Girl, Woman, Other

Bernardine Evaristo’s Inside Story: “Winning the Booker Prize for Girl, Woman, Other has just been a phenomenal experience. I feel like I haven’t stopped running since. Even my feelings around the BBC situation are very positive [in their coverage of the 2019 Turner Prize being shared between four artists, the BBC referred to Evaristo as “another author” while referencing her joint Booker Prize win with Margaret Atwood]. The outrage that people felt for it was actually very heartening. I got a sense that there is a community of people out there who really value my achievement [Evaristo is the first black female winner] and want to see it acknowledged.

“There was always this argument that there was no readership for black British writing. But now, writers have come through and done very well. I think my book is proving that experimental and quite cutting-edge black writing can also resonate with people whose stories are far removed from these characters. Because Girl, Woman, Other is quite radical in many ways: there are women on the queer spectrum exploring class and gender and race, plus there’s a non-binary character.

“A lot of people have said to me that they find the book very insightful into lives they knew nothing about. So it feels like the book has this educational aspect to it—which isn’t what I was trying to do. Nor was I trying to define our lives. I was just trying to broaden the scope of our lives in fiction. But the actual consequence of that is that people feel they’re being educated. The book was written in 2013, at a time when there weren’t many books out there about black British women and so we were not fashionable in any way. But during the period between writing and release, things changed and society shifted. Which was interesting for me, because I don’t usually write anything that’s topical!

“To be honest, some of the first reviews were not as exceptional as some of the reviews I’ve had for other works, so I didn’t think it was going to be my big breakthrough novel. But I was shortlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize, which was the first reassuring thing that happened, and then the Booker experience took it to a very different place.

“A favourite character from the book? Well, I had a lot of fun with Yazz. She’s certainly no modelled on a young me—I was very serious when I was younger and not entitled. Yazz is someone who has big expectations and is loosely based on one of my godchildren when she was younger. They do know that, and she complained that I didn’t credit her in the book for being the inspiration. She’s not really Yazz, but she is that kind of young, clever, feisty, full-of-life character who’s very critical of her parents and would really make me laugh.

“So, Yazz is 19 and then we have Hattie at 93 years old. I found Hattie much harder to write because I don’t know anything about farming up in Northumberland. Or indeed farming, full stop. So she took a lot of research, but as a character I also found her rich and complex, very funny and formidable. She’s such an unusual figure for British fiction. A 93-year-old farmer living independently completely compos mentis, and also a woman of colour. Those two characters are the two I am perhaps most invested in.

“I have a non-binary character [Morgan], so I did a lot of online research into what it’s like to be non-binary and the reasons why people choose that, or feel that they have been chosen for that. When I began writing I was trying to understand issues around being transgender and I did understand at a deeper level what they might mean, which was very helpful in writing the character.

“I then came to the conclusion that actually, for me, it makes more sense to be non-binary than it is to be trans male or trans female. Because gender is not inherent in who we are as people. Being a woman and being a man is very much performance. So why, one could propose, would you go from one performance to another? So, I thought while writing Morgan, the most obvious thing to do would be to not associate with either gender: to reject the idea or agenda of either. It was very educational for me.

“I feel one of the things that might be a result of me winning the Booker is that people will be more open to experimental voices from my community and black writers. I think there’s an important difference between experimenting with fiction and it being inaccessible, and experimenting with fiction and making it readable. I am totally disinterested in writing something that will only be accessible to people with a PhD in experimental fiction.

“When I wrote these 12 black women characters, I really wanted them to be out there, and for them to reach people—the 12 black British women who wouldn’t necessarily find a home in the houses of middle England are out there. But I had to allow the form to be the form that it is. So I’m just delighted that this experimental work is not proving to be a problem for people. In fact, I was recently talking to a dyslexic person who finds it really hard to read. She was telling me how easy she found the book to read. The absence of full stops and the way it’s presented on the page allowed her not to get hung up on English grammar. The words were more immediately accessible to her.”