W: Bernardine welcome to Waterstones, I should say welcome back to Waterstones
and congratulations for winning the Booker Prize. I'm thinking actually of a
part of your book, Girl, Woman, Other. One of the characters, Carole, is unhappy at
University and her mother lists some women, black women, who were
the first to do certain things. Diane Abbott as the first black MP, Valerie
Amos as the first Baroness and when you stood up on that stage at the Guildhall
you said that you were the first black woman to win the Booker Prize and in
fact the first black British author to win. So you have joined this sort of
panoply of women who are now sort of there as a sort of a marker for others.
Do you feel like that and what does that feel like?
BE: I think I don't know what I
feel at the moment because I'm just still in a state of being
overwhelmed by everything and then every so often I think oh my god you did it,
you won the Booker Prize! And then I have to get on with kind of
more publicity stuff. But I did say that and I'm really glad I said that because
people don't know. You know most people didn't know that we'd never
won it so they need to know that somebody has. I remember when Toni
Morrison died people would say she was the first black woman to win the Nobel
Prize. No, she was the only black woman to win the Nobel Prize and that was nearly
30 years ago. So until we get the kind of statistics and the
numbers you never quite know what the reality is for, say, certain kinds of marginalised communities.
W: In fact not just the fact that you have won it but to win it with this book.
So Girl, Woman, Other has this wide range of characters, is a very inclusive novel in
that way and I wondered if we could talk a bit about that. So why you chose
to tell the story through these named chapters and there's also something
about the style of it so that you often have these sentences which don't have
capitalized beginnings there is something about the flow of one story
into the next; could you tell us a bit about that
BE: So the book kind of grew organically. The desire was to write as many of these women as possible and in
the end I came up with 12 of them. But I didn't know how many characters they
were going to be and I think in the editing process, I always
forget my process, but I think in the editing process
I had the twelve women together and then I grouped them into groups of threes at
some point because that seemed to make sense and characters emerged out of
other character stories. So Amma is the theatre director who ends up having a
show at the National Theatre after nearly 40 years, so she has this big
breakthrough moment. And Yazz is her daughter so Yazz had her own sections.
Dominique is somebody she set a theatre company up with in the 80s so
she had a section. Carole is a banker, working-class Nigerian, ends up going to
Oxford, joins the corporate world. Her mother was in her section, Bummi, who's a
Nigerian immigrant so then Bummi had her own section. So it kind of grew like
that and the women's stories, so they all have their own sections but they're
not individual stories as such they're not short stories. It's a cohesive novel
but it's unusually structured obviously so they all have their own sections but
they also kind of bleed into each other's sections. So there are X degrees
of separation between all the characters. And then I created this form which in
fact I call the novel a fusion fiction because of the way the stories fuse into
each other. But also in terms of the form of the novel whereby I don't use many
full stops. I have lots of commas but it's a kind of poetic patterning on the
page but it's not poetry. So it's a very free-flowing reading
experience I kind of go like that because I think that's how I've written it.
W: That's exactly how it is, it does that across the page.
BE: And you're kind of going with it and hopefully the reader kind of goes with the flow.
And I really enjoyed writing that form actually because it gave me so much
freedom and it felt like it was very energised and also a little bit poetic.
And then I had to revise it and sharpen it up and tighten it and make it
work structurally. So that's how it evolved. And that experience of using
this form, this flowing form, allowed me I feel to go back into the characters' past.
So we go back into everybody's childhood and then we see them in the present
because the novel is set in the present day but I'm also inside their minds and
outside of their minds. But also I feel that the
form kind of means we're kind of accessing their subconscious as you're
reading it. And you're slipping from Amma's subconscious in a sense, to Yazz's
and then into Dominique's and then the next chapter you've got like
Carole and her mother and so on and so forth. Is it a stream of
consciousness? Possibly a little bit but not really because I think it's quite
concrete in many ways as well.
W: That gesture you were doing of the
flow; fluidity seemed to me to be a really major theme in the book as well.
Because there is some gender fluidity, there is some fluidity of sexuality and
there is the fluidity of these people in each other's lives (and class)
And class as well, people moving from from sort of class to class. Is that a correct
assessment is that sort of something you were thinking of as you were writing?
