Bookshelfie: Women’s Prize Podcast - S3 Ep4: Bookshelfie: Deborah Frances-White

Episode Date: April 20, 2021

Stand-up comedian, podcaster and screenwriter Deborah Frances-White explains how a Helene Hanff book got her free tickets for life in London’s West End on this week’s Bookshelfie episode with Yomi Adegoke.   Deborah is host of the hugely successful podcast The Guilty Feminist, which has also been made into a bestselling book. Her solo comedy shows have included Half a Can of Worms, which tackled the issue of her own adoption as a newborn baby and what it was like to eventually meet her biological family, and Cult Following - which told the story of her family’s conversion to Jehovah’s Witnesses when she was teenager. She’s co-written two books on stand up comedy and her debut feature film Say my Name was released in 2019.   Deborah’s book choices are:  ** Underfoot in Show Business by Helene Hanff  ** The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) ** Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison  ** Lullaby Beach by Stella Duffy ** Ghosts by Dolly Alderton   Every week, join journalist and author Yomi Agedoke, and inspirational guests, including Elizabeth Day, Sara Pascoe and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie as they celebrate the best books written by women. The Women’s Prize for Fiction is one of the most prestigious literary awards in the world, and has been running for over 25 years.  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.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 Yomiyo Degake, your host for Season 3 of the Women's Prize Podcast. We have a phenomenal lineup of guests for 2021, and I guarantee you will be taking away plenty of reading recommendations. Each bookshelfy episode, we ask an inspiring woman to share the story of her life through five different books by women. Hello and welcome to today's episode of Bookshelfy. I'm Yomiya Degoke, and I'm absolutely thrilled to be your host for series three,

where I'll be lucky enough to be interviewing some incredible women about the work of other incredible women. Let me start by reminding you that this year's long list is out, and the 16 brilliant authors and their books can all be found on our website, women's prize for fiction.co.uk. We are still practising safe social distancing, and this podcast is being recorded remotely. Today's guest is stand-up comedian, podcaster and screenwriter Deborah Francis White.

Deborah is the host of the Guilty Feminist Podcast, which launched in 2015 and amassed a cult following for its sideways, honest look at feminism that's kept it in the chance ever since. Pre-COVID, the podcast was recorded in front of a live audience, setting out gigs at the London Palladium and the Barbican. It's also been made into a best-selling book. And whilst this is important, impressive enough, it's actually just a small notch in the enormous bedposts of Deborah C.V.

Which includes various other podcasts, radio series, TV panel show appearances, stand-up comedy and writing for TV, film and print. Her solo shows have included half a can of worms, which tackled the issue of her own adoption as a newborn baby and what it was like to eventually meet her biological family, and cult following, which told the story of her family's conversion to Jehovah's Witnesses when she was a teenager. She's also co-written two books on stand-up comedy

and her debut feature film, Say My Name, was released in 2019. Welcome, Deborah. How are you doing? Well, do you know what? I find lockdown goes up and down. I find sometimes I'm full of energy and I think this is actually good because it's making me stay home and I can get things done

and I can rest my body from racing around the world and doing all the things I used to do. And there are other times when I actually feel like I might have disappeared and maybe I don't exist anymore. And I think I miss my audience so much now, because this is a year now, this time last year, I was on tour in Australia and New Zealand. We were playing huge venues. It was like virtually a year to the day ago that I played this huge, you know, a couple of thousand seats in Sydney, a venue called the Enmore Theatre.

and it was hysterical with guilty feminist fans, listeners who come out to see us when we go to Australia. And when Cal Wilson and I introduced our guest, because it was a surprise, who the guest was, I started with the most vague thing in her CV and worked my way up to the former Prime Minister of Australia. And they were so ballistic by the time we got there, they couldn't even hear me say, her name. It was hysteria. Then we went to New Zealand. We played the Wellington Arena, which I'd never even been to Wellington, and it was full, like thousands of people. And it's just, that's a year ago now. And so that they were these sort of from last International Women's Day to this International Women's Day, I really haven't been on stage and had that connection with the audience

and that felt that frenetic energy. So books, I think, are one way of. of finding that connection with other people, if you're not allowed to sit with your friends and put the world to rights, if you're not allowed to sit in a crowd of cafe and overhear other people's conversations on a first date or in a business meeting and you're not allowed to play the Wellington Arena,

then books are a great way of reminding yourself that other people feel your feelings and we read to know that we are not alone, as the saying goes. Have you been reading and also do you consider yourself a big reader? I was an obsessive reader as a child. And my favourite thing was to go to the library and get a lot of new books. And then, you know, I was one of those kids who'd have a torch under the covers when I was meant to be asleep. My sister would say on the weekend, oh, let's run around outside of the garden and play a game.

And let's do a, you know, she had to, wild adventures planned. And I would be like, oh, I've just, I've just got to finish this book, sorry. And does nothing make me happier. And then I read English at Oxford. And there was a lot of reading, as you can imagine. And I had to read a lot of fiction at Oxford. And I loved it. I really did love it.

But I think, and I really loved learning to analyze and critique and discuss books. It made me very happy. But I think post-Oxford, I think I'd, I then got into doing, I wanted to do comedy and I wanted to be making shows and going here and going there and I think I lost my habit for reading quite so religiously

when smartphones took over as well and I read my phone far too much and so Tom, my husband who also produces the Guilty Feminist podcast has said this year he's making a goal for the number of books he's going to read because he used to be such, my God, Tom could read.

Tom reads much faster than I do. So he would constantly have two books on the go and he would just eat them up. And he said, God, I'm lying bed at night, you know, on my iPad, looking at nonsense and I'm going to get back into that. So this year we've both got a news resolution to read more. I mean, that's quite cute, actually.

Co-resolutions for a start. But I think also a lot of people can relate to the idea of reading their phone instead of books, I most certainly can. So I'd like you to complete the sentence, riffing off of your wonderful podcast. I'm a reader, but...

Oh, I'm a reader, but the book I've read most often in the last five years has been Facebook. The stories I enjoy most are Instagram stories. It's true, though. That's what passes for stories now. It's not a story. calling it a story. It's just a picture of you pouting with your abs out. That's not a story.

