The son of traditional Pakistani parents in Leicester – the Midlands city where Asians constitute a third of the population – Riaz Khan found his own identity in the early 1980s, when he adopted football’s ‘casual’ culture. In KHAN, the eponymous author describes the era when the British-born children of Asian immigrants began to cross-pollinate with working-class English kids. At odds with the strict Muslim values of his parents, he describes how his adoption of the soul-boy look of the 80s coincided with his acceptance into Leicester City FC’s hooligan ‘Baby Squad’. No longer a ‘Paki’ – according to the racist parlance of the time – he and his fellow young Asians were the heralds of a hybrid youth culture.
Introduced to new Asian gangs such as the Wongs, Riaz, his brother Suf and their peers confound the old stereotype of Asians as passive and studious. In the environs of their multiracial football ‘firm’, they are truly at home; outside the tiny world of kick-offs and punch-ups, Khan still sometimes finds himself labelled an alien – not only by skinhead BNP members but by his own family. This is his story. This is a portrait of melting-pot Britain in the making.
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