Shukla wanted to give a platform to British writers of colour, who he said “aren’t represented and struggle to find interest from mainstream publishers”, i news reported He said the anti-immigrant rhetoric we are currently seeing in Britain is “toxic” and that he believes the book “give[s] the narrative around being ‘other’ in this country back to the people who are othered”.However, he said it wasn't a "political manifesto", telling i news that he began working on it long before the EU referendum in June and the subsequent surge in hate crime against migrants.“We’re not, the writers in the book, all spokespeople for our race and our communities,” he told i news, adding that the book allowed contributors to tell their own stories in their own way.He also urged the media to give writers of colour more "time and space", adding that: “The narrative around immigration is never owned by immigrants…and it’s our story to tell.”The amount of coverage that interim Ukip leader Nigel Farage is given, by contrast, is "astounding", Shukla said.Among the contributors to The Good Immigrant are journalist Bim Adewunmi , who wrote about tokenism in popular culture, and the actor and rapper Riz Ahmed, who recalled his annoyance at being stopped by airport security.Other books to win at the Books Are My Bag readers' awards in other categories were Grief is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter (fiction), Reasons to Stay Alive by Matt Haig (non-fiction), The Road to Little Dribbling: More Notes From a Small Island by Bill Bryson (biography and autobiography), and The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry, cover design by Peter Dyer (beautiful book award).If it's good enough for 50,000 voters, it's good enough for us. We'll be adding The Good Immigrant to our Christmas lists.