Bookshelfie: Women’s Prize Podcast - S4 Ep6: Bookshelfie: Bonnie Greer

Episode Date: November 25, 2021

Activist, playwright, novelist, critic, broadcaster and ‘searcher’ Bonnie Greer tells Zawe about the power of being on the outside looking in.    Bonnie is one of the UK’s most influential black cultural figures - having played a part in running numerous major institutions including the British Museum, the Royal Opera House, London Film School, RADA, Serpentine Gallery and Theatre Royal Stratford East. You may well have seen her on TV,  as a regular contributor to Newsnight Late Review, or a panelist on Question Time, where in 2009 she famously took down the BNP leader Nick Griffin in what is still one of the programmes most watched - and most controversial - episodes.    Bonnie has written numerous plays, musicals and operas which have appeared everywhere from Radio 4 to the West End, and is the author of five books, spanning fiction, non-fiction and memoir. She was awarded an OBE in 2010.    Bonnie’s book choices are:  ** Small Island by Andrea Levy ** Their Eyes were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston ** Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by JK Rowling ** Character Breakdown by Zawe Ashton ** Entropy by Bonnie Greer   Zawe Ashton, acclaimed actress, director, playwright and author, hosts Season Four of the chart-topping Women’s Prize for Fiction Podcast. The new Women’s Prize Podcast season continues to celebrate the best fiction written by women, by interviewing inspirational women about the books that have most influenced their life and career.   Make sure you listen and subscribe now, you definitely don’t want to miss the rest of Season Four.   This podcast is sponsored by Baileys and produced by Bird Lime Media. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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all while championing the very best fiction written by women around the world. Hello, I'm Zawi Ashton, and I'm your brand new presenter for season four of the Women's Prize for Fiction Podcast. The podcast that speaks to women with lives as inspiring as any good fiction to share the five books by women that have shaped them. My guest today is Bonnie Greer. Bonnie is one of the UK's most influential cultural figures. She's had pivotal roles in the running of major institutions in this country, including the British Museum, the Royal Opera House, Rada and the Serpentine Gallery.

A regular contributor to News Night Late Review, she's always one of the most memorable and erudite commentators on current affairs programs who could forget 2009 question time when she famously took down the BNP leader Nick Griffin in what is still one of the programs most watched and most controversial episodes. Her plays, musicals and operas have appeared everywhere from Radio 4 to the West End. As an author, she has written five books spanning fiction. nonfiction and memoir. It's no wonder she was awarded an OBE in 2010. When she agreed to host the Q&A at my book launch for my first novel, I couldn't believe it because it felt like such a full

circle moment. She to me is an absolute cultural powerhouse, a fearless woman who always has something brilliant and illuminating to say about the state of our world. It's my pleasure to bring this very personal and special episode of bookshelfy to you today with the one and only Bonnie Greer. How do you define yourself? When I go looking for these formal intros for our guests, it's like, oh, you know, well, she's a critic, she's a playwright, she's a novelist, she's a activist, speaker, how do you, author, how would you define yourself? When I think of myself, that's very deep. I think of myself as a searcher.

I'm looking for good questions and good trouble, as the late John Lewis used to say. And I think I've been doing that most of my life. And it's funny that, you know, you made me think about that, but that's what I am. You're going to make me cry. Literally first five seconds of interviewing you. I love that. You're a searcher. And do you think you search to find or the searching is never really supposed to stop? You know, on one level, I'm thinking about, you know, why I was born. I mean, I know how I was born. But I think ever since I was a little kid, very little, I wanted my mother, my late mother used to

call me why is the sky blue kid because I was the one who just walked down and said mommy sky blue I have no idea please stop and I would say mommy why is this and I remember once and I can see this my mother told me my mother had six children after me so she was always pregnant in my my kind of path and one day my mother was talking to one of her friends and I was standing there because I must be about three because I always like being around adults because I just want to know what they were talking about. I was a quite nosy kid and maybe I was four and this lady was standing there talking to my mother and I turned my mother and I said mommy why is her stomach like that sticking out my mother said shh so I said well mommy why is her stomach sticking out

She went, shh. And then they kept talking, and then my mother said she realized I was very quiet. And she thought what's going on? And she looked and she saw my feet sticking out from underneath this lady. I had my head up in her dress. She was pregnant. I didn't know what was going on. Nobody told me, so I thought I'm going to find out.

