Bookshelfie: Women’s Prize Podcast - S2 Ep13: Bookshelfie: Lily Cole

Episode Date: July 14, 2020

In this episode Zing Tsjeng is joined by Lily Cole, who takes us on a tour of her bookshelves and tells us her five favourite books by women. Lily has been a household name for the past twenty years, first famous for her flaming red hair and modelling career and now better known for being an philanthropist, actress, entrepreneur, activist, mother and author. In 2013 she co-founded Impossible.com: a technology company that uses tech to solve social and environmental problems. Her new book Who Cares Wins is being published on the 31st July. Lily's book choices are: Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte  I Am Your Sister by Audre Lorde  The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson  A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi Every fortnight, join Zing Tsjeng, editor at VICE, and inspirational guests, including Dolly Alderton, Stanley Tucci, Liv Little and Scarlett Curtis as they celebrate the best fiction written by women. They'll discuss the diverse back-catalogue of Women’s Prize-winning books spanning a generation, explore the life-changing books that sit on other women’s bookshelves and talk about what the future holds for women writing today. The Women’s Prize for Fiction is one of the most prestigious literary awards in the world, and this series will also take you behind the scenes throughout 2020 as we explore the history of the Prize in its 25th year and gain unique access to the shortlisted authors and the 2020 Prize winner. Sit back and enjoy. This podcast is produced by Bird Lime Media. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

At Harrison Healthcare, we know that lasting health starts with personalized care. We're not just a clinic. We're your partner in prevention, helping you achieve your health and longevity goals. Our expert team combines evidence-based medicine with the compassionate, unhurried care you and your family deserve today and for many years to come. When it comes to your health, you shouldn't settle for anything less than exceptional. Visit harrisonhealthcare.ca.ca.com. With thanks to Bailey's, this is the Women's Prize for Fiction Podcast, celebrating women's writing, sharing our creativity, our voices, and our perspectives, all while championing the very best fiction written by women around the world. I'm Zing Singh, your host for Season 2 of the Women's Prize podcast, coming to you every fortnight throughout 2020. You've joined me for a special bookshelfy episode in which we ask an inspiring woman to share the story of her life through five brilliant books by women.

Welcome back to another episode of Bookshelfy recorded during the coronavirus lockdown. We are recording this episode for you remotely. So if there are any sound issues, please bear with us. Today's guest has been a household name for the last 20 years, famous first for her flaming red hair and modeling career, and now better known as a philanthropist, an actress, an entrepreneur, an activist, a mother and an author. She was awarded a first class in history of art from Cambridge in 2011. In 2013, she co-founded Impossible.com, a technology company that uses tech to solve social and environmental problems. She's spoken at Davos, Google Zeitgeist, Wired and Web Summit. She was an affiliate at the Berkman Center at Harvard University and her new book, Who Cares Wins, is being published on the 31st

of July this year. It is, of course, Lily Cole. Lily, welcome. How has the lockdown been for you so far? Wow, that's a big question. I'm still processing it. It feels hard to, I don't, it feels hard to like land, land on strong opinions about. I feel very lucky and privileged, um, that we live in the countryside. We have lots of outdoor space. Um, we're able, you know, we can afford the necessities and I think my worries right now with communities that are in much, much, much, much, much more difficult situations facing the situation. Um, I mean, trying to look for the silver lining since the beginning, um, of which I think, you know, there are a lot to find, whether it's stillness, time with family, a shift in how we think about

work and consuming and living, maybe a more sustainable pace of life. So I've been trying to focus on the positives, but obviously it's, I think, probably quite an emotionally fraught time for many people. Oh, definitely. I think so. I think of anything. I mean, it's been fine for me. I've been in London, so I feel relatively safe and secure in my own place. Again, just kind of musing on how lucky I am to not be a frontline worker, to not be a key worker, to not be out there at the front of the epidemic trying to get it under control. But I have friends and family who are. So, you know, there's that sense of worry about whether they're going to be okay and hoping for the best.

