Bernardine Evaristo: ‘I’ve gone from being a raging ranter in my 20s to a radical reasoner in my 60s’
My earliest reading memory
I loved the novel Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild, which I read when I was about nine. It was the only book I owned for many years as we couldn’t afford them. I relied on Woolwich library, but sadly the books had to be returned. I think Ballet Shoes spoke to me because it was about three sisters who felt like outsiders, and who lived in a large, eccentric home full of people, including boarders. Likewise, I grew up feeling like an outsider in a large eccentric house with eight children and two parents, as well as boarders– at one stage a family of 13 from Goa stayed with us – in the two attic rooms.
My favourite book growing up
Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas, which I read at 14, when I was cast as Captain Cat in the annual play at my girls’ school. I relished playing the ancient Welsh sea captain and was entranced by the poetic language, humour and huge range of characters who inhabit the seaside town of Llareggub. Originally written as a radio drama, the play became an early inspiration for my own writing many years later.
The book that changed me as a teenager
The Kon-Tiki Expedition by Thor Heyerdahl airlifted me out of my south-London neighbourhood and across the world to the Pacific Ocean. It broadened my horizon at a time when my only international travel experience was a day trip to Boulogne. I’m sure I’d find it problematic in many ways today, but I will never forget the sheer exhilaration I felt when reading it as a youngster because it made me feel the limits of my suburban childhood. More than any other book, it inspired me to become a traveller.
The writer who changed my mind
Audre Lorde. I bought her 1984 collection of essays and speeches, Sister Outsider, from Sisterwrite bookshop in Islington when it came out. I’ll never forget reading, at a time when we women struggled to be heard. Lorde told us that our silence will not protect us, and that the master’s tools will not dismantle the master’s house. Do I agree with these two sentiments now? Actually, not so much. We need to be clever and strategise about when and how we speak up in order to yield results. I’ve gone from being a raging ranter in my 20s to a radical reasoner in my 60s. I also think the master’s tools can be repurposed and subverted to rebuild a fairer society.
The book that made me want to be a writer
The choreopoem, for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf by Ntozake Shange was a huge encouragement to me as a young theatre writer.
The book I reread
Midsummer by Derek Walcott, a series of 50 sonnets he wrote in middle age, which I have been rereading for 40 years. His poetry is deep, gorgeous, complex, sublime - and when I feel that I’m losing my poetic voice, reading this book reconnects me to it.
The book I discovered later in life
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, published in 1937. It’s a wonderful novel but I didn’t come across it as a young woman when I began reading literature by black women. She flourished during the Harlem Renaissance, only to be later forgotten, dying in obscurity and poverty. This novel was out of print for nearly 30 years. Alice Walker began the process of reviving her reputation in the late 70s.
The book I am currently reading
Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World by Naomi Klein, which won the inaugural Women’s prize for nonfiction this year. It’s a brilliant interrogation and analysis of the disturbing fissures and extreme factions evident in our politics and culture at the moment. Everyone should read it.
My comfort read
I tend to read large art books full of visual imagery to give my eyes a rest. I’m currently reading Shining Lights: Black Women Photographers in 1980s–90s Britain, edited by the photographer Joy Gregory. It’s an important record of this era seen through the gaze of fantastic photographers who have been mostly overlooked.
• A new edition of Mr Loverman by Bernardine Evaristo will be published by Penguin on 26 September, to coincide with the BBC TV adaptation.