No! I wasn't actually, I wasn't consciously thinking of it but you
know when I'm writing I'm just inside the stories, writing the stories, trying
to produce as much variety as possible. You know they can't all be
straight women because there's 12 of them right. So I'm gonna have some
lesbians, some are gonna be bisexual, one's gonna be polyamorous, one's gonna be
pansexual and then several of them are heterosexual and you know even
homophobic right. And then with the class; I'm very interested in
class, I'm very interested in how people become the people they become and how
they move out of their early lives. So quite a few of the characters start off in
very ordinary working-class backgrounds and then move beyond that to lead
middle-class lives. Because another interesting thing I think about the
novel is that I'm interested in black women, how we achieve and succeed in this
society. And one of the ways in which we do that is to leave our origins behind,
our class behind, and you know assume middle class or even wealthy lives.
So there's sexualities, gender - so obviously sort of transgender issues are
quite topical, I know some non-binary people, so I thought okay let me
create also a non-binary person. Which is why I often describe the book as about
twelve primarily black British womxn - with an x
W-O-M-X-N because that is trans-inclusive. Whereas you know the
non-binary figure isn't a woman anymore, they are non-binary.
W: So people often talk about a novel being a novel of our times. And it's a bit of an empty phrase
often, what does that actually mean?
But you have managed to cover huge amounts of time without it feeling like
a sort of bloated historical novel.
BE: Yeah it covers over 100 years.
The oldest character, the character who is deepest in history is
somebody born in 1875. So it covers the whole of the 20th century and
people are calling it, some people are calling it a feminist novel.
I don't mind, they can call it a feminist novel. That's not what I was thinking
when I was writing it because it feels like it's a bit didactic to be
saying that. But actually it does explore to a greater or lesser extent feminism
in the novel as it is relevant to some of the characters. It is not relevant
to all the characters. So Hattie who is the 93 year old farmer in Northumberland
you know who is a powerful, formidable matriarch. You know, this is a black woman
who's a farmer and has lived on this farm for 93 years. London is a
completely alien sort of concept to her. She wouldn't call herself feminist but
feminists would call her a feminist. And then there is one woman who considers
herself a feminist but she's very much not really inclusive, we think
she's white but she's not really inclusive of black woman in her feminism.
And actually when she has a few disastrous relationships, once she gets
with a guy who was pretty old school in his attitude towards women
she kind of ditches her feminism. She says well look where it's got me.
And then you've got Amma who was definitely feminist and lesbian and has
been all her life and Dominique and they're grappling with the new young
feminists, the millennials, who perhaps see them as old school you know. And then
you've got Yazz who says I'm not a feminist I'm a humanitarian. You know
what does that mean? You know she's like saying 'being a woman is so passé, mom'
She's 19, she's at University, she's very woke. So actually it does throw up all kinds
of things about feminism but also all kinds of things about blackness. Because
they range from women who are very dark to women who don't
look like they're of color and people who are engaging with race to
people who aren't interested in and engaging with race. And I think I was
just sort of trying to explore all the conversations that I
hear and am party to. I'm very much identified as a black woman. I have
members of my family, we're all mixed race, right, so white English and
Nigerian. But members of my family who would identify as mixed-race or just aren't
uninterested in it. So I chose to identify as a black woman many
years ago and I think that's how society sees me. But I totally respect
somebody who says well I'm mixed-race why should I identify with one side. They
won't identify as white because they can't, because society will say
well you're not. But actually they can say that's who I am, I'm biracial,
I'm multiple heritage, I'm mixed-race. That's absolutely valid and fine and
that's what I am within being black. So a lifetime of having these
conversations has been put into this novel. I could not have written this
novel at the age of 22 because young women write young women and if
they write old women, they're nuts I have to say, seriously.
So at my age I could write young women and I know young women, I teach young women.
And then I can also conceive of somebody, people in their 70s 80s and 90s,
as fully formed and functioning human beings.
W: Who are not just nuts.
BE: Who are not nuts.
