781595580689. OCLC 62421357.
  • Who Are We – And Should It Matter in the 21st Century?. New York: Nation Books. 2011. ISBN 9781568586601. OCLC 663952482.
  • The Speech: The Story Behind Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s Dream. Chicago: Haymarket Books. 2013. ISBN 9781608463220. OCLC 829740195.
  • Another Day in the Death of America: A Chronicle of Ten Short Lives. New York: Nation Books. 2016. ISBN 9781568589756. OCLC 945232454.
  • Dispatches from the Diaspora: From Nelson Mandela to Black Lives Matter. London: Faber and Faber. 2023. ISBN 978-0571376827.
  • "Photobombing de Gaulle: how a forgotten picture rewrites the history of WWII. For the triumphant liberation of Paris in August 1944, black soldiers were kept out of sight. Georges Dukson didn't get the memo". FT Magazine, 3 August 2024.[31]

References

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  1. ^ "Index entry". FreeBMD. ONS. Retrieved 12 January 2018.
  2. ^ "Gary YOUNGE - Personal Appointments". Companies House. Retrieved 12 January 2018.
  3. ^ a b Younge, Gary (10 January 2020), "In these bleak times, imagine a world where you can thrive", The Guardian.
  4. ^ Younge, Gary (16 June 2007). "Made in Stevenage". The Guardian. Retrieved 2 October 2016.
  5. ^ Munshi, Neil (30 September 2016). "Another Day in the Death of America by Gary Younge review — an indictment of US gun culture". Financial Times.
  6. ^ Younge, Gary (19 February 2000). "Memoirs of a teenage Trot". The Guardian. Retrieved 7 May 2016.
  7. ^ a b c d e "About", Gary Younge website.
  8. ^ Donaldson, Brian (20 May 2010). "Gary Younge - Who Are We and Should it Matter in the 21st Century?". The List.
  9. ^ a b Younge, Gary (16 February 2007). "Higher education | Revolution by degrees". The Guardian. Retrieved 7 May 2016.
  10. ^ Busby, Margaret (25 September 2016), "Books: Another Day in the Death of America by Gary Younge" (review), The Sunday Times.
  11. ^ "Gary Younge". The Nation. 22 March 2010. Retrieved 19 January 2021.
  12. ^ "Gary Younge becomes a Professor at The University of Manchester". The University of Manchester. 5 November 2019. Retrieved 2 December 2020.
  13. ^ a b "100 Great Black Britons – The Book". 2020. Archived from the original on 12 February 2022. Retrieved 29 October 2020.
  14. ^ a b Mills, Kelly-Ann (25 October 2019). "Raheem Sterling joins Meghan and Stormzy in top 100 most influential black Brits". Mirror. Retrieved 20 April 2020.
  15. ^ Jeraj, Samir (13 March 2023). "From Margaret Atwood to Gary Younge: new books reviewed in short". New Statesman. Retrieved 17 June 2023.
  16. ^ Nelson, Franklin (11 August 2023). "Pen portraits | Reflections on the politics, history and culture of the Black diaspora". TLS. Retrieved 19 December 2024.
  17. ^ Younge, Gary (1 July 2015). "Farewell to America - Gary Younge". The Guardian.
  18. ^ Media Guardian 100 2010: 98. Pat Younge, The Guardian, 12 July 2010.
  19. ^ Chair of Council: Pat Younge www.cardiff.ac.uk Retrieved 19 March 2023
  20. ^ "Honorary Graduates" (PDF). Heriot-Watt University. Archived from the original (PDF) on 21 October 2016. Retrieved 16 September 2016.
  21. ^ "Honorary Awards Ceremony", London South Bank University
  22. ^ GNM press office, "Gary Younge wins prestigious James Cameron award", The Guardian, 7 October 2009.
  23. ^ "Guardian's Gary Younge wins prestigious James Cameron prize", The Guardian, 8 October 2009.
  24. ^ Sampson, Jessie, "Winners of The Comment Awards 2015 announced" Archived 4 March 2016 at the Wayback Machine, Newsworks, 24 November 2015.
  25. ^ "David Nyhan Prize for Political Journalism", Harvard Kennedy School.
  26. ^ "About the Sandford Awards", The Sandford St Martin Trust.
  27. ^ "Eighty-four leading social scientists conferred as Fellows of the Academy of Social Sciences". Academy of Social Sciences. 19 October 2016. Archived from the original on 6 June 2019. Retrieved 5 August 2017.
  28. ^ "Honorary Graduates". Cardiff University. Retrieved 21 July 2017.
  29. ^ "Commencement Remarks and Citations 2019". Mount Holyoke College. 17 May 2019. Archived from the original on 22 December 2019. Retrieved 15 January 2024.
  30. ^ Bayley, Sian (6 July 2021). "RSL launches three-year school reading project as new fellows announced". The Bookseller. Retrieved 6 July 2021.
  31. ^ ”De Gaulle acquiesced [in producing a white infantry division]... So it was that on August 25 many of those who fought for Europe’s liberation were denied the right to participate in it... the freedom for which they were fighting did not apply to them. They call it the blanchiment.” (Younge does not mention that the ashes of Félix Éboué were interred in the Pantheon 1949)
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