As Europe, along with the rest of the world, struggles to learn itself anew and adapt in the presence of rapid demographic change - and often acting in a way that fails to recognize the positive potential in this change - Kossi Komla-Ebri provides a human and personal account of this global process which sometimes seems too big, global, and too daunting. Komla-Ebri's vignettes show us through pain and humor what this giant global force looks like when it comes out in the everyday, rears its heads in the interactions between friends or strangers, the intimate or the unfamiliar. By shedding light on the relationship between the structural and the interpersonal, he takes deeply personal issues and makes them universal. Komla-Ebri shows us that we are all touched by what may feel abstract or too broad for the individual to reproduce and affect. All people who have experienced embar-race-ments and othering - which is increasingly all people - should find this book enlightening. And by reflecting our own behavior back to us or teaching us how to cope with and process these daily slights, this work helps us put one foot in front of the other toward a world of greater belonging.
--Dr. john a. powell, Hass Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society