And then thinking about people in refugee camps and communities where it's impossible to social distance or wash your hands, places where there's little food security. And yeah, yeah, it's we, I think the people who were able to. speak about their experience for the most part are usually the lucky ones. It's the people we're not hearing from that avoid us list right now that I would worry about. Exactly. And I think that one of the things about the pandemic is that it touches every single section of society. And I can't remember the last big news event maybe that had that effect on everybody in the world in the same way. Like everyone's affected differently. But it's the one news event that

is on the agenda for every single country, for every single person in the world. For sure. And actually that's a silver lining I look to. Yeah, in the beginning of the book that I've just written that you mentioned, Who Cares Wins, I talk about the climate crisis as a kind of unifying threat that has the potential to bring humanity together. And obviously, the coronavirus has done that. And for all the hugely traumatic and negative fallouts it is having, I think one of the silver linings is that we have been brought together and, people of, you know, different economic and kind of socio-political backgrounds all have to all have to deal with it together. And hopefully there's something very unifying, the potential for something very unifying that could come out of that experience. I know, fingers crossed. And, you know, there's some things that I've noticed that people are turning to more and more during the pandemic, you know, being able to talk to their friends, their family, being able to have access to, you know, art, literature, music.

that has been a kind of comfort to them in these days, that's come across quite strongly to me. And I think maybe getting back to old, old hobbies and dreams that often we're too busy to do, finding time to do things in a DIY way, I think can bring a lot of a lot of pleasure to life, you know, the simple pleasures. Exactly. Have you been reading a lot during the lockdown? I haven't, no. I wish I had. I was reading a bit. One of the nice things about this podcast is I was looking back on my book list and feeling justified in just spending the day reading. I've actually had quite a lot of work to do from home and having changed art.

My daughter's not a nursery anymore, so having much more time with her has been beautiful and a blessing, but also is a juggling act with other work things I have going on. Definitely. Do you read to her a lot? We read her two stories every night. I actually just started her on a Harry Potter audiobook this week. I think it's, I don't think she's there yet. I think I was about eight when I read those. I think I'm being a bit eager.

But she's getting into Enna Blyton and The Far Away Tree. She loves like Planet books. She loves Peter Rabbit. I don't know. A lot of the old classics and some new ones mixed in. Julian is a mermaid, gorgeous illustrated book. I read that recently. It's such a great book.

isn't it yeah it's nice when you find a child's book that speaks to an adult as well as a child so you're kind of enjoying it yourself while you're reading it oh definitely I mean it's all the classics really and you've got quite a few classics on the list of books for bookshelfy I mean the first one you picked is Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte yeah I can't think of a more classic novel than that I know part of me thought I shouldn't include it because I've already spoken so much about why I love that book at the same time it is it did have an impact of significant impact on my life growing up so it would feel a bit of a lie to not include it. So there you go. There it is. There's, there's Emily again. How did it have a significant impact on your life?

Well, maybe that sounds a bit melodramatic, not a significant impact, but like it, you know, you read books as you're growing up and some of them have a kind of formative impact on how you think or make a very strong impression on you. And it was one of those books that, um, I don't know, just I guess emotionally resonated with me in a very strong way. And then I went back to and, you know, read, read again over the years. And I think as I've gone older, I've been probably better able to deconstruct in a more analytical way why I like it. Um, the kind of, some of the politics to it, I think probably really spoke to me without realizing it. But it's also just beautifully written. And any story that creates a very strong imaginary world where you believe in

the characters and you believe in the relationships and the places is, um, you know, um, you're It's almost like a memory of a holiday that you or a house used to live in that you want to go back to that feels real in your imagination. So how old were you when you read it for the first time? I'm afraid in all of these books I'm going to have to be a bit vague because I don't remember the exact dates. I read it in school. I think it was like early secondary school, I want to say. So like young teens. Was it one of the books that you read for class or was it something you picked up for pleasure?

No, it was definitely a class book. I remember writing notes in the margins and all that kind of bookish stuff you do in school. So it was definitely a class book. But you know, you read lots of class books and a lot of them fall away. It was one that I then came back to just for enjoyment, you know, later.

