Coconut

Nineteen-year-old bedroom rapper Dev has always been called a ‘coconut’: brown on the outside, white on the inside. Already ashamed of his Australian accent, he has given up on speaking his family’s language due to being mocked by community members any time he says a word in Fiji Hindi. His cultural displacement comes to a head when he accidentally ruins his grandpa’s Hindu funeral ceremony, knocking the urn containing his ashes into the nearby creek. Everything changes when, after a grocery shopping trip leads to mutual frustration, his sharp-tongued, non-English-speaking grandma hears Dev swear at a stranger and responds in kind. Their new secret language becomes a bridge across grief, a way back into culture and language, and the start of healing.Nineteen-year-old bedroom rapper Dev has always been called a ‘coconut’: brown on the outside, white on the inside. Already ashamed of his Australian accent, he has given up on speaking his family’s language due to being mocked by community...