I'm not talking to you, Yomi. I'm not saying you post that content. And if you do, I mean, well, I don't have ads. I'm delighted if you do post that content. But it's more Instagram stories. And if anyone doesn't know what they are, they're just like little images or videos that you can flick through. It's really the story of that person and often that person's ego. I include myself in this. I'm not exempt. But I think we need to get back to the idea of what story really is, because I think story is incredibly powerful. I was talking to Hannah Gadsby recently,

who many of you will know from her brilliant show, Nanette. And she said, story holds our cure. And I think that's absolutely right. We've all learned to empathise with a very small band of viewpoints because of the stories we've consumed, especially the ones that Hollywood has pumped out over the last hundred years. The viewpoint is the same viewpoint over and over and over again.

In Hollywood, it tends to be a middle-class white man. It tends to be a straight man and his angst is explored again and again and again. So whether he's the President of the United States, whether he's a serial killer, whether he's a slubby guy who can't get a job, it tends to be the same viewpoint over and over and over again. And one Christmas, Susan Macoma came to spend Christmas with us, who's a mutual friend of ours. And we've watched It's a Wonderful Life.

And if you're very young, you may not know that the story of It's a wonderful life is it's about a character called George. She's played by James Stewart, a film star from the 40s and 50s. And he feels so desperate that nothing's gone right in his life. And what's being the point of his life and he goes to jump off a bridge? And at that point an angel appears to him and shows him what his life would have been, and shows him what the world would have been like without him in it. So shows him the fact that when his brother fell through the ice as a child, if he hadn't been there to rescue him, he would have died.

And that would have meant these consequences and so on and so on and so on. And how much he's changed the world and impacted his part of the world and how much he means to people. And it's a very beautiful story. It's very sad and it's also very joyful at the end. And I was sitting next to Susie and she was crying. We were all crying, but she was crying. And I just looked over at her and I thought, when does a white man ever sit and look

through the eyes of a black woman at Christmas and cry and empathize? Like literally never. If a white man were watching a movie about a black woman at Christmas, it would be a sort of, oh, I'm watching this other thing. I'm watching something kind of exotic or interesting or different or look at me, look at my diversity points. You know, and it would still be, because it's not so common, it would still be an other experience.

It would be like, oh, that's what she's going through. But he's not invited constantly to imagine a black woman as an every person. Whereas black women are invited all the time to filter their own experiences through white men and see a white man as in every person. And we all have. We absolutely all have. So the fact that we do empathise constantly in our society and the new stories empathise constantly if a young white man is caught, you know, shooting people,

it's like, oh, has he had a troubled past? What's his backstory? Because in a movie, his backstory would be explored. Absolutely. And so that's why Hannah says story, our cure because the more that we can watch stories from varying viewpoints and through the eyes of different sorts of human beings, the more that we will see humanity in people and not just identity. We're now going to your first bookshelfy, which is Underfoot in Show Business by Helene Hand.

Can you tell me what this book is about? Okay. So it's a memoir. of a writer called Helene Hanath who was underfoot in show business in the 40s. She was basically moved to Broadway as a young playwright. And she came from a small town in America.

She wasn't particularly pretty. Her clothes didn't quite work. All of that sort of stuff. But she turns up to have a go at it. Now, most people, if they know Helene Hanof, know her from a book called 84 Charing Cross Road, which was made into a film with Anthony Hopkins and Annette Benning. And it was about her relationship with a very British bookseller and who she would write to and say, have you got this book or have you got this book? Because we can't get it in

New York. And he would write back because they didn't have Amazon then or any kind of bookseller that would just deliver books to your door. And they stuck up a friendship. And so that's how she's best known. But I love her book Underfoot in Show Business because it really inspired me to go and have a go at things, to leave my hometown and to turn up somewhere new and introduce yourself and think you could make it, to have the audacity to have a go at making it in show business. And she tells all these just glorious, wonderful stories. She's a brilliant storyteller. In a way, she's my best role model because she doesn't really make it as a playwright, but she lives a life having goes at making it as a playwright,

and she ultimately makes it having written a book, which gets turned into a play, which then gets turned into a film. So, you know, there are many roots for people. And her story is not one of great success. Her story is one of great effort and joy in that effort. and all of the wonderful, funny things that happen to you along the way and the people you meet. It's a celebration of a life well lived, doing the thing you want to do,

and not allowing success to be your metric. Seeing life as a success if you are in the game. This book contains just some glorious stories, one that Helene Hanoff was picked for a play scholarship And the previous year, they'd picked two playwrights, and just given them $1,500 each and said, which is a lot of money back then, and said, off you go, writes and plays. And then they thought, well, this isn't very good.

So we should put them through a program, give them mentors, send them on a workshop writing course, you know, really help them. And of the 12 people they chose to do that to that year, one became a screenwriter, you know, lots of them dropped out, became different things. Some of them had success writing,

but none of them were Broadway playwrights. The year before, including Helene Hanof herself, the year before the two people they'd given the money to who'd wandered off on their own were Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams. She was like,

so that's the value of education. There's a brilliant chapter called If they take you to lunch, they don't want your play. As somebody who's been in show business a long time, and had a lot of those experiences, you really relate to her constant struggles, but also the way that she finds ways to make those struggles in themselves funny and a life worth living. One of my favourite things that she taught me when I was a young Jehovah's Witness who had no hope of getting out of the beach town I was in an Australia,

was that they don't check your tickets at the interval or an intermission, as they say, on Broadway. So when she was young and on Broadway wanted to see lots of plays, she couldn't afford to but she realised that if you could find out just before Curtin went up, if there were any tickets available, at interval you could just turn up on the street where all the smokers were outside and then just go back in with them

and look around and find an empty seat. So when I first came to London to the West End and I was temping, I did that all the time. I did it every night. So you'd see the second act of everything. And she always said, don't take your coat because she always caught colds because they would see if you were coming in with a coat that you weren't one of the New Yorkers who always left their coats inside,

probably at the coat check. But I did. I didn't worry about that. But one night, I tried the Helene Hanof method of sneaking in at the interval to see deflader mouse at the E&O. And there were no seats. I've done it properly. I was just wondering about it. Okay, always go towards the authorities.

