Evaristo: memorable women characters and slavery turned upside down

Let's go back to the writer's workshop: were all the twelve protagonists there from the beginning, with their mutual relationships? Did you do some fieldwork to observe the different places and contexts that you described with such acumen and precision?

The book developed organically. I wanted to talk about many stories: a thousand at first, then a hundred, then I thought it was ridiculous. I ended up writing about twelve characters. I didn't start out with a list. The first character that took shape was Carole, then her mother Bummi, then LaTisha.

But I could not start with Carole and her trauma, because I was afraid that it would set the wrong tone for the book, which is not and does not want to be a book about victims. The opening tone is crucial, and I wanted it to be clear from the outset that the book is about many issues: family, relationships, racism, sex, gender. I decided to open the story with Amma, who is elderly, queer, and involved with art and theatre. A new kind of character, perfect to start with.

I grew up in a family of four brothers and three sisters, and it wasn't until I was 19 that I became involved with black women communities, because I lived in a white neighbourhood. I started doing theatre with people from the Caribbean, and I have four girlfriends that introduced me to black sisterhood. I did a lot research to secure as much authenticity as possible. I met a lot of businesswomen, women artists and teachers, I read extensively about farming in northern England. I studied a lot before I could write about the non-binary protagonist, because I didn't know what the feeling of not belonging to any gender was. This book is based on the research I have done. I am a listener and a keen observer of the world around me, and this has been essential in constructing my fiction.

Amma owes something to me as a young woman. Penelope is inspired by a real person, a co-worker that I didn't like at all. I spent a lot of time trying to make her likeable and removing my own judgement from the character, to make her more human. Yazz is very funny. I am not a mother, but I know a lot of mothers and daughters and for her character I drew on my experiences of how such relationships work.
I am 64 years old and I have sharp memories of how it felt being different ages: this was very useful while constructing my characters.

Besides being a great writer, you are also an extraordinary cultural activist. Do you have any advice to make us more aware of our past and of the beauty that variety and diversity bring to our present?

Awareness is the outcome of a long process, just as facing our past is a necessary challenge. Knowledge of the grey areas of the past, in particular, is essential for awareness. We must consider our colonial past if we want to understand the present. Denying it does not help, because we must be conscious of our history and remember at all times that history is shaped by whoever tells it. Our history was predominantly told by men, by white colonisers, while stories told by women, workers and slaves were mainly lost. To fill this gap we can turn to history, geography, sociology. In the art world, and in the cultural world in general, many have taken it upon themselves to build on this awareness to explore and interpret society. Everyone can play a role in narrating the past: academics, of course, but also people working in films, radio, songwriting and music. Everything that concurs to heightening our attentions towards the past and awaken our consciousness is of huge import.

Bernardine Evaristo was born in London in 1959 to an English mother and Nigerian father, the fourth of eight children. She is the author of novels, plays and essays, and has always campaigned for the inclusion and visibility of black artists. Girl, Woman, Other was the first book by a black woman to top the British paperback fiction chart.

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