What do you think spoke to you at that age about Wuthering Heights? Because I remember being an English class and reading a ton of books that, you know, like you say, failed to connect with at all and actively despised by the end of, you know, school in A levels. So what was it about Wuthering Heights that really spoke to you?

I think first and foremost, it's just very beautifully written, very poetic. And I think some books manage to create a very strong, real, solid sense of place and character. That once you've gone into that world, it's like a familiar territory. And so I have a few books that are favourites of mine that I will reread in life. because when I reread them, it's almost like seeing old friends that it feels familiar the landscape that you've created in your mind attached to that story. And Wuthering Heights is one of those.

So I think probably it was just fed my imagination in a really strong way. I think later in life looking back on it, I'm kind of very impressed by Emily Bronte herself as a writer and also the politics that were quite subtle in it around essentially feminism, written before there was much of a discourse around feminism or it wouldn't have been understood or even maybe recognized by Emily in those terms but the relationships between capitalism and property

and women losing their property rights and therefore how that affected their romantic relationships and their choices was kind of woven throughout that text in a really strong way and maybe that had nothing to do with why I liked in the first place but maybe that's what makes me appreciate it more over time I think it's such a subtle book because you're learning about basically women and how they were deprived of property, deprived of their liberty, but in such a way that it feels like a real kind of yarn. I don't know how I was to put it. It's very readable, which I think is why, you know, as young people, especially young women, they love Wuthering Heights in a way that, you know,

they might not other novels from the same time period that are kind of foisted on them by English teachers and school and exams and stuff like that. Yeah, totally. And the politics isn't in. your face at all. You almost have to unpick it to find it. And that might have been conscious on Emily's part or it might have been that she didn't even think of it as political. It was more that she was grappling with these structures that she existed within and trying to make sense of them and how they're impacting her and her sister's lives. And that subtlety, I think, is one of the reasons it's powerful because it's not pushing a political idea down your throat. It's exploring human relationships with the politics as the kind of invisible backdrop that's then affecting the relationships.

Were you quite a big reader when you were growing up? I think I was, yeah. It's very hard to be objective about yourself, but there's a photograph of me immersed in a book. I think it was like some cheesy, cheesy book, very young, but my face looks very intense and very serious. And I think that I did find a real solace in books and a really kind of, I live. loved, I just loved going into those different worlds. And yeah, I think I really, yeah, always really, really, since the age I obviously could read, really loved it. It's still hard to find a good book, I find. And so I'll go long periods of not really reading because I haven't found

something that really captures me. And then when I find something that captures me, it's like, it's wonderful. It's like a love affair, you know? You can just enjoy it. Because I imagine that, you know, in your modelling days, you must have had to travel so much. And most people, think that travelling is a boon towards reading books. But sometimes you can't really concentrate when you're travelling all the time. Well, I was always modelling when I was studying. And the way I managed to to keep the two going at the same time was actually by taking books, usually school books, with me on trips. So whether it was travelling or getting my hair and makeup done for that period of my life, I pretty much always had a book in my hands because I would take those times. Modelling is like,

Luckily, you have a lot of time where you're just waiting around getting a makeup done on a train, on a plane. And I would use that time to be doing my schoolwork. So I was actually probably not like reading maybe for enjoyment, but yeah, reading. Was that kind of, you know, did you kind of motivate yourself to study that hard during those times? Or, you know, I don't, you know, with modelling, like are people expecting you to, you know, like when you're a child actor, there'll be a tutor and stuff like. that or was it basically all off your own back? I didn't have a tutor or anything. It was all off my own back.

The lucky thing is I'm probably quite a geek that I actually like enjoy, enjoy reading and enjoy learning if it's a subject I like. So there might have been some parts that felt sluggish, but a lot of the time I was actually really interested in what I was doing. So it made moments that might have actually been quite boring, like travelling or, I don't mean, I don't like traveling itself, but I mean the journey. and or getting your makeup done.