If you scurry off, you're going to look like. you're dodgy here. So I walked up to the usher and went, oh, excuse me, I really need to use the ladies' room. Is there time before the curtain goes up for the second act? And he went, oh, not really, but look, go to the loo, and then I'll have to put you in a private box so you don't disturb anyone else.

So I went to the loo, just kind of stood there for a bit, came back out, and he put me in a private box. And I remember I had some grapes from the Temping Agency and I sat and watched second and third acts of Deflay de Flay de Maus, like a queen in a private box eating grapes. And I put that story into my film, say my name. So I've got so much to thank Helene Hannah for, and I really recommend this as a charming book.

If you don't feel you're winning, and I don't think anyone feels like they're winning, particularly in 2020 and 2020, read this book and it will make you feel part of the action is what's important. Be in the game is what's important. You don't have to be Arthur Miller or Tennessee Williams. You have to just be in the game. What a flipping anecdote.

I'm just like the way I'd have just panicked and absolutely ran out of there, probably been chased up the road. It might be a story of white privilege. I mean, potentially. To be fair, it might be. But I do recommend, you don't want to run away from the usher

if you're going to try this technique. And look, honestly, I don't see there's any harm in it. If those seats are sitting there empty, young people might as well have them. I think theatres should say, look, if you can prove you're a student or unemployed, just come and come and we'll tell you when the second act starts and you can fill the seats. Even I think they should have like a little five minute break.

If people aren't sitting in their seats, I just think people should be allowed to. You're not costing the production anything. And listen, now that I can afford tickets, I buy them. So before we move on to your second bookshelfy, white privilege aside, which is quite a bigger side. I'm sorry, it's true though. It is true. It is true. Struggle to lift it up and put it to one corner.

That side is quite brave and certainly. characteristic of you to have the balls to go up to an usher and sort of say, you know, I'm the aggrieved party here, I need a wee and, you know, I'm going to go get put in a private box so I can't want to the remainder of this show I shouldn't actually technically be in.

So I'm very interesting if you've always been an extroverted person and as a kid, especially with, you know, your upbringing and your childhood and your teenagers and how specific they were and how unique they were. I'm quite interested in what kind of personality type So I was always the outgoing one in our family and I explored this in my show,

a half a can of worms that got turned into a radio four show called Deborah Francis White Rolls the Dyes about finding my biological family that my sister was four years older and very shy. And so even though she was much older than me, four years older than me, she would be the one to say, you go and get the ice cream from the ice cream van. You're the outgoing one. and I actually looking back don't know if perhaps I was manipulated into having an outgoing personality by my sister because that is the kind of thing she would do

go, you're the outgoing one, why don't you go and ask that person the time? It's possible I was just told I was the outgoing one. But I don't think so. And the reason I don't think so is my first performance was my nursery school end of year show. I was a horse, don't me to brag, fourth horse in the parade of horses. And we had to do this little horsey dance,

which was a bit like Gangham style only in white onesies. And just prancing, prancing. And I can remember it clear as day. I remember the response of the audience. I remember the audience cheering and clapping the way they do for small children. And I remember all of the other little horses dancing away. And I remember thinking, well, this audience is not done with this dance. And they're not done with me.

So I danced on and the audience clap more and I danced on and the audience laugh more and I danced on and the teacher had to come and leave me away. And that story was legendary in our family because no one else would have done that. I was the performer. And when I found my biological family, at first it wasn't clear to me why.

You're looking for these traits that you have. I always wanted to live in London from the time I could read books, which was very young because I could read before I went to school. And that's, I think it was just because that was where the stories were set. All of the stories in my books in Australia were, in my beach town, Australia were set in London

and the children had coats and there was snow, which there is at the moment, which we didn't have. I only had a cardigan in my childhood. I don't ever had a coat. That's not because we were poor. We weren't rich, but we weren't poor. It was because the temperature never moved to coat weather. I had a cardigan.

That's what I had. You had one cardigan when it got for chili, pop cardi on. But most of it was very hot. And so I wanted to be where the seasons were and I just loved all these stories and desperately wanted to live in London and I really wanted to be a performer. And so those were the things I was looking for

when I found my biological mother and they weren't immediately apparent but it turned out that my great-grandmother had been invaudible in musical. She was a comedian with her sister Lucy. Oh, wow. And my great-grandfather was he was posh, he was from Devon, he was in the Navy

and he was what they called a stage door Johnny and that meant young men that would come to the stage door to try and pick up the dancers and the acts and the comics and he came and chatted up Hettie at the door, Charles and he got more than he bargained for because they ended up having five children and one of the children was asthmatic and in those days there was no venterlin

they just said go to a hot climate and so they got on a boat and went to Australia and they tried to set up a dairy farm in Queensland which was an absolute as you can imagine I mean it was a showgirl and a naval officer trying to set up a dairy farm lost all their money but never came back to London but their eldest daughter Eulalia

she missed London so much that she tried to walk back she got her doll and walked down these train tracks because they were right on the bush. And she just realised about an hour and a half in that if she didn't walk back, she was going to die in the bush. So she walked back and no one had missed her. So I always think that I got back.

Eulalia died before I found the family. But I always think I got back to London for Eulalia. And for Hetty, who had been a performer. And her sister Lucy, when they split up the double act, Lucy became a solo comedian. And I've seen all the reviews and, letters from her talking about booking gigs. On the census, every four years, she's always in different digs because she's on tour. Always says she's 23, no matter what the year is. She's always

23. Show business hasn't changed women at all, hasn't. So, yeah, I sort of found those roots in myself. So I think, yes, I had a genetic disposition to being outgoing and to be the kind of person who would wander into a show and go, I'm sure my seat's her somewhere. And just Blagget it a bit, yeah, I do think that. So your second book, Shelby, is The Mill on the Floss by George Elliott. Tell me a bit about this book and also why it makes you say, oh. Okay, so the Mill on the Floss, I remember finishing it on a tube station platform because I got off the tube and I was so compelled I couldn't leave without finishing it.

