Author Bernardine Evaristo won the 2019 Booker Prize - a historic and revolutionary occasion as she was the first black British person ever to win the prize in its 50-year history. However, Evaristo had been working 40 years in the arts before this career landmark. This nonfiction debut from Evaristo looks at the author's childhood as one of eight siblings with a Nigerian father and white Catholic mother, her experience helping set up Britain's first black women's theatre company, the relationships of her twenties and her determination to write novels she found to be absent in the literary world around her. Born in 1959 in London and raised in Woolwich, Evaristo recalls the bigotry she experienced, including frequent vandalism of her family's home with bricks thrown through the window and noting 'Black was bad and white was good'. Learn how Evaristo graduated Rose Bruford College of Speech and Drama and worked with two colleagues to build Theatre of Black Women which created productions that included 'an experimental mixture of dramatic poetry, minimalist sets, movement and music - a theatrical collage, a poetry theatre'. Another important strand of Evaristo's life is her relationships which are chronicled in a chapter about her flings, relationships, crushes and sexuality. She writes that her creative life 'has been inextricably interwoven with my romantic entanglements with other people' and shares her experiences with a 'Mental Dominatrix' who convinced Evaristo she was better at reading the author's own poetry, a long distance affair with a Dutch woman and a restorative fling with a 'docile, sweet- natured, spiritual man'. Evaristo also reflects on her experience learning about Black history and how one 'cannot divorce Britain's imperialist history from its national identity'. At the end of the book, she leaves artists with the guidance to be wild, disobedient and daring with creativity, take risks instead of following predictable routes as 'those who play it safe do not advance our culture or civilisation'. There are fantastic photographs also included in the book, from photographs of her family including her parents' wedding day in Camberwell in 1954 and a portrait photo of her as a 'little dumpling' at the age of one, to a group photo with friends during her last year of school where she writes 'Ms Evaristo of the House of Suburbia is wearing an attention-grabbing woollen coat' and a shot of the author standing beside her fellow 2019 Booker Prize winner Margaret Atwood on 14 October 2019, under which she writes 'I wasn't an overnight success, but everything changed overnight'.
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