And then middle-aged women in their 40s and early 50s. Then when I was writing the wife I was thinking, ‘Older black women, who writes about that?’ I’m not sure, but I don’t think anybody does. When I was writing Mr Loverman I kept thinking ‘Who writes about 70-something year-old older black men in this country?’, and I couldn’t think of anyone, let alone writing a gay character.
A lot of us writers of colour will say that we want to write those books that we feel should be out there. One of the things I realized is that I try to write the stories that aren’t out there. So the book I wrote before was Mr Loverman, which was about a 74 year-old gay Caribbean man living in London, and there were some secondary figures in his wife – a woman in her 60s who didn’t know he was gay, his two middle aged daughters, his grandson and his lover Morris.īy the time the book was finished I was really interested in the three woman’s stories, in particular the two daughters. Five Dials: Where did the idea for Girl, Woman, Other come from?īernardine Evaristo: I suppose each book I write speaks to the one that came before. Joyfully polyphonic and vibrantly contemporary, this is a gloriously new kind of history, a novel of our times: celebratory, ever-dynamic and utterly irresistible. Mostly women, black and British, they tell the stories of their families, friends and lovers, across the country and through the years. Girl, Woman, Otherfollows the lives and struggles of twelve very different characters.
She is currently Professor of Creative Writing at Brunel University London and Vice-Chair of the Royal Society of Literature, and her new novel Girl, Woman, Other is published by Hamish Hamilton. Her other writing includes short fiction, drama, poetry, essays, literary criticism, and projects for stage and radio.
Bernardine Evaristo is the award-winning author of eight books of fiction and verse fiction.
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