It was Holland Park. I was a nanny at the time. I sat down on a bench in Holland Park tube station, finished it and wept on my own. I was so broken by this book. I was like, well, this book's clearly ruined my life. Do you ever feel like that like a book's ruined your life? I mean, it hasn't. Just to be clear, just in that moment, but in that moment, you're kind of considering whether it has. I definitely have been devastated and crestfallen by, it's usually endings. And that's not always because they're sad. That's sometimes because I'm like, I didn't want it to end that way. So I'm super

interested in what happened here that made you feel like your life in those moments was done for. Well, I mean, I won't spoil the ending for the listeners because they might not have read it, but it's about a young woman in the 19th century. Her name is Marianne and she falls in love. And she is constrained by the values and the power structures of her time. And I remember when I went to Oxford, I studied it, and the other young women in my tutor group, when we were discussing it, couldn't understand why she just hadn't run off with him. And they end up unshaparoned and they can go on and quickly get married or they can come back. They haven't done anything. They haven't had sex or anything, but just the fact you're alone with a man unshaparoned means you're disgraced now. But she can't do it.

Her conscience makes her come back and she's a social pariah. She gets shunned. Now, I used to be a Jehovah's Witness. And when you leave that organisation, you get shunned. So I understood it entirely. I understood it was a matter of conscience because I'd been in a religion that was a high control group and it was controlled entirely by men. And I understood in absolutely what it was to be a 19th century heroine in a book. I absolutely got it. I was like, no, because your conscience tells you you must not do this. And so you made all sorts of sacrifices as a young Jehovah's Witness.

And, you know, you would go and hand yourself in. to the elders if you'd done something wrong. You would be encouraged to tell on other young women who you worried were straying from a spiritual path. And you would, of course, subject yourself to shunning if your conscience was telling you that that's what you needed

because that was disciplined from Jehovah. So I remember being the only one of my tutor group who actually could understand this character because they were all to just take off. Who cares what these guys think? And I was like, no, you can't. You can't do that because your relationship is with God. And the power structures are there for a reason.

to protect you, but also because right is right and moral is moral. And it was a real epiphany for me when everyone else didn't understand that I had been in a cult. This book really made me realize that I was like, oh, you've been in a cult. And the thing is every generation is its own cult in a weird way. Every generation has its own social mares, its own ways of operating, the things we do, the things we don't do in public, the things we do in private, the things we admit we do, the things we don't admit we do. and if you read books from the past, you realize you're in your 21st century cult and they are all in their early 20th century cult, or their Victorian cult, or their restoration cult. If you are out of step with your generation, you are said to be in a cult.

So if you're an Amish person in 2021, you're in a cult, right? You're in a high control group. You're in a sect because you're out of step with your generation. But the way the Amish people live now, well, people did live like that hundreds of years ago, and that was normal. It wasn't a cult at all. So it really made me understand the rules of a high control group. And we're all in one now.

We're absolutely all in one. There are things we do, the things we don't do, things we'd say, the things we wouldn't say. The ending of this story is deeply tragic. And I think it's almost like a morality tale really about obeying the men and the power structures that have been set out for you at any cost, I think. And something that you said that really, I find, I mean, yeah, super interesting is just that idea of, that sort of tussle with morality and what you should be doing according to your cult of the time, or in your case, you know, with your Jehovah's Witness upbringing and the sort of guilt that came with that when you decided that, you know, you were going to go your own way. And I'm interested in if you've ever still have those feelings of, I suppose, guilt or residual guilt or, because, you know, these ideas and ideologies are very much sort of, you know, especially, you know, do you say a religion like Jehovah's?

Wait, I'm trying to work out how you, sorry, characterize Jehovah's Witnesses. Some people would say a religion like Jehovah's Witnesses. For me, it is a religion, but for me it's a cult because the reason I call it a cult is, I think a useful definition of a cult is an organization or a group that won't let you leave with your dignity intact. If you can't get out of it, if you can't say, guys, this has been fun, but I'm off. And if they won't say we wish you well and we'll see you around, then or we'll help you move on to the next phase of your life, that's an issue for me. Right.

And that's a cult. It's a high control group. So I personally see it as a, most people who've left would see it as a cult, yeah, because of the shunning. Right. The rules, if you were a Jehovah's Witness, you cannot have friends who aren't Jehovah's Witnesses. And you'll get in trouble if you do. And you could be disfellowshiped if you, if you and shunned, if you continue to associate with people who are said to be worldly.

And the punishment for leaving is shunning. And that leaves you completely alone. So I didn't have any friends at all when I left. I wasn't formally disfellowshiped, but it's effectively the same. So I didn't see anyone. Apart from the family I managed for when I left, I didn't see anyone all weekend. I didn't see anyone. And I'd go to an improv class during the week.

And sometimes someone from the improv class, I'd say, oh, should we have a drink on the weekend? But if that person cancelled, I wouldn't see anybody because the family would go away on the weekend. So I wouldn't speak to a single soul for 48 hours. Because I just, you lost, when I joined it when I was 14, you lose all your school friends. You can't associate with them anymore, really.

So you don't have any old friends. I was in London. You have to just make every new friend from scratch. So it's, you know, it's a, it's a traumatising thing. And I, so I absolutely understand why Mary Ann from the Mill on the Floss didn't feel she could just go, yeah. You know, I'll start over. It's, at least I had the world to go into. I had the world to go into.

There's, there's nowhere to go into if that's the rules of the whole society that you. Yeah. Yeah. Imagine if the whole world was Jehovah's Witnesses. Then where do you? Of course I would be still conforming. Of course I would, because where else would be? there's you know you then you there or I would have to have the strength of character to build a

counterculture to it maybe I would have if I'd found other people but you know who knows men men tended to more you know the romantics were tended to be men who'd go let's go and build a commune in America but and we'll take some women but but if you're not the dominant if you're if you're not the apex predator then in a very real way, are you going to be the one to start the counterculture? You know, I'm not saying

no women ever have. I'm saying it takes an enormous amount of character to do it and it's very risky. So we all think we'd be the ones, but not everyone would have been the ones. So I can't honestly hand on heart say, yeah, that's what I'd have done.

