There weren't enough stories about people who looked like me. So I wrote my own | Coco Khan

My contribution to The Good Immigrant prompted a stream of apology emails: forgive me, ethnic friend, for I have sinned

Four years ago, I wrote an essay that appeared in a collection called The Good Immigrant. The story, based on an episode from my life, opens with a South Asian girl waking up in the bed of a (white) stranger after a one-night stand in the dark. Dawn is breaking, and as the light fills the room she notices something: he has flags. Union jack flags hanging all around the room. I won't spoil the story, but if you're beginning to panic, don't. No hate crime occurs (well, not there anyway), and the piece is a comedy.

My reason for writing it was relatively simple. At the time, Britain was in the midst of a campaign to leave the EU. For us - the writers, the children of immigrants - it was urgent to counter the xenophobic rhetoric that reduced people who love, hurt, bleed and dream to -signs.