El Club de Lectura de Casa África comenta la obra «Niña, mujer, otras», de Bernardine Evaristo

For this new literary meeting, the first of the 2021 session, the co-ordinator of the Reading Club, Ángeles Jurado, has suggested "Girl, Woman, Others", Man Booker Prize 2019, a work by the Anglo-Nigerian writer Bernardine Evaristo.

The novel, which shared the Man Booker prize with Margaret Atwood and her sequel to “The Handmaid's Tale” is written in a ground breaking literary style, half way between poetry and prose, which the author described as “fusion literature”. A text which breaks literary conventions and the usual rules of punctuation and yet surprises with its flow and is easy to read.

The story presents a side of Great Britain which has never been revealed before. From Newcastle to Cornwall, from the start of the twentieth century up to the start of the twenty-first. In “Girl, Woman, Others” we follow the story of twelve characters' lives around the country and during the last hundred years.

All of them are seeking for a shared past, an unexpected future, a place to call home, a place where they will fit in, a lover, a long lost mother, a missing father;  or just a ray of hope ...

The novel is a densely populated town where everyone supports each other in order to get through life, something which faithfully reflects the vision the author has of an ideal society.

Bernardine Evaristo writes novels but has also written short stories, plays, poetry, essays, literary criticism and projects for the theatre and for radio. Two of her books, The Emperor's Babe (2001) and Hello Mum (2010), have been adapted by the BBC Radio 4 drama department.

Bernardine is currently Professor of Creative Writing at Brunel University, London and is the Vice Chairman of the Royal Society of Literature.

Evaristo fights for the recognition of black literature and art. In 2012 she founded the African Poetry Prize at the University of Brunel and the manual for development of poets The Complete Works (2007–2017). She was also co-founder of the writers support agency Spread the Word (1995) and in the 1980s created the first black women's theatre company in Great Britain: Theater of Black Women. In addition, in 1995 she organised the first black theatre conference in Great Britain, Future Histories, for the Black Theatre Forum, at the Royal Festival Hall, and the first conference in Great Britain on British black writers, Tracing Paper, at the Museum of London, in 1997.

If you are interested in participating in our Reading Club, please write to cultura@casafrica.es. For the moment, the meetings are being held online as virtual meetings, but when the pandemic is over, on site meetings will be resumed.