So I went under her clothes to see what was going on. And my mother said all she could see with these feet. my little feet sticking out from my latest woman's dress. I love that. So I think that's me at the end of the day. Like, what's under here?

And I don't like to take the approved opinion. I've never liked that either. So that's me. And how much of that do you think you get from your mom and dad? I mean, you're such a prolific writer and speaker and in terms of curiosity, in terms of, you know, reading or, like you're saying,

just generally searching for answers in the world, how much of that do you think you get from them? Well, my dad grew up in rural Mississippi during the Depression, and, you know, as a black boy, he didn't get very much education. So he educated himself. And I can remember as a little girl when he finally bought his house. He used to get the Encyclopedia Britannica by male, you know, door-to-door salesman in those days, and he'd buy the books.

And that's how he began to educate himself about the world, because he had articles about things. And it was illustrated with objects. from the British Museum. And so sometimes I would sit with him and read about the Greeks and then we would see, you know, the objects, the Parthana Marbles and, and, you know, I would just, like, read that way. I always wanted to be outside, and still do,

outside of the thing I was born in. He used to sit by the window in my little crowded room with my sisters, I share with my sisters, and look out the window. at the garden over the next street, down the street, was a track for the Illinois Central Railroad, huge railroad system that went from the south to the west coast. And people used to write blue songs about it because it was the train where you could escape from segregation.

And it had a long whistle. And I remember sort of sitting out there thinking, where's that train going? And I want to be on that train. And so reading these, reading became a way of, like, looking at different worlds and different experiences. My father really wanted to do that. And at the same time, being very grounded in being a black man, I mean, he called himself a race man in those days. That meant he were for black people first and foremost, because he grew up in segregation.

And he was here in this country during World War II for the United States Army, which was segregated at the time. believe during the war they didn't arm people, but they didn't arm black men until toward the end. So all of that is all of my background, and at the same time, incredibly curious guy, if he had had the proper education, he would have been an amazing sort of intellect. So I think it's from him. And it's ironic that I wound up being a part of the British Museum because neither of us would have imagined that ever happened to his daughter. So it's quite an amazing thing. That is an amazing thing.

We've joked and talked before about what you do when you're one of many children, you know, how your imagination starts to kind of shape itself and how that little child never actually goes away. you can become older and more worldly and more educated and travel. But actually that child is always that. Always there. And the teenager is always there. And the young woman's always there.

And the middle-aged woman. All of it is always there. And, you know, when you're young, you think, oh, I can still remember thinking, oh, when I'm 16, then this is going to happen. Then you get to be 16 and then you think, oh, 21, no, 18, then it's 18. And then it's 21 and then it's 25. And then, oh, my God, I'm going to be 30. I've got to do this by 30.

I have to do this by 30. Then you get to be 30. Then it's 35. Oh, my God, it's 40. Oh, my God. And it's always this kind of thing where you think you're going to be, you'll get all this wisdom, you'll get everything, everything will happen for you. and on a certain level, you're still growing always, I guess, until the last moment.

And all of these people, all these people are still inside you, and they come alive at different times. I mean, I can still access my eight-year-old self, which was quite scary, and I thought that's not proper. but then she has things still to tell me and my 32-year-old self still has things to tell me, my 40-year-old self so I was thinking to tell me. 50 was blank. That's a really bizarre age. I have to say that that was very busy,

but it's blank at the same time because I think, I think, I shouldn't say blank, but most women's bodies change. around late 40s to middle 50s. When you have a really big change, like when you begin to have your period, then that's the next big shift.

