Bernardine Everisto — Manifesto: On Never Giving Up

Image Source: Southbank Centre

On 3 October, I visited the Southbank Centre (again!). This time to see one of my favourite Black British female writers — Bernardine Evaristo. This event was held at Queen Elizabeth Hall, and I have to say that I really did prefer this space to the Royal Festival Hall. This time our seats were much closer to the stage.

For those of you who may not know, Bernardine Everisto was the first Black woman to win the Booker Prize in 2019 for her novel Girl, Woman, Other. I say win; she shared the prize with Margaret Atwood, which Bernardine did not mind in the slightest since her fandom has expanded dramatically:

“I am happy to share it, especially with Margaret Atwood who is such an inspiring feminist, environmentalist, legendary writer and generous person. I certainly don’t feel that I’ve won half a prize. My name alone appears on the Booker plaque sent to me, just as hers will do the same.” (bevaritso.com) 

Image Source: thebookerprize.com

My friends and I thought she should and could have been awarded the whole prize especially as Margaret Atwood had already won the prize in 2000. 

Bernardine Evaristo On Writing / Vogue Visionaries / British Vogue / YouTube 2021

I've met Bernardine face-to-face a couple of times, most recently on 9 November 2019 at a Wasafiri event at the British Museum: 'An Island Full of Voices', where she was featured in a panel on authorial activism and literary collectives with Rachel Long, Nikesh Shuka and Susheila Nasta. I literally bumped into her in the ladies’ toilets! This was just after winning the Booker Prize so I felt compelled to engage in a few quick words to congratulate her and remind her of the time in 1997 when she did a reading of her semi-autobiographical novel-in-verse Lara, at the Centerprise Bookshop, an iconic community centre where she signed my copy. Sadly, Centerprise closed in 2012 after Hackney Council seized its premises after four decades, during which it was a hub for all things book related. I facilitated a creative writing workshop there during the nineties as part of the Black Literature Development Agency.

Image Source: Amazon

I'd been looking forward to seeing and hearing Bernardine discuss her powerful new book Manifesto: On Never Giving Up ever since I heard of its existence when she shared the news on Twitter, especially as she would be in conversation with another one of my favourite Black British female writers, Afua Hirsch, also a journalist and broadcaster, known for her book Brit(ish): On Race, Identity and Belonging.

Bernardine Evaristo

Bernardine started with a reading, some of which charted coming of age and leaving home after living within a family of eight children and two parents:

“When I think of it now, I landed very easily as an eighteen-year-old. I wanted a boyfriend, and had one; I needed a home, and walked into one; I needed a job, and found one. The only problem was that the boyfriend and I weren’t really at the nesting stage, but he was the easiest route out of my family home so what did I care? We briefly shared his room in this communal property until the one next door became available and I nabbed it. Finally, I had a room of my own. My first one. Up until this point, I had never slept a single night in a room on my own.”

I could so resonate with the yearning to leave home, although for me the motivation in the 1970s was because I wanted to return to a culturally diverse dynamic city to live in. After spending eight years living in Northamptonshire, due to no fault of my own, I strongly felt the need to move back to London to re-establish myself. 

L: Afua Hirsch R: Bernardine Evaristo

Bernardine went on to tell us how her life of creativity, spanning four decades, included being an actress, playwright, teacher, and activist. Her book Manifesto provides a detailed account of how she lived her creative life, refusing to let any barriers get in her way, which is one of the main reasons I wanted to buy a copy as I could totally relate. This idea of never giving up despite social issues such as race, class, feminism, sexuality, and ageing is all-inspiring and particularly relevant in the society we live in.

Booker Prize Winner, Bernardine Evaristo / Full Q & A at The Oxford Union, 2020

Manifesto is such an inspiring read. I love that Bernardine never gave up and kept going with her writing amongst other pursuits. Her lifelong commitment to writing those original stories — novels, plays — that were often explorations and experimentations that took many years to write, were executed with a sheer determination and diligence that I admire and respect. So if you are creative and struggling with where you are at, you must keep on going, for you never know where your creativity may end up. You might one day win a prize! And even if that doesn't happen it will be well worth the ride.

Bios:

Bernardine Everisto is the author of nine books and numerous other works that span the genres of verse fiction, short fiction, poetry, essays, literary criticism, journalism, and radio and theatre drama. Her writing and projects are based on her interest in the African diaspora. She is a Professor of Creative Writing at Brunel University London.

Afua Hirsch is a writer, journalist, and broadcaster. She is a columnist for The Guardian, and appears regularly on the BBC, Sky News and CNN. Her first book Brit(ish): On Race, Identity and Belonging, was awarded a Royal Society of Literature Jerwood Award for Non-Fiction.

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