Of course. So speaking to that, I'm just interested in that idea of, Perhaps not now, but I suppose when you initially left, you know, whether you were still battling with those feelings of this is what I should be doing or this is what I shouldn't be doing and having that residual guilt over, over decisions that you made that were counter to, you know, what you were supposed to do as a driver's witness.

I don't think so. I think, I decided I wasn't ever going to go back to a meeting out of guilt if I didn't want to go and I never went again. And then I think I was pretty, I felt pretty free and liberated. I had to work out what I thought about the world. Now I'm a total atheist and I don't I don't feel any guilt at all. I do know people who do. I do know people who still have these panic attacks or nighttime worries that Armageddon's going to come. They're in the wrong. But I don't believe any of it anymore. I don't think, I don't feel guilty. In fact, I'll tell you what I do think you're me. You know, if you and I in the old days before COVID would sometimes go out and, you know,

have a have a bit of a wild night out. Mm. Have a few drinks and dance at a few tables. A few. Do you know, you remember? One night we went, we ended up, we think we just bumped into each other in the street and we ended up to the Groucho Club

because you'd been offered some lifetime membership to the Groucho Club just for being special. So in we went and I remember having a few drinks with you and Elizabeth and having a brilliant time. Now, I've got friends who, if they have a little bit of, a really wild night out, will wake up at the morning and they will, it will remind them of their misspent youth

and they'll feel really kind of guilty and embarrassed and ashamed. Do you know what I feel? I feel like, yes, definitely not a Jehovah's Witness. I feel proud of myself if I have a wild night out. I feel elated. I feel it proves that I'm not who I was being moulded to be. So I don't get any shame associated with youth

because I didn't really have much of a youth. So that's, listen, this is a great advantage that I don't feel ashamed of a hangover. These are the paths left to travel by, you know, sometimes if you just get on that conveyor belt of school, uni, go get a job, you don't question anything. If you, you know, if something big happens to you, like you end up joining a cult when you're a teenager,

you have to reassess everything. And there are advantages to it. I think it gave me my artist pass. I think it made me an artist because I was an outsider. I was an outsider because I was a Jehovah's Witness, and then I was an outsider from that. And outsiders make great writers. I'm just smiling at the fact that you're just waking up the next day,

thrilled to have a throbbing headache. Like, yes, fatherproof that I'm not. Come on, baby. Come on. Who did I stog last night? Yes, I did. Would a Jehovah's Witness do that? No, she'd be knocking on doors, getting a nice early night. What was I doing last night?

It's not clear, but there's some photographs on Instagram that I'm going to have to ask someone to delete. Yeah, you do. Come on. This podcast is made in partnership with Bailey's Irish cream. Bailey's is proudly supporting the women's prize for fiction by helping showcase incredible writing by remarkable women, celebrating their accomplishments and getting more of their books into the hands of more people. Babies is the perfect adult treat, whether in coffee, over ice cream, or paired with your favorite book. Enjoying the Women's Prize for Fiction podcast,

share the literary love and be part of the future of the Women's Prize Trust by making a one-off donation to support our important workers to charity. Donations of all sizes help us to continue empowering women regardless of their age, race, nationality or background to raise their voice and own their story. Search for Support the Women's Prize to find out more. So your third book shall be is Song of Solomon by

Excellent Tony Morrison I love your visceral reaction to these books I can just hear the thrill tell me when you first read it and what it's about okay I read it for Radio 4's good reads

it was picked for me by somebody else and I had to read it so I could discuss it and I was like where has Tony Morrison been on my life this is absolutely the best book I've ever read. The pros are just, it's beyond anything else I've ever read. If you have not read any Tony Morrison, I am about to change your life. And I want you to tweet me at Deborah FW.

Thank you. You've changed my life. Now, many of the listeners will be like, Deborah, where were you before Radio 4 made you read this book? And I will admit to you that yes, I should have read this book before, but I hadn't. It is an absolute world opening book. It takes you into a place at a time that it's unlikely you're going to be familiar with, 1930s America, and it's an incredible analysis of white supremacy and the forces at work amongst African Americans to fight off the tyranny of white supremacy. The characters are so vivid, flawed and glorious.

The prose is beyond anything I've ever read before by anybody else. And it's no surprise why Tony Morrison has a Nobel Prize, basically. Absolutely. That's how I thought when I first read Love and I just remember getting to the end of it and thinking, why am I writing again?

Like, this is not the same thing that she was doing. Because she was doing something else entirely that is otherworldly on a completely different ancestral plane. And it just, I just remember going back to my laptop and feeling inadequate, but also thoroughly auditing. Absolutely inspired. Because she's a black woman as well. It's incredible, like, you know, it's so rare that I guess black art is

given its credit in that way that, you know, a Nobel Prize. Like, do you get what I mean? It's just it's never elevated to the level that it should be. Yeah, I do think we should be inspired rather than, because Tony Morrison doesn't want to silence anybody's voice, especially any woman's voice, especially any black woman's voice. So I think allow it to inspire. And I think what we should be doing is reading Tony Morrison

and then going to our laptops, not in any way to copy or to, couldn't if we tried. No, but just to feel the spirit of her observation and her truth, it doesn't matter where I start reading. I will find something completely original and unique, but entirely relatable. And I think that's what's wonderful about it. Sometimes you read books by very, very clever, clever, clever men,

and you're like, oh, he's very good at writing, isn't he? And it's all about admiring how clever he is with words, but you're not alive inside of it. You don't feel ignited in your bones because of it. And with Tony Morrison, I feel like she takes me to a familiar window and shows me an entirely new view. Thank you so much, Deb.