It could maybe make those moments more interesting. I still had fun. I'm not saying I was only reading books for years of my life, but I managed to fit the books in. The second book that you picked is Audrey Lord, I Am Your Sister, which is her collected writings. And I think you were given this as a present from a friend. Yeah, from a really good friend of mine probably four years ago.

And I was familiar with her writing probably more anecdotally from quotes I'd read here and there. But seeing it collected together was like, yeah, just a powerful moment. It's also such a political collection of essays. Yeah, I think there's actually, if I look at the five books I've chosen, they're all quite political. I wasn't on purpose, I guess, the kind of books that speak to me. I think she's an amazing thinker. I think she speaks very clearly and powerfully and the way that she looks at the intersecting natures of oppression

and the fact that we can't separate out one version of oppression from another that it's all part of a kind of system was, I think, at the time when she was writing it kind of very pioneering and it still feels unfortunately very relevant today. I know. To me it seems crazy that we're still talking about issues and concepts that she pretty much pioneered decades ago. Yeah.

Well, it's a big head fuck of a system, right, that we're grappling with. And I don't think you can be unraveled in even a few decades, or even really a few hundred years, because of course she was building on the back of work that's been done for a long time. But it does sometimes feel like progress is slower than we'd hope or wanted to be. Were you always interested in books of a political nature? Certainly not what I was reading when I was a kid. So not always.

But I do always like to kind of challenge my own politics, open my mind to different perspectives. I like to be learning and always learning. And so I really appreciate it when I find thinkers that, resonate with me and whose politics feels truthful if that makes sense. And what I like about her writing, and I haven't read everything she's written, but the bits I have read, I feel like it's not coming from a place of anger or coming from a place of demonising the other. I feel like there's a kind of language of compassion that Bell Hook's had as well, that's

recognizing oppression and not being silent about it, but at the same time not creating more division, but trying to come from a place of compassion almost. I think that's really important. And you know, you yourself have done quite a bit of campaigning work as well. Yeah, and maybe that's why it speaks to me, you know, it's like she feels like an activist when you, I mean, she is an activist and when you read her writing, it feels like a rallying called to activism to for people to not stay silent about any part of themselves that they need to

voice or express. And so yeah, it's a it's a it's a brave kind of rallying call that would have been very brave when she was writing it, you know, way back when. How would you describe your own kind of campaigning activism? I think an evolving one where I, I am always learning. I can, I think, be probably quite opinionated and I try not to be too opinionated. I think probably I get less opinionated over time in a way

or less sure of my opinions. And it's a kind of delicate balancing act between being kind of brazen enough to say or act when you feel like something's wrong. but at the same time being humble to the fact that no one has the full picture, no one has all the answers, and we're all learning. And so to not ever be too strong in your own convictions. I don't know if that sounds really vague, but I think...

No, I think it sounds really admirable because I feel like the common trajectory from most people is that as they get older, they get more certain of their opinions and less willing to kind of listen to other people's opinions. Yeah, I think that's probably true. I've been really trying to like, not just in terms of activism, but just in terms of life, hold on to like what they call the beginner's mind, which is not an easy task, you know, but like try and retain. So many people have written about it, whether it's Eastern philosophers or William Blake talking about the innocence of childhood,

but they need to try and retain the openness of your mind when you're young. And openness in all ways, like whether that's political, it's a different kind of political conversations or just to our understanding of reality and our values and our understanding of what life is and should be and means. I think it's so easy to be. And I've seen it happen myself that over time you become more and more maybe contaminated by the society and the world that we live in and habits and ways of doing things. And I think it's a kind of effort to try and peel that away so that you're always

in a slightly more kind of open-minded child-like, maybe child-like sounds naive but I guess open-minded is the word way of approaching reality. How do you, I mean, how do you do that in your... Oh my God, it's a desire, it's not an accomplishment. It's something I'm trying to do, not that I've achieved. Yeah.

