Two Countries, One Identity

From the reading: Two Countries, One Identity

When Siobhán McClean — the Dublin-based singer-songwriter who performs as Shiv — was growing up in Athy, County Kildare, being the only non-white child in school felt less like a burden than a curiosity, less like exclusion than distinction. That quiet, almost accidental ease with which she inhabited Ireland has not survived the last decade. Social media, she suggests, did not invent the racism that has always existed in any society; it organised it, amplified it, and handed it a megaphone. The result, for someone who left Zimbabwe at five and has known no other home, is a disorienting question: if the country that raised you no longer feels entirely certain it wants you, where exactly do you belong?