Before we get to your next book, Shelfy, I would like to speak about white supremacy, which we've already sort of touched on. But one of the best things I think about. Morrison's work is how you come to our work and certain themes are discussed without you necessarily. I mean, obviously you're aware that they're being discussed, but it just feels massively poetic and effortless. It doesn't feel like you're reading a, I suppose, racism 101 textbook by any means. It's relatable in a way that even, I mean, as much as I am a black woman, I'm not an African-American woman, I'm not living throughout, you know, Jim Crow or anything.

it's a very different experience. So I imagine when I speak to white people about her work, they often talk about it being their entry point into understanding or their, I guess, awakening in terms of racism and white supremacy and things like that. Now, I know that isn't the case for you, but I am interested in when, I suppose, you had a consciousness of the concept of white supremacy

because I think most people, even as children, despite privilege, still will have an awareness of racism, but not necessarily of white supremacy as a concept. So when did that sort of become something for you? I mean, I was at a very, very white town in Australia. I think there were a couple of indigenous girls at my school. But there was nobody else. There was a couple of indigenous or mixed-raced girls at my school.

there was an Italian, a girl from an Italian family, his surname was Camilleri. That was very exotic. A British girl turned up, her family had moved over from London. That was very glamorous. Other than that, it was local white Australians. And so, I mean, I'm literally talking about a girl with an Italian surname

being thought to be. Other, yeah. Yeah, oh, 100%. It's like, yeah, she's Italian. Her family's Italian. Now, of course, if you're living in Melbourne, yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's very cosmopolitan. And the part of Australia I grew up in is much more cosmopolitan than it was. But when I grew up, honestly, I didn't have a great sense of the indigenous girls that I weren't in my year, so I didn't really know them. I don't know what their experience was like. It was probably bad. And I don't know that and I don't remember that because I was a white child. But I don't remember ever anybody bullying anybody or calling anybody names or I don't remember that being a part of my childhood. I don't remember anyone using slurs. I remember hearing as I got older adults talking about indigenous people in places like Darwin and saying there was a lot of problems. there with alcoholism and unemployment and violence.

And they were saying it in a way as if it were the indigenous people's fault. And they weren't talking about it from the point of view of white supremacy, power structures, colonialism, the genocide that happened to indigenous people on Australia. They weren't talking about it like that at all. They were basically saying that Aboriginal people were the problem. And I remember that being something that I, had to address in my own head and question. But I was also from a very homophobic place

where there were no out gay people in my school. It was illegal to be gay in my state in Australia. Any gay acts were illegal. So, you know, I was from a very white, very seemingly straight because gay people were too frightened to be out and couldn't be out, without risking prison. I was raised there. So did I have a sense of white supremacy

and power structures? Not at all. We were trained that Australia Day was something to be proud of, all about Captain Cook coming over and discovering Australia. What a hero, what a legend. There was absolutely no discussion that indigenous people were gunned down,

that their children were taken away from them. it wasn't discussed or talked about. And now I join with other Australians in feeling great shame at the, not only the history, but also the contemporary price that indigenous people pay every single day in Australia for the socioeconomic disposition that they have inherited

and the continual criminalization and demoralization, of the Australian Indigenous community. I mean, it's really abusive and terrible. So now I have much more of an awareness of it, but I still, of course, and I've really spent a lot of time on the podcast trying to make it a diverse space

where black women and if I go to Australia, indigenous women, it can be heard, brown women, of course, but queer women, but I am also aware that at the end of the day, I'm a mildly queer, tall white woman from an English-speaking country who went to Oxford. And none of those things are going away. And so it is my responsibility and my job

to be as much a part of the solution as I can be, but I also understand that those power structures benefit me. every single day. So your fourth bookshelfy is Lullaby Beach by Stella Duffy. Can you tell me what you love most about this book and also where you were and when you first read it? Okay, so I read this book very recently. I was lucky enough to be sent a copy of it before it came out. It's new.

It's by a brilliant writer called Stella Duffy, who actually know of old. and she has written a book about three generations of women, all from a seaside town. And it starts with a tragedy. So great niece Lucy finds Kitty dead and she's taken her own life at Lelaby Beach, her home for many years. So that's a bit of a content warning there

that it does start with somebody taking their own life. And the family can't believe that Kitty would do this. And they're like, why, why would she do this? And in their efforts to understand, they start to uncover her secrets and her life. And the book goes to really explore Kitty's life from when she leaves Westmear as a young woman to go to London. And she's been living in the seaside town,

which feels claustrophobic and dull. She wants to, you know, the thrill of the city. Relatable content for me. and she thinks she meets the love of her life in a man called Danny, who's the son of a businessman. She thinks he's very fabulous. But actually he is not a good man at all. And he's very ambitious, but he is abusive.

This is the 50s, London in the 50s. And it's all very bright light. So if you're interested, I mean, I love, because I live in London, I love, I sometimes wandered down the street. And I think, gosh, during the blitz, people would have run down there. People would have, this would have happened. In the 20s, people would have been coming out in these sorts of clothes. And we're all standing on the same street, which is one thing I love about London.

I probably feel that because I'm from Australia where there isn't quite that same history in the same way. So she becomes friends with a young Jamaican woman called Ernestine. And Danny does not like this. So there's so many brilliant themes in this. It's about the cycle of abuse. It's about women dealing with the same things in different generations. If you want to get a greater understanding of windrush through fiction, through story, which is a wonderful way to do it.

This is a brilliant book to read. There's all sorts of other things, you know, abortion and other things that, you know, Stella is such a feminist and such an intersectional feminist. There are all sorts of wonderful things explored, that some of them are harder material in terms of trauma. But the book is beautiful and layered, and the characters come to life, and it's a real page turner.

And there's a twist in the story. So I think sometimes exploring those harder topics, not always through nonfiction and plowing through those difficult topics that we think, oh, God, I've got to look at this, I should look at this, I should know about this, should educate myself. Coming through fiction and being caught up in a story is a great way sometimes to explore things

that otherwise we might find very traumatic to deal with. I mean, it sounds like a brilliant book, and it sounds very much like, you know, sisterhood is a sort of central theme to it. And I want to talk to a little bit about sisterhood, especially as someone who, you know, has been a wonderful friend to me and has definitely been someone that, you know,

has been very massively supportive of me throughout my career. and I think even the fact that you chose this book very, very recently released and I know that that very much speaks to your, I know what you are like in terms of women, genuinely meaning the now kind of overused potentially sort of slightly almost cliche term women supporting women.

