'The key to that was through a conversation I had with several Black authors - including Dionne Brand - and they were asking me how my writing was going. I got the idea that I would make my book essentially a calendar and that every month of 2017 would form a chapter of the book. It would take another two years to actually figure out the structure of the book. After I signed the book deal, I did feel some pressure. This caught me by surprise because I wasn't planning on doing that. 'After it was published, Penguin Random House was among a few book publishers that reached out to me and asked if I was interested in writing a book. It was a personal essay about my own experiences with police surveillance and the practice that we now refer to as carding. 'In 2015, I had a piece published with Toronto Life called The Skin I'm In. CBC Books named Cole a 2020 writer to watch.Ĭole spoke to CBC Books about how he wrote The Skin We're In. border in the middle of winter and the death of Somali-Canadian Abdirahman Abdi at the hands of the Ottawa police. The Skin We're In looks at one year, 2017, and chronicles Cole's personal journalism, activism and experiences alongside stories that made the headlines across the country, including refugees crossing the Canada-U.S.

The Skin We're Inis journalist and activist Desmond Cole's first book, and it explores life in Canada as a Black person. When it was published in February 2020, it became one of the bestselling books in the country.

The Skin We're In by Desmond Cole