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Meera Syal

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Academy 7

Anita & Me... and Me

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Factual: Life Stories

25/08/2018

BBC Two - Anita & Me... and Me

Meera Syal describes how her childhood inspired the coming-of-age novel Anita and Me.

Meera Syal journeys back to Essington in the Black Country - the mining village where she grew up. She describes how her childhood inspired the coming-of-age novel Anita and Me.

To introduce her 2002 film Anita and Me, Meera Syal journeys back to Essington in the Black Country - the mining village where she grew up. She describes how her childhood here inspired the coming-of-age novel Anita and Me, that Meera subsequently adapted into a film.

Meera opens up about how she was an outsider, with one foot in the Indian culture of her parents and the other in Essington's white, working-class community. She revisits the site of her old house - and discusses why she wrote Anita and Me: 'I wanted to record the lives of us - the first generation of British Asian kids born here'. Now, the story is part of the GCSE curriculum: 'that's monumental for me -we're here, we contributed.'.

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