But it feels like the right thing to try and achieve, so... Right. Well, we were talking, you know, just earlier on about how doing the... I think learning from my kids, sorry to interrupt you. I think I looked at my daughter who's four and I'm like, what can I learn from you? Instead of like this idea that, you know, kids are always learning from adults. And obviously there's a bit of that going on. I'm really interested in like what we adults can learn from children because they have a magic and an openness that is sadly, I think, lost along the way for a lot of people growing up. Your daughter sounds amazing. She's pretty cool. Yeah, I'm a fan. This podcast is made in partnership with Bailey's Irish Cream.

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so don't forget to treat yourself by pouring the ultimate dessert over your eaten mess at a picnic in the park or maybe just in your back garden over ice with your most adored book now that's our idea of living summer best i mean speaking of children i think that brings us really well onto your third pick which is the argonauts by maggie nelson um i actually read this and cried hysterically by the end of it Interesting. Had such an emotional response to it. It's one of my favorite books as well. Tell me a bit about how you encountered this book.

So it was recommended to me by a friend in a kind of ad hoc way. We're in a book shop. And I was buying a book and asked if she had any recommendations. And she pointed this one out. And then I took it with me. I was doing a trip to Australia. This is quite a few years ago. And it's in Australia for like a month.

And I took the book with me and read it while I was there. And it just happened. It wasn't planned, but it happened to coincide with. being in Australia and meeting someone who works a lot with the indigenous communities in Australia and learning through him about, you know, more about kind of indigenous history and particularly about matriarchal communities, the area we were staying in was historically a matriarchal community and I was really interested in that. And somehow those two things wove together in a really powerful way reading that book, which is so, I mean, it's a feminist book, but it's also so insanely

contemporary with this idea of a matriarchal history and what humanity might have looked like thousands of years ago in different social forms and in some of these communities where either there was a kind of balance between the genders or women had kind of leadership role. or positions of authority. And yeah, it just, the two things coincided, spoke to me in a very powerful way and maybe maybe just realize still what a kind of patriarchal system we are in

and are emerging maybe out of. For people who aren't familiar with the books, and I know this is very hard because Maggie Nelson's writing kind of defies categorization. Could you kind of briefly describe what it's about? Oh my gosh, no. as you say it does defy categorization i mean it's it's even the writing style is a real

mash up in a good way it's like slips between memoir prose poetry it's not clearly one form um it's about a love story first and foremost um between her and her partner and parenting but it's but it's interwoven with politics that comes through the anecdotes um and and the metaphor of the Argonauts is, I guess, how things can change, but stay the same, say essentially the same. How would you describe it? Hmm. I think I would describe it, too, as a love story between the protagonist and her partner, Harry, who is transgender and their, I guess you could essentially boil it down to their quest to have children, but it's so much more than that, because it slips,

between academia and prose and poetry. And to me, some of it sounds very lyrical. There are really intense passages that are so emotional. Like I'm remembering the childbirth sequence in the book. That was the point where I started crying, I think, because it was so intense to read something like that. And it's just phenomenal. I think that's one of the reasons I really liked it.

It felt so powerfully honest, an honesty that I don't, you know, I don't meet and most people don't. That's very brave. And I love the end. There's like a very short part where Harry writes, you hear his voice at the end. I mean, because I don't have children myself,

and I've always wondered about the passage that affected me so much was the childbirth passage. This is not a spoiler because I don't really think there's a spoiler for this book. You have to read it yourself to understand it. But you're a mother. Did that experience of pregnancy and childbirth and having children, did that all feel very true and resonant? I think, yeah.

And actually, I was reading it not long after I'd had my daughter. So maybe that was part of the reason it spoke to me. But everyone's experience of childbirth and sex and parenting and love and all the kind of visceral and messy things that she describes. are also quite different and subjective. So it wasn't as if I read it and was like, that's my experience. But the honesty of it felt, I felt connected to. Yeah.

Because quite often those themes are like sugar-coated and romanticised or just kind of tiptoed around. And those themes, things like sex and childbirth, are much more visceral and raw sometimes than language captures. her honesty made it feel much more real. Oh, definitely. I think that, especially in a lot of literature, there's a sense where it's either sugar-coated or it's dramatized to be absolutely brutal and unyielding and terrible when there's so much shades of grey in between all of those things.

