I was standing at a bus stop in a small English town last winter. An elderly woman looked at me, then at the bus timetable, then back at me. She asked, in a voice loud enough for everyone to hear, “Do you know when the next bus comes?” I told her. She thanked me. Then she said, “You speak such good English.” I have lived in this country for fifteen years. That moment, that tiny knife, came back to me as I read Johny Pitts’ Afropean: Notes from Black Europe. How do you live in a place that keeps forgetting you are already there?
Pitts is a British writer with a Black British father and a white mother. He grew up in Sheffield, a post-industrial city in northern England. He felt European. He also felt Black. But when he looked at Europe, he did not see himself in the official story. So he got on trains and buses and ferries. He went to Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, Berlin, Stockholm, Moscow. He visited the banlieues, the housing projects, the barbershops, the churches, the nightclubs. He talked to people who, like him, carried the weight of being both inside and outside. The book is a travelogue, yes. But it is also a quiet argument. It says: Europe has Black roots. Black people have been here for centuries, not just as migrants but as makers of culture, as workers, as soldiers, as citizens. Yet the European imagination keeps them in the margins. Pitts does not shout this. He shows it. He lets the reader walk with him through the streets of Paris, past the statue of a Senegalese soldier who fought for France and was then forgotten. He lets you sit in a Berlin cafe where young Black Germans talk about being asked “Where are you really from?” every single day. The suspense in this book is not about plot. It is about recognition. Will Europe ever see these faces as its own?
The core theme of Afropean is invisibility. But Pitts turns the idea around. He does not write about invisibility as something that happens to you. He writes about it as something you learn to navigate. You learn to be seen when you want to be and invisible when you need to be. You learn to smile when the question comes. You learn to carry your passport even when you are just going to the corner shop. Pitts uses imagery of light and shadow throughout the book. In Paris, the light falls on the grand boulevards, but the Black neighborhoods are in the shadows. In Stockholm, the winter light is pale and thin, and Black bodies seem to absorb it. In Moscow, the darkness is heavy, almost physical. The imagery is not decorative. It is the argument. The author’s craft here is subtle. He does not tell you what to feel. He describes a barbershop in Brussels where the air smells of hair oil and coffee, and the men talk about football and migration papers. He describes a church service in London where the singing is so loud it shakes the floorboards. You feel the warmth, the community, the life. Then you remember: these spaces exist because the larger society does not fully welcome them. The book shows a universal pattern. It is not just about Black Europeans. It is about anyone who has ever been told, by a look or a word or a silence, that they do not quite belong.
I will be honest. This book made me uncomfortable. Not because it is angry. It is not. Pitts is a patient writer. He is curious, not bitter. But the discomfort came from recognition. I am not Black. I am an immigrant from another continent. Yet I have felt that same small knife. The stranger who asks “Where are you from?” and then, when I answer, adds “No, where are you really from?” The colleague who says “Your English is very good” as if it is a compliment. These are small cuts. They do not bleed. But they accumulate. Afropean helped me understand something: belonging is not a passport. It is not a birthplace. It is being seen without having to explain yourself. Pitts ends the book in the port of Dover, looking at the white cliffs of England. He wonders if Europe can ever become a place where Blackness is not an exception but a part of the landscape. The book does not give an answer. It gives a map. It shows the places where Black Europe already exists. You just have to know where to look. I recommend this book to anyone who has ever felt out of place. It will not fix that feeling. But it will show you that you are not alone. And maybe that is enough.
