Shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize and the Republic of Consciousness Prize. 'Where's reality, I want to change it.' A 36 year old character that looks like Eleven from Stranger Things works in a run-down hotel on an Isle of Wight battered by waves of austerity and decline. Polar bears emerge from t-shirts. Reebok Classics come to life. Nothing is normal, in the house of Mother Normal. Blending fiction and critical writing and anarchic joy, We Are Made of Diamond Stuff is a rakish, boundary erasing work that collides literary aesthetics with working class cultures and attitudes. Interrogating autobiographical material, it extends the avant-garde tradition to make it an ally for queer migrant experience. Innovative, irreverent and critically British, it questions dreams of national belonging while also celebrating the radical potential of resistance, ingenuity, and friendship.