I mean, probably Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights is the other end of the spectrum, right? Yeah. It's very much on the brutal side of things. And a more romanticised, like, without going into the detail of anything. But that's because also a product of its time. And it's important, I think, to understand writers in the context of their time, which actually leads quite well onto the next book. Yes, your fourth book is Virginia Woolf, a room of one's own.

For me, it has to be viewed in its time. In some ways, it's one of the most progressive essays ever written, beautifully written, so powerful, so important. And also it has kind of what would probably be seen now as blind spots that I think are probably a product of her time and were Virginia Woolf alive today. And in the kind of political discourse of today, she probably would be writing in a slightly different way.

Where do you think the blind spots are? I think there's a kind of slight acceptance of colonialism as a positive that's subtle, but that exists in some of her writing and thinking. The idea of kind of civilising other nations being a positive thing I feel really uncomfortable with. But I could see that a hundred years ago. That was the way that people thought, and probably 100 years from now, there will be similar blind spots in the thinking of some of our most progressive thinking.

as today, if that makes sense. No, I think that does because, you know, we've talked about how it's a journey, isn't it? And people are always constantly recalibrating themselves. Totally, yeah. And that's actually what I like about also Aldeux, you know, and Virginia Woolf, both of them, talk about imperfection. And the beginning of a room with one's own, Virginia Woolf kind of says, look, like sex and gender are way too complicated for anybody to get right,

and I'm not going to pretend I can get it right. and it isn't about getting it right. I'm just going to explain my journey up until now and reveal how I've got to this position. And Audrey Lord also talks about imperfection and the quest of oneself to keep learning, basically. So yeah, both of those kind of positions really speak to me because I think there needs to be humility

in any serious kind of political discourse. It's interesting you mentioned imperfection because I'm wondering if, you know, the current time we're living in allows for that kind of imperfection, for that kind of growth or whether we just expect our heroes to be to be perfect all the time. I don't think we're very, I don't know, say we in a very generalized broad sense, which isn't fair because obviously there's a wide mix of people. But I think a lot of kind of our culture today is, I think it's quite problematic. how we take very strong moral position sometimes and then don't allow for imperfection and don't allow for space for growth and whether it's the cancel culture

or cutting people down I get quite uncomfortable with the way that that discourse can become quite uncompassionate and judgmental and therefore seems quite arrogant in a way. No, I think I told you get what you mean because it feels like you can't expect someone to come out of the womb perfect morally perfect it just seems impossible and also to assume that we that that you the speaker

for think are in a position where you you have authority like a moral authority where you've got it all figured out is to be blind to the things that we ourselves might have missed and therefore the things that we can still learn um and i've done it myself you know i'm not i'm not saying i'm exempt from that where as I say I have been I can be kind of quite opinionated but I do try and constantly check myself so that I'm still open to learning were you always opinionated or was something that kind of developed over time I think I was pretty opinionated I think I was more opinionated when I was younger I felt quite strongly about things and sure of things and I think that sureness has been chipped away probably the more I've learned and questioned my assumptions or doubted myself

or seen a different point of view. I mean, you've had a really long and wide-ranging career, so I'm guessing you must have come up against loads of opportunities to challenge the way that you thought was anything that sticks out? I don't have a singular things that stick out. I think it's, I think traveling was a huge blessing in my life. Getting the opportunity to travel to different cultures, I was, I mean, it was just gobbled it up.

I love learning about different cultures and just seeing that people act in such different ways in different environments and have different belief systems and ideas about the world. So I found that very mind-expanding experience. I've been so lucky to work with many diverse people and become friends with diverse people. And I learned through conversation. So I think, yeah, I feel very lucky that I've had quite an eclectic mix of experiences.

and that's probably helped me stretch my opinions or mind in different ways. So you read a room of one's own first in school and then you reread it when you were making a documentary about Wolf at the BBC. Yeah. What was that experience like of making a documentary about this writer? So yeah, I presented a documentary for the BBC called icons where they got the British public to vote on who was the most iconic. It's kind of a ridiculous premise in a world.