You're truly about it. You really put your money away your mouth is and it's one of my favourite things about you. So I'll talk to you a little bit about sisterhood, why it matters, why supporting women, you know, especially women of colour in your case, is something that you have been actively trying to do in your career and just signal boosting the work of women,

which is obviously what this podcast is all about. I think Lullaby Beach has literal sisters in it and where sisters will go for each other and how far sisters will go to each other. And you and I both have sisters and we know the strength of those bonds. And because I was not raised in my biological family, I think I've always understood that biology and family aren't the same thing.

Like, you know, people say blood's thicker than water, but as an adopted baby, I know that that's not true. And I think it's made me understand that you can choose your family wherever you go. Because my family, they say you can choose your friends, but you can't choose your family, but I know that's not true because my family did choose me as a baby. And I think I've always understood that wherever you go, if you've been adopted once, you can get adopted again.

you can just become part of other people's families and create your own chosen urban family and so many people I know, especially if they go to the city, especially if they're outsiders in some way, if they're queer or they don't have a constant, close, reliable relationship with their own family. They do get chosen family.

And I've always been great, you know, I live on the other side of the world for my family and I've always been, it's always been important to me to have around me to build those bonds and to behave, I find if you behave like family to somebody, you just do become their family in a way. And so I think for me, that's what the women supporting women thing is about. And you've said such lovely things, which I'm very moved by.

But I think the answer is, you know, if my sister is in trouble, I don't just treat her like, you know, oh, this person's like texting me and is having a bad day and I could sort of help that person by texting back. I think I just act like that person is my actual sister. And we've been raised together and go, well, what would I give that person? What would I give this person if she were my actual sister? Well, that's what I'm going to give her because that's what she needs now.

She needs an actual sister. And that I think makes feminism real. Listen, you can't do that for everyone all of the time. You wouldn't have any other time in your day. But sometimes, you know, you feel a kinship with somebody or you feel like I know this person needs this. right now and it gives me a great joy and warmth and peace to be there for the women around me and to do what I can when I can. And we've all got to set up boundaries and limits, of course, because you can't do everything for everyone all of the time. But I think the idea

of self-care has sometimes crept into, don't do things for other people because you've got to look after yourself. And it's like, yeah, of course. if that's what you need right now, but also caring for other people is very rewarding. And it creates community. And so ask yourself, do I need self-care right now? Or does this person need my care? And can I have self-care the day after tomorrow? And today, can I really be there for my sister?

Another way in which you sort of have, you know, continually platformed and supported women is obviously through the guilt of feminists, not just as panellists, but also by allowing women to be guilty feminist essentially. So let's talk about how it began and why you think it's been so successful. I think the guilty feminist is very successful largely because women are thirsty. And there's not much designed for us and by us. If it is on the telly or through the radio, often it's been overly produced and overly shaped and men have had a huge hand in it.

And I think it's just an unadulterated space created by women for people, created by women for women and people of minority genders. And it's a celebratory space. It's a space where you don't have to be perfect to be a force for meaningful change. We start with our I'm a feminist butts where we kind of open up and say, here's the way in which my values and my actions do not meet. And that's okay. It doesn't matter. But where it does matter, let's build muscle. you know, where it does matter, let's talk about it, put it on the table and get better. Let's work on it.

We don't have to be perfect today. And I think one of the ways in which we do live in a cult is a cult of perfection through social media. That's got worse. Everybody else seems to be looking fabulous and doing fabulous things and succeeding a whole time. And actually saying, do you know what? I didn't watch that four-hour documentary on the suffragettes that I said I was going to watch. I watched say yes to the dress and I really enjoyed myself but then I think sometimes there's hidden feminism in those kinds of things there's something we're being drawn to

about the power of women so I think a celebratory space that's genuinely funny that allows people to go I'm not perfect and yet I'm showing up and yet I want to be better I don't want to be in a space that's just like I'm not really very good at feminism

Loll, relax. But I want to be in a space that says, here's the ways in which I'm not perfect. I'll never be perfect. I'm going to die with a full inbox. I have accepted that now, Yomi. I know that I'm going to die with the full inbox. I'm all right with it.

I'm all right with it. So trying to kind of make it clear and be perfect, it just fills up again. You know when you email everyone back? They email you back. And it's back. It's all back. That's what happens.

It never goes away. This is never going to end. there's clustered in my flat I think right I've cleared it all out now and then it's back it's back I take clothes that I no longer wear

to Oxfam I come home I swear they're back they're back in my wardrobe I took this jacket to Oxfam it's found its way home it's never going to end this pile of work

this these goals and aims and this nobility I'm striving for it's never going to get there but working towards it and being pleased with the progress I make, I'm definitely a better feminist now than when I start with the podcast. I'm so much a better feminist. I have a great understanding, a greater audacity to challenge,

a greater understanding of my own privilege. I started the podcast to wallow in my own oppression, and I've learnt more about my own privilege than anything else. And I'm definitely just, I was going to say, Balsier then. That's an example. I'm a feminist, but Balsier. Why does that mean courage? Nonsense.

I'm definitely bolder and just not as bothered about what people want in terms of the way things have been done before. And the audience have come with me. They've listened with me and they've contributed with me. And the guests, every guest I've had on, every, including you, every co-host I've had on has brought something to that space. So I feel very, very lucky to have a space where I can shine a light on women who deserve a bright, shiny light. I love the fact that we have women on who are from all sorts of backgrounds,

communities. You know, we have incredible black and brown women, women with disabilities, queer women. It's women with masculine gender expression. All sorts of brilliant people. We had somebody come on the other day to talk about asexuality, which is something I didn't know anything about really. And I learnt so much. I had two elderly women who'd been code breakers in the Second World War. And most of their stories

were, to be honest, were about nightclubs in the Second World War. It was fantastic. I couldn't have asked for anything more. We are just so lucky to have this space and I will never not be grateful that we started this venture and so many women around the world. We've had 85 million downloads now. So many women around the world

and people of minority genders and cis men have joined us to discuss and to participate and to actually be active to go out and change stuff. Our listeners go out and change stuff. We have projects that we do together and it's remarkable. So your fifth and final bookshelfy this week is Ghosts by Dolly Alderton. What is the book about and did any of it resonate with you personally? Yes, it really did. So Ghosts is about a young woman dating right now. And I wanted to put it on the table as a book. Because the first books I chose were those traditional cornerstones of female reading.

