A lovely non fiction book from Irish journalist and gaeilgeoir Una-Minh Kavanagh as she details her childhood growing up in rural Ireland as a woman of colour, and how her beloved grandad instilled a love of the Irish language in her from a young age and how Irish has helped her become the person she is today.

I've been a follower of Una's for quote a while, and I'm glad to have finally read this book and learned more about her mother's journey to Vietnam in 1991 to bring Una home, and her beautiful relationship with her grandad (which I think hit me deeper as I'm a couple of days away from my own grandad's two-year anniversary). As someone who deeply regrets my failure of learning Irish in school, I really appreciated Una's fun attitude towards encouraging the ability in others and her passion in keeping Irish alive in as many ways as possible which includes gaming in Irish. Now, thanks to Una I've switched my email inbox to Irish to help me tune my mind a bit more to the language.

Una also details some of the horrible racism she has experienced in Ireland - both offline and online - and her strength of spirit and character in the face of such low behaviour is commendable. I liked how she encouraged people to speak up for themselves or for others with her story and how she turned her story into a brilliant online campaign to highlight that Irishness means more than freckles and white skin but comes in a kaleidoscope of beautiful skin tones, backgrounds and experiences.

I think there were times the writing and the story stayed on the simpler side of things, and I wasn't always here for detailing of the amount of engagement different tweets got online (I also think all of this would mean nothing to an older read and could repel them from the book). However, I did enjoy Una's sense of humour that stayed intact for the entire book, and how can I not enjoy a book that is more or less a love letter to both the Irish language and a wonderful Irish grandad.