Girl, Woman, Other: on women, blackness, and becoming your own self

Bernardine Evaristo is the first ever black woman to have won the Booker Prize (an annual prestigious award handed for the most outstanding unique novel which has been published in the United Kingdom in English). This statement alone should be enough to prove her importance to all of us. Also, she talks womanhood. And she does it well.

In her award-winning novel, “Girl, Woman, Other” she explores the lives of twelve British women, spanning more than a hundred years, dealing with issues of identity, ancestry, prejudice, motherhood, sex and art. Sounds boring? Well, I promise you it’s not. It’s alive, entertaining and deeply relatable, and I am saying this as a white woman.

While reading the novel, I couldn’t help but notice how Evaristo captured the very essence of womanhood: her females are flawed, complex, messy, homophobic and gay, feminist and non-feminist. It’s a hymn to fluidity, to the beauty of diversity. Bernardine herself is such an entertaining figure that you can’t help but fall in love with her. I attended one of her talks recently delivered at Foyles in Charing Cross, she gave some insight about her characters. She is the epitome of how a contemporary writer should be: engaged, fun and deeply passionate about telling stories.

What really struck me about her work is how effectively she describes the struggle of integration, not only as black women. But rather as human beings with a whole baggage of experiences – in contemporary society, the feeling of inadequacy, the “othering” which is still prominent in a world that trumpets the importance of diversity.

If you are a London dweller, diversity will be nothing new to you. But, as the stories unfold throughout the UK, it’s shocking to see how difficult it can be to integrate when you come from a black background: like Carole, who enters Cambridge as a black girl and neglects her own origin to be accepted. We are compelled to ask ourselves, how do you assimilate into a society and hold on to your cultural background, if there’s no one guiding you? And how is the identity of each of us influenced by our origin, as well as our society?

The stories Bernardine narrates become universal in their analysis of blackness. I compared my own experience with that of Carole, and Carole’s experience with that of the other women in the novel. And I realized, whiteness is certainly essential to my identity, but there are elements of my attitude and interests that connect me to these black women far beyond the colour of our skin. Once you acknowledge this, every issue of racism or “otherness” becomes just so meaningless that you even wonder how it arises in the first place.

And yet, every page in the novel is a constant reminder: in every stage of their life, a black person experiences the world differently from a white person. As Bernardine herself said at the talk I attended, “race does not exist, it’s a lived reality, and I described the lived reality of these black women. It’s a response to how we’re treated in society”.

The blackness of these women is so incredibly important to the development of their own self, because they incarnate the “other” of British society; however, on the other hand, the more you read, the more blackness becomes secondary, because let’s be honest, is it that relevant? Is it more relevant than your thoughts, ideas, what you love, who you love, and how?

After this powerful, illuminating read, I am inclined to say no. The judges of the Booker seem to have understood this for the first time in history, by awarding Evaristo. If you have not read ‘Girl, Woman, Other’ I highly recommend that you do, especially as Black History Month is celebrated every October in the UK. It is thanks to stories like these, which give “others” the attention they deserve, that allow our society to move forward. Let’s keep on listening to them.

• black women
• BlackHistoryMonth