And I thought, actually, what I want to bring to the listeners and to you is something fresh and new and contemporary and relevant that I have read recently that I feel gave me some epiphanies. And ghosts is about a young woman dating in London who gets ghosted. And it's by the brilliant writer, Dolly Alderton. She's somebody who you and I both know, she's also wonderful fun on a night out. She's hilarious. Isn't she? If you can have a night out with Dolly Orton,

take that opportunity. I haven't actually yet, but it was funny enough at the Women's Prize. An event, perhaps two or three years ago, I remember absolutely nothing about it, which says it all. But all I remember, she was fantastic. And I remember saying to somebody,

she's an absolute scream. I must get her drunk again and get my husband. self-drunk within that scenario. So yeah. She is fantastic. And she has, she's written, this is her debut novel. Her first book was a Sunday time's bestseller for ever and ever, ever.

And that was about her own experiences of love. And this is a novel. This is a fictional book. But it's about the experience of being left. It's about the experience of being completely ignored. And again, I think the speak. to shunning for me because ghosting is a form of shunning. And it's about a young woman in a relationship with a man who just disappears and just completely stops contacting her. And

what that experience is like. But it's also about at the same time her father losing his memory because of dementia, because of Alzheimer's, and what it's like for somebody you know to start disappearing, literally in some cases where he wanders off and also for. figuratively, you know, she's talking to him, but it's, it's not like the experience of talking to him was. And I think these are very important and relatable 21st century topics. That again, to be explored through fiction, it was a real page turner. It was a really beautiful read. She's ever so funny, Dolly Alderton, but she's also very poignant. And I think in some way, she's a modern day Jane Austen.

And I think she writes about dating and manners. And women exploring their future without men and with men and ultimately wanting love, but understanding that you yourself are a completely self-sufficient being and you don't need men. It's a lovely book. You read ghosts, didn't you? I did read ghosts.

I love, I absolutely, like, as you said, Dolly is. bloody funny. And I think what really kind of, I guess, resonated with me was just the situations that I suppose it very much is if you don't laugh, you will absolutely certainly cry and so just some bits that I read and just thought, I don't know, when you said that she's a modern day Jane Austen, I just, I was nodding along to the point that my neck nearly broke. Because I was just like this, I'm sure that at the time women would have been reading Jane Austen and I don't know, it's just really typifying and capturing something in the time specifically, but also that it's just universal to women everywhere.

And I feel that ghost is the type of book that, yes, it's very much of its time, because, you know, we're talking about dating apps and ghosting. But, like, ghosting, I'm pretty sure people were writing letters during the war to boyfriends, and at some point they just stopped responding, and it's not necessarily because they'd died. I'm sure ghosting has existed for centuries, just not in the digital sense. Well, Willoughby ghosts in sense and sensibility, doesn't he? He's a ghost, up. This is why I love you.

Willoughby the soldier. You're right. Just off he goes. And he's just suddenly where is he and he's not writing back? And it was easier to ghost in those days because nobody had phones. You were waiting for... Even bloody eggs. Nobody had Facebook.

Yeah. You couldn't even stalk them. But it was gossip was Instagram then, wasn't it? Oh, my God. Was it? It was sort of somebody, oh, well, I saw him taking a turn around the pop room with with Miss Milligan and there you go. I'm really waiting for the Netflix adaption

because I know it's coming but yeah I think goes to something I can absolutely there are a lot of books that are written in a time and it's kind of like of the time and that's it but I do feel like it just to me it was it was very universal and super super funny and poignant because I interviewed her about it actually and I remember wondering how she

was able to write about Alzheimer's so poignantly and what to me felt accurately and she did she did a lot of research but I don't know. I just, I thought it was amazingly done. Yeah, there's something about it that I just really love. Thank you so much, Deb. We have unfortunately one last question and I'm not going to lie to it is a very, very, very difficult one. Yes, go on. Which is what is your favourite book from the list and why? Okay, because I'm the guilty feminist, I think I get a guilty pick and a feminist pick. So my feminist pick has got to be Song of Solomon. It's

far and away the best prose of any book I've ever read. It's just glorious. You will learn so much. You will empathise so much. And when Hannah Gadsby says story holds our cure, I think she's talking about Tony Morrison. It's a way to live through and live vicariously and to connect in a way that is difficult to connect because it's the past. and it's a way of living and a way of understanding our history and the history of white supremacy. So that's my feminist pick. My guilty pick is Elaine Hannaf's Underfoot and Show Business because that book just made me think, yeah, you can do it.

And what if you're not successful? It doesn't matter you're in the game. Just get out. Live your life. Be amongst it. Get involved. Have some fun. Take some chances.

Love it. Thank you so much, Deborah. I really feel like I'm the usher. in a theatre that you've just come up to and said I get two picks and I've somehow gone along with it. I don't know how I've ended up here but somehow it all checks out and works out.

I always do it. Whenever I get asked on, you know, those things like the, you know, the Guardian, say your cultural highlights. I always do a guilty pick and a feminist pick. I think that's what I want to do. You know, I want to say this, these two things live inside of me and they coexist.

Why not? So, you know, I feel like we should all be allowed a guilty pick and a feminist pick in life every day. We absolutely are, but do not tell the other guests because they're only allowed to pick one. Look, if I have to pick one, obviously it's Song of Solomon, but you know.

But you didn't. Nobody reads Helene Hanove. It's joyful. She's joyful. Go and read her. I'm Yomiya Degger Kaye and you've been listening to the Women's Prize for Fiction podcast. Brought to you by Bayleys and produced by Birdline Media.

Head to our website www.women'sprice for Fiction. com.com. UK, where you can discover this year's 16 long-listed books covering both new and well-established writers and a wide range of genres. Thanks very much for listening and see you next time.