way because you're comparing these extraordinary people but to vote for the most iconic person of the 20th century was the premise and I did the episode on artists and writers and Virginia Wolf was one of four of them and I mean it was wonderful because I was familiar with Wolf's work a little bit from school and of course we're all familiar with different quoted bits here and there but I hadn't delved deep into her as a as a person and her story um And so, yeah, I just thoroughly enjoyed spending that time reading more of her work. I got to see in the British Library some of the real manuscripts you'd written on, went to her house in Sussex, an amazing, beautiful little house with an amazing garden,

learning more about, yeah, her life and her love affairs. And I found really, I mean, it's a great job, right, when you get paid to do something that you really enjoy. and that was one of those. One of the things I love about Virginia Woolf is that when you're introduced to her in school, obviously, for g-rated reasons, you're not allowed to learn that she had all these, like, massive unspooling affairs that encircled this huge group of contemporary writers and artists. And then you find out about it and you're like, oh, she seems like a person I'd like to hang out with and party with and go out drinking.

She seems like a laugh. Yeah, her love affair with Vita Sackville West, which is what we focused on, Yeah, I mean, it's kind of phenomenal that maybe that's changed, but it wasn't taught in school when I was there. And it feels like an important part of understanding her and her politics. But yeah, as you say, I think probably it's been a bit sanitized out of her story. I think it's coming back. I think now is the time where these stories are seeing the light of day. And there's been, I mean, it's been made into a film, I think, of the last year and there's been a few books about it.

So your fifth and final book is Yajasi, who wrote Homegoing, which is a very contemporary book. I think it came out in the last few years. Yeah, I read it about a year and a half ago. So how did you come to this book? A friend gave it to me, and I read it very quickly. I mean, it's a very, like, not easier. That sounds diminishing. Like, it's a very quick, fast-moving, easy read in the sense that it's so lyrically written, that you just want to.

you just want to you just kind of race through it you know and and I and I found it really powerful it's a really unusual structure where every chapter is a is a new story and you could almost take out a chapter and just read it by itself but they thread together through through a kind of ancestral lineage so you're following the thread of two half sisters in Ghana several centuries ago whose lives go in very different directions through the slave trade. And then you follow their children's stories and their children's stories and their children's stories. And you're going each generation to the next up and to the present day. And it's just this an amazing overview of history that made me think about obviously slavery and race and the racial issues we have today,

how they relate to a racial history that's been happening for a very, very long time. Obviously, she looked at a few hundred years. You could take that back arguably thousands of years. But also from a personal perspective, how we are connected to our ancestors and our own stories without us often knowing are connected to these other very, very different, sometimes quite difficult or traumatic stories that happened before us through our ancestors. And I feel like our culture doesn't spend much time thinking about our connections today to our ancestors and our ancestral history that we all carry and we all have,

even though science is starting to show that kind of ancestral trauma is carried through genetically. So it's affecting us physiologically, psychologically. I thought it was a very beautiful book that allowed for a kind of broader perspective of understanding our moment. It's interesting you talk about ancestry because I feel like talking about where your family are from or, you know, what the experiences are, has kind of almost become the realm of really NAF ancestry.com and, you know, you're retired, aren't looking into the history. Yeah, or like quite like hippie, cliche stuff, which is really unfortunate because. it's real. It's like there's not, you know, there's nothing, um, weird or new age or metaphysical about the idea that we all have ancestors. And we all come from these legacies and to lesser or greater degrees have a connection to those stories and what our ancestors went through. Um,

it's a really beautiful metaphor I heard that's like, you are the, you're the point of the arrow and your ancestors are all of the lines coming towards. towards that point, you know, it's like we wouldn't exist without those histories behind us. And arguably they have a big effect, those histories have a big effect on our personalities and our societies and our culture and everything we kind of take for granted in human society today. And so kind of understanding that history is arguably important. That's a lovely image. Do you feel connected to your and family history? Not enough. I would like to more and I've been making an effort to,

to put up pictures of my grandparents in the house. And I'd like to make more of an effort, especially with my daughter now, of trying to like translate those stories to her and capture them. So I've made some effort, yes, but not nearly enough. I would like to understand my family's history

and my daughter's father's family's history as well better. What were your grandparents' history? Well, my grandfather on my mother's side, was very young and he fought in the war. He was involved in Dunkirk. Wow. Yeah. And I never met him.