W: That idea of race is really interesting and in that spirit of
inclusivity there's a character who discovers something about their genetic
heritage, this idea of DNA testing, and of course anybody who's ever done that test
will find that they're not nearly as one thing as they thought they were. There is
this whole range of things. And I wondered whether whilst this is a book
primarily about black womanhood that it really does something about
breaking down those divisions that people seem to be wanting to erect more
and more in this age of extremes where people are one thing or another. That
actually what you show is that people are fluid and made up of many things and
that our society is actually far more, not homogenized,
but far more mixed than we give it credit for.
BE: Yeah, I think so. I think that's a good interpretation, thanks!
W: You can have that.
BE: Yeah, you know I am political. but I think everything
is complicated and messy and nuanced And I really do try to steer away
from very simplistic, didactic political viewpoints. Whether it's on race or
gender or sexuality or class or anything. Because it is a mix. Always there
is a mix of things at play. And I guess that's what I am doing with a novel I'm
showing the complexity and the variety of experiences and identities and
options and so on as it pertains to black women. But you know I'm really
surprised with this novel that women of color are getting it generally, white
women are getting it and even middle-aged white men are coming up to me
and saying how much they love it and I'm like oh. It's interesting for me.
And I guess this is perhaps while the Booker thing's been going on
you know, that's the joy of the prize that the books are
kind of reaching into all kinds of parts of the UK and the world that the
book might not have reached. And then people read it and they realise well
actually it's about human experience, it's about humanity, you know, these people are
not alien to me, they have relationships. You know the novel is also
about relationships and families. They have problems, they have
ambitions, they have desires, they have disappointments, they have tragedies; they
have all those things. And I think although those things are refracted
through my characters they are universal experiences.
W: when you were last here we were filming a little Shelfie video in which you were picking books
that had inspired you and one of those was Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde.
And she once said 'I am deliberate and afraid of nothing.'
and I wondered whether that was a sentiment with which you could sympathise?
BE: I am deliberate...
W: I am deliberate and afraid of nothing.
I wonder whether winning the Booker Prize if you didn't feel this already
instills you with a confidence to do whatever you want next.
BE: I am afraid of nothing. That's a really powerful statement isn't it. I feel
vindicated, sure. I feel that after, you know, I went to drama school in '79 and
that's when I started writing and 40 years later I've got this achievement.
I mean in a sense it is a rubber stamping. It's not that I have undervalued my own
work since then you know or that other people have undervalued it but we know
that it is a sort of landmark thing to win this prize in this sort of world.
So that's amazing. So I do feel vindicated in a sense. But I think there
might be the pressure after this in terms of delivering whatever I'm going
to deliver next. So, knowing myself, I think there will
be some fear about the next book. But my previous book, Mr Loverman, a lot of
people loved it and felt very affectionate towards it and in the early days of writing
Girl, Woman, Other I was thinking oh, they love that book, Mr Loverman,
people aren't gonna love this book they're not gonna love it.
But now so many people are loving it so I'm like okay well I shouldn't
have worried about that because you know every book will find its readership and
find its audience. So what I feel is unstoppable.
I think there's always fear, not fear that stops me though,
so I do feel unstoppable. I feel that but I've felt that for a very long time because
I think a lot of people give up. You know I have a publisher Simon
Prosser at Hamish Hamilton who's always published me for 20 years. So that has
been brilliant, to have a home like that. But I've never taken it for granted that
he will publish my books, that each book I'm going to send to him he's going to
say yes I'll publish it. But he has always published my book so I've had
that foundation. And he's always encouraged me, well, he hasn't had to
encourage me but he's always accepted the quirky little things that I do.
But I haven't had... I've had mainstream attention but not
major mainstream attention, people don't know my name around the
country or the world. And they come across my books and they will
say oh, especially if they've liked my work, I really like your book you know
and then they'll discover the other books and they'll say but
you know I've never heard of you. And I think the Booker will change that.
So I'm unstoppable but then I also have the Booker behind
me to do the work of bringing my work to a larger audience. And that's
just, you know, I'm really pleased about that. That's an understatement actually...
(That's fucking fantastic.)