That Reminds Me

When writing is this honest, it soars. I think that this is why the words in this collection fly around you and settle, as they have. What an incredible use of language and truth. Hope this reaches all the mandem. We need more.

Yrsa Daley-Ward

These are words that come from the heart, the lived life and owned observations. Powerful and moving. Social realism at its best.

Alex Wheatle

I hate Derek Owusu for the same reasons I love him: he is the sort of writer who makes me and other writers have doubts about whether we belong in this art. He is one of a kind. Truly a precious stone of a poet. His words evoke flawless empathy and leave me with either a strained face from smiling or a wet page from crying. I consider myself enlightened, lucky, intimidated and gripped when I read his words.

Nelson Abbey

Derek Owusu’s writing is honest, moving, delicate, but tough. Once you lock on to his words, it is hard to break eye contact. A beautiful meditation on childhood, coming of age, the now, and the media. This work is heartfelt.

Benjamin Zephaniah

That Reminds Me by Derek Owusu reads like an open wound. The prose runs like a pulse, builds like the beat of some lowercase drum. Honest and beautiful.

Guy Gunaratne, author of In Our Mad and Furious City

That Reminds Me is heartbreaking, important and original. Derek Owusu's words are precious scars.

Christie Watson, author of The Language of Kindness

Owusu’s work is a much-needed contribution to literature. His work is profoundly tender, often wry and always sharply observed. He grants us a rare, nuanced glimpse into the world of a vulnerable young black man, negotiating his identity in a complex and difficult world.

Okechukwu Nzelu

Honest, insightful, and woven together in a narrative that will undoubtedly change lives.

DeRay McKesson

That Reminds Me is extraordinary. It’s a complex, emotional story – intimately told. Every word is used to great effect, and the images Derek evokes are simply stunning. It is unique, original and so very beautiful. I enjoyed this book very much.

Dorothy Koomson

This book was gripping and an emotional rollercoaster. One that we could not put down.

Sunny and Shay, BBC Radio London

Derek Owusu's voice is originally poetical and profoundly authentic. That Reminds Me is an addictive and painful delight, full of familiar bruises I don't know how I got but couldn't stop pressing.

Kobna Holdbrook-Smith

In weaving emotion into literary gold, truth has never been this painfully told, or this beautiful.

Courttia Newland

The best poetry out since Warsan Shire.

Symeon Brown

If you want to see what the policies from Whitehall that keep the working classes struggling look like in human guise, when placed in an environment where their identities have to be negotiated daily, That Reminds Me is the viewfinder you need. It’s post-Thatcher reality in the inner city, clouded over by racism, infused with West African stoicism, narrated by a voice that has known something different. It’s life as a growing boy experiences it, with a powerless wonder; it’s messy and beautiful, fractured but eloquent. K’s story reminds us that our scars should not strip us of our dignity.

Nii Parkes

A fast-paces, dense, poetic, original and bewitching story by an important new writer. That Reminds Me will long be remembered by readers.

Alain Mabanckou

Deserves the same recognition that greeted Max Porter's similarly constructed fictionalised memoir Grief is the Thing With Feathers... uses its broken-up style to explore experiences that defy easy comprehension. There is nothing indulgent about this quietly observed account of a black man Owusu gives the name of K... There is a physicality to his writing, the impression of incoherent feelings being wrestled into shape, that lends his book heft. K's future is, in the end, ambiguous, but Owusu's surely gleams bright.

Claire Allfree, Metro

A bold prose poem written in novella form, That Reminds Me is one of the most powerful pieces of writing to be published in 2019.

Foyles

A moving, semi-autobiographical story about a vulnerable black man - a one-off. The story's most touching moments are about compassion and are never oversold... The sense is of suffering making room for empathetic insight. This book is brave and moving... Owusu writes with an enlightening fluency.

Kate Kellaway, Observer, 'Poetry Book of the Month'

It's a tough read that rewards a thousand times. I love the fragmentary form and the sense of beauty that builds throughout. So raw, tender and transporting.

Rhik Samadder

The latest release from Stormzy's increasingly impressive #Merky imprint, this is a stylistically ambitious memoir of a precarious Tottenham upbringing. Owusu writes with a poet's gift for seemingly incidental observation in a potent story that's left deliberately, troublingly fragmented.

Metro

A virtuosic debut by a raw new talent. An honest and timely evaluation of a black man's struggle to belong and later come to terms with failing mental health. Utterly convincing and deeply sad, Owusu's storytelling will bring readers to tears.

Scarlett Sangster, The Irish News

Derek Owusu is not just a brilliant writer, he’s a deep thinker. Anything he does is relevant, and meaningful. It would be easy to say that he is mainly concerned with the condition of young black men, but in truth he speaks truth to all of us.

Benjamin Zephaniah

A magnificent achievement.

Paul Gilroy

A dreamy, impressionistic offeringof reassembled fragments of memories emerging through the misty beauty of a deliciously individualistic poetic sensibility with flashes of Twi and UK London ebonics to further remind us of what has been missing from British poetry... I can't tell you how impressed I was and how much I enjoyed reading this stunning book.

Bernadine Evaristo, Booker Prize-winning author of Girl, Woman, Other

Written with candour and verve, and full of moments of heart-stopping anguish and beauty.

Stephen Kelman