He died before I was born. But it's crazy to think that that, you know, the war and Dunkirk and these things that feel historical and far away were so closely connected to us. You know, it's only two generations ago. And my mom grew up in a, in the south of Wales on a mountain. mountain with him and her mom, Sylvia and her sisters. And I mean, I made a documentary last year about, or two years ago, about a friend of mine Mark Boyle who lives without electricity or any modern technology in Ireland. He's made that choice as an environmentalist and really seriously lives off the land. And when I showed it to my mom, my mom was just like, yeah, but Lily, that's

how I grew up on a mountain with no electricity and no running water. And, um, I'm, of a, um, farm. So yet a very different, very different reality and lifestyle to, to, you know, what most of my contemporaries experience today. My father's side, my father's spent most of his life on living on a boat and his family came from Devon and I know that, I know that side of the family less well. But, and unfortunately all my grandparents have passed away, but I would like to learn more more about their history too. I think it's so interesting how you just need to dig a little bit and then you uncover all these stories of how your ancestors were involved in these huge pivotal events that changed the world basically. And then how that's maybe affecting us today.

You know, I read an article in the context of the coronavirus. I can't remember where it was a week or two ago that was saying that many of us have a kind of latent memory of the first and the second world war through our ancestors, through those stories. Whether you believe it's through the storytelling of our parents and the kind of psychological effect it had on them and therefore us, or the science that says that there's kind of trauma does pass through genes,

we have a kind of latent knowledge of this recent history that profoundly affected many of our families and that this new crisis is triggering some of those same responses, whether it might be the desire to unify and band together and kind of go into the war effort mode or to grow our own vegetables and be more kind of Victory Garden DOI-esque. I'm not saying I know how that manifests, but I thought it was an interesting argument that there was something oddly familiar

about this experience, even though it's so new to many people. That's interesting. I think there is an argument to be made that, you know, in times of crises, is you default to what feels quote unquote instinctive. And you might have observed that either from your grandparents or your parents observing what their grandparents did, or you just have this kind of latent knowledge of, this is how I need to react in the situation.

Right. Well, final question. If you had to choose one book from your list as your favourite, which one would it be? I think it would be the Argonauts. I think, I mean, it's a very hard question. It's not very fair. I hate the questions. No, I know it's your favorite film ever.

yeah it's i almost want to be like no there's no hierarchy of oppression and there's no hierarchy of books on this list but um but if you forced me i feel like that one probably because it feels the most unusual in a way um it feels so the the structure the way it's written is it feels like it's breaking the mold of of um of how we think about writing and um and it feels the most contemporary so um so yeah I'd probably choose that one. Plus, you really liked it. So that's an easy way to just throw it onto you, basically. I mean, I could go on about this.

I would go on about this book forever. Like, if I had, I recommended it to so many friends. With varying degrees of success, not everyone likes it, which I find very surprising. But I mean, I don't find that surprising at all. I mean, it's quite an out there book. It is very out there. I'm sure probably somebody will listen to this podcast and then they'll read the book and they'll be like, what the hell? what were these two women talking about?

But some people will love it. Yes. And that's maybe the beauty of books is that there is no right and wrong and it is subjective and horses for courses. We have different tastes. Exactly. So for the minority of people who will absolutely love this book, we can both highly recommend it.

Well, thank you so much, Lily. You've been great. Thanks. You've been great too. I'm Zing Singh and you've been listening to the Women's Prize for Fiction Podcast, brought to you by Bayleys and produced by Birdline Media. You definitely want to click subscribe because in our next episode we'll be exploring three previous winners of the Women's Prize in a book club with three brilliant guests. Please rate and review this podcast. It's the easiest way to help spread the word about the female talent you've heard from today. And thanks very much for listening.

See you next time.