Gary Younge

Early years and education

Younge grew up in Stevenage, Hertfordshire, where he was born. He is of Barbadian extraction.

In 1984, aged 15, he briefly joined the Young Socialists, the youth section of the Workers Revolutionary Party, but left a year later after harassment from other party members, including allegedly being accused of working for MI5 and claims that he supported Fidel Castro only because of his ethnicity. At the age of 17, Younge went to teach English in a United Nations Eritrean refugee school in Sudan with the educational charity Project Trust.

From 1987 to 1992, he attended Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland, where he studied French and Russian, and was elected vice president (welfare) of the student association, a paid sabbatical post that he held for a year.

Career

In his final year at university, Younge was awarded a bursary from The Guardian to study journalism at The City University in London, and after a short internship at Yorkshire Television he joined The Guardian in 1993, and has since reported from all over Europe, and Africa, the US and the Caribbean.

His 1999 debut book, No Place Like Home, in which he retraced the route of the civil rights Freedom Riders, was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award. His subsequent books are Stranger in a Strange Land: Encounters in the Disunited States (2006), Who Are We – And Should It Matter in the 21st Century? (2011), The Speech: The Story Behind Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s Dream (2013), and most recently Another Day in the Death of America: A Chronicle of Ten Short Lives (2016), a "deeply affecting" account of everyday fatalities among young people across the US, which in 2017 won the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize from Columbia Journalism School and the Nieman Foundation for Journalism.

In 2019, Younge was appointed a professor of sociology in the School of Social Sciences at Manchester University, writing his last column for The Guardian in January 2020.

Younge was named on the 2020 list of 100 Great Black Britons. In addition, on the 2020 and 2021 Powerlist, Younge was listed among the Top 100 of the most influential people in the UK of African/African-Caribbean descent.

His 2023 book, Dispatches from the Diaspora: From Nelson Mandela to Black Lives Matter, a collection of his journalism covering four decades of reporting from Britain, the US, and South Africa, was described in the New Statesman as "a reminder of how much racism has changed and how much it has stayed the same." It was said by the TLS reviewer to "offer compelling, nuanced reflections on politics, history and culture".

Personal life

In 2011, Younge relocated to Chicago, Illinois, where he lived with his immediate family until returning to the UK in 2015. with his wife and two children. becoming chair of the council at Cardiff University in 2022.

Awards and honours

• 2007: Honorary doctorate from Heriot-Watt University
• 2007: Honorary doctorate from London South Bank University
• 2009: James Cameron Award for the "combined moral vision and professional integrity" of his coverage of the Barack Obama election campaign
• 2015: Foreign Commentator of the Year by The Comment Awards
• 2015: David Nyhan Prize for political journalism from Harvard University's Shorenstein Center
• 2016: Sandford Award, "for radio, TV and online programmes that reflect religious, spiritual or ethical themes"
• 2016: Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences (FAcSS)
• 2017: Honorary doctorate from Cardiff University
• 2017: James Aaronson Career Achievement Award from Hunter College, City University of New York
• 2019: Honorary doctorate from Mount Holyoke College
• 2020: Powerlist of the Top 100 most influential people in the UK of African/African-Caribbean descent.
• 2020: 100 Great Black Britons
• 2021: Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature

Bibliography

• "Photobombing de Gaulle: how a forgotten picture rewrites the history of WWII. For the triumphant liberation of Paris in August 1944, black soldiers were kept out of sight. Georges Dukson didn't get the memo". FT Magazine, 3 August 2024.
• Pigeonholed: Creative Freedom as an Act of Resistance, Faber & Faber, 08.05.2025

References

References

1. "Index entry". ONS.
2. "Gary YOUNGE - Personal Appointments". [[Companies House]].
3. Younge, Gary (10 January 2020), [https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jan/10/bleak-times-thrive-last-column-guardian "In these bleak times, imagine a world where you can thrive"], ''The Guardian''.
4. (June 16, 2007). "Made in Stevenage". The Guardian.
5. Munshi, Neil. (30 September 2016). "Another Day in the Death of America by Gary Younge review — an indictment of US gun culture". [[Financial Times]].
6. (19 February 2000). "Memoirs of a teenage Trot". The Guardian.
7. [http://www.garyyounge.com/?page_id=2 "About"], Gary Younge website.
8. Donaldson, Brian. (20 May 2010). "Gary Younge - Who Are We and Should it Matter in the 21st Century?". The List.
9. Younge, Gary. (16 February 2007). "Higher education {{!}} Revolution by degrees". The Guardian.
10. [[Margaret Busby. Busby, Margaret]] (25 September 2016), [https://www.thetimes.com/culture/books/article/books-another-day-in-the-death-of-america-by-gary-younge-jbsc5kssk "Books: Another Day in the Death of America by Gary Younge"] (review), ''[[The Sunday Times]]''.
11. (22 March 2010). "Gary Younge".
12. (5 November 2019). "Gary Younge becomes a Professor at The University of Manchester". The University of Manchester.
13. (2020). "100 Great Black Britons – The Book".
14. (25 October 2019). "Raheem Sterling joins Meghan and Stormzy in top 100 most influential black Brits".
15. Jeraj, Samir. (13 March 2023). "From Margaret Atwood to Gary Younge: new books reviewed in short".
16. Nelson, Franklin. (11 August 2023). "Pen portraits {{!}} Reflections on the politics, history and culture of the Black diaspora".
17. [https://www.cardiff.ac.uk/about/organisation/honorary-officers/chair-of-council Chair of Council: Pat Younge] www.cardiff.ac.uk Retrieved 19 March 2023
18. "Honorary Graduates".
19. [http://www.lsbu.ac.uk/about-us/honorary-awards-ceremony "Honorary Awards Ceremony"], London South Bank University
20. GNM press office, [https://www.theguardian.com/gnm-press-office/guardian-journalist-gary-younge-wins-james-cameron-award1 "Gary Younge wins prestigious James Cameron award"], ''The Guardian'', 7 October 2009.
21. [https://www.theguardian.com/media/2009/oct/07/gary-younge-wins-cameron-prize "Guardian's Gary Younge wins prestigious James Cameron prize"], ''The Guardian'', 8 October 2009.
22. Sampson, Jessie, [http://www.newsworks.org.uk/news-and-Opinion/winners-of-the-comment-awards-2015-announced "Winners of The Comment Awards 2015 announced"] {{Webarchive. link. (4 March 2016 , ''Newsworks'', 24 November 2015.)
23. [http://shorensteincenter.org/prizes-lectures/david-nyhan-prize/ "David Nyhan Prize for Political Journalism"], Harvard Kennedy School.
24. [http://sandfordawards.org.uk/the-awards/ "About the Sandford Awards"], [[The Sandford St Martin Trust]].
25. (19 October 2016). "Eighty-four leading social scientists conferred as Fellows of the Academy of Social Sciences".
26. "Honorary Graduates".
27. (2019-05-17). "Commencement Remarks and Citations 2019".
28. Bayley, Sian. (6 July 2021). "RSL launches three-year school reading project as new fellows announced".
29. ”De Gaulle acquiesced [in producing a white infantry division]... So it was that on August 25 many of those who fought for Europe’s liberation were denied the right to participate in it... the freedom for which they were fighting did not apply to them. They call it the blanchiment.” (Younge does not mention that the ashes of [[Félix Éboué]] were interred in the Pantheon 1949)