A moment that changed me: born and raised in Kenya, I yearned for Croydon
‘I relished how familiar it all felt’ … Eric Otieno Sumba. Photograph: Supplied image
Stories
A moment that changed me: ‘A jail term for GBH felt like the end of my life – but it was also the start of a better one’
Locked up at 21, I discovered I was creative and could express myself through words. Now I am a poet, a broadcaster, an author – things I’d never have believed possible.
It all started in 2008, when I got involved in a fight in a club…
A moment that changed me: a play taught me I was not undesirable – just a black woman in a white world
Growing up, I swallowed the message that beauty meant looking like Margot Robbie. Reading A Raisin in the Sun helped me to embrace my blackness.
I was not a particularly pretty or popular teenager. I was not a “hot girl”. Yes, I went to…
A moment that changed me: a film director gave me the push I needed to finish my novel
I’ve got to admit, my expectations were low the day my old school friend Selwyn Musa told me some film director was looking for students. Selwyn had met the director, Barney Platts-Mills, in Ladbroke Grove, west London. He had asked…
A moment that changed me: after losing my hearing, newspapers helped me find a way to cope
The psychological effects of going deaf as a child were unbearable. But after stumbling across a front-page headline, reading the news helped me discover new worlds
It was a long time ago, on a Friday afternoon, on a street in Khartoum.…
A moment that changed me: Ben Okri – realising my dream to become a novelist at the age of 19
I wrote the first draft in a ghetto in Lagos, working on it at 4am. With its publication the life I was meant to live began.
Family legend has it that I began reading the Times at around the age of four. At school in London I was that…
A moment that changed me: the death of my father, a coat of red nail varnish – and coming out to my family
I was in a Pret in Cambridge city centre when I got the call: the senior tutor of my college, Pembroke, told me I had to come and see him. I was needed urgently back in London for a family emergency, and he would drive me to the train…
Iñaki Williams: ‘Playing for Ghana allows me to get closer to my roots’
Born in Spain but now at the World Cup with Ghana, the striker agonised over his decision to play for his parents’ birthplace
There is a light in Kweku’s eyes. “This is just incredible, crazy,” he says. “You see it from the outside and…
Kyle Walker’s tough childhood gives him resolve to prove people wrong
England defender, fit again and raring to go, grew up on an estate where he witnessed a fatal arson attack and a suicide.
Kyle Walker has had surgery on a ruptured groin but says he is now fit to challenge for a place in Gareth…
Ghana’s Mohammed Kudus: ‘Neymar is not better than me, just more high-profile’
The Ajax playmaker discusses the recent, testy encounter with Brazil, interest from Everton and his country’s chances in Qatar.
“He’s not better than me. He’s just a higher profile player, that’s all,” comes the retort. He is Neymar,…