And I think that was such a drama unconsciously that a lot of it is quite blurry for me. And just as I'm saying this to you, that's why I did a lot of writing as well. As I was saying this to you, I just realized that because we don't have a culture in which women talk about the menopause, and they don't talk about the menarche,

and they don't talk about, I mean, when my period was about to begin, I was very young, and my mother, I remember exactly when I was told it was going to happen because the doctor told my mother I was with her. And I started administrating at 10. So, you know, that in those days

took you out of the cycle of being a little girl. because I couldn't play like everybody else because I had periods. So I couldn't rush around. I couldn't learn to ride a bike because my mother was protecting me from bleeding in public. And also because I was becoming a woman. I was at breast, everything at 10. So I think that that made me more hidden. As I'm speaking to you, I'm realizing that now,

that made me sort of hide myself a bit because she hid me and she did it to protect me you know because you know you could get if you're menstruating at 10 you'd get pregnant at 10 so she she hid me quite a bit so the next sort of leap when you're when you're about ready to have menopause and nobody there isn't anybody you can talk to about it there isn't anybody you can say, oh, I feel really like, I remember going to my gynecologists. It's interesting, I'm saying this, because it has to do with writing. It says I was going to my gynecologist who is, I had a private gynecologist, and I was sitting there, I was crying, crying, and I was saying, oh, my God, I'm screaming at my husband,

I'm treating him horribly, and I don't know what's going on, and I'm gaining weight, and I'm losing weight, and he just smiled at me, and he said, do you remember when you were 15? I said, what? He said, do you remember when you were 15? I said, vaguely, he said, well, you're 15 again, that's it. Your hormones. I said, what?

He said, he's your hormones. Take a deep breath, we can fix it. We can make it work. But nobody talks like that to women. No. So I think in a way, you know, as time goes on, I can see these things much more clearly than I could before. And it was a cultural, artistic, creative dip for you? Yeah, I mean, well, I did a lot more work than I have before.

Oh, sorry, you said that. Yeah, it was actually a resurgence of creativity. Yeah, that was really, because I was doing a lot of broadcasting in my, like, 50s and late 40s a lot. and in a way you kind of, when people ask you to do things, and I think you may appreciate this, when people ask you to do a lot of things, you think, well, that's what I am. You know, if they're saying, oh, come do this, go do that,

and you think, well, they're hiring me, that must be what I am. Or something like that. And then you do that. And, you know, you get involved in that, which I enjoy. But it's always the search, and it's a good thing. I thought when I was younger, oh, I'm going to come to the end of this, and I figured out you don't ever get there. And it's good.

It's very good. I'm interested to know how little eight-year-old Bonnie on the south side of Chicago shows up in your work now? She's there more than she ever was, really. I realize that I don't like black theater. I used to make it when I was in my 30s. I think it's absolutely boring now. I'm not interested in people being black on the stage.

This is dreadful. And I'm more interested in people being people, whatever that is. And the so-called black experience coming through the humanity. I mean, the plan writing now is, like I really like this shape. It's only 40 minutes because I think if you're in the theater longer than that, you should be paid to be there. You know, and with the exception of seeing your wonderful self, of course.

But I would happily pay you to come to see me and whatever I do. But I think this new play that's going to be produced, I really wanted to talk about states of blackness, which I think your novel kind of does, as I'm thinking about it. And even though it's not banging it out there, it's kind of there. And I'm interested in the state of it, as opposed to the condition of it. The condition of it is not interesting to me anymore. The state of it is interesting to me.

I want to understand the state. So these plays are expositions and analysis of the state of it, because the condition of it, the reality of being black, you know, we know that. But what's the state of it? The reason why I wanted to do this podcast, which is it's actually about talking to women who have had lives as inspiring as fiction,

whose stories could inspire a novel, a play, an article. And that is the epitome of your, life, Bonnie, and your experience. So it feels kind of reductive to even talk about the things that you've read when we're, when we're so electrified by the things that you've lived. But I think it could be a good point to segue onto your first bookshelfy choice, which is about migration. And that is Small Island by Andrea Levy. Not only is it a great place to start to discuss these themes, but Small Island actually won the women's prize in 2004 and was named the best of the best winner of the prize's first 10 years in a public vote,

which I think is fantastic because this book meant a hell of a lot to me when I read it too. I have only just been made aware that Andrea passed away in 2019. And I don't understand why that wasn't a huge fanfare. That's how she was. I had a little cry. That's how she was. Because for me, she is one of the most prolific female writers. That's how she was.

She wouldn't have wanted people to know. I first encountered Andrea Levy's work in the 90s. All the lights are on. And Andrea Levy was known among us black women writers. She was, we knew of her. And she was great. Then when I was doing News Night Review at the beginning of the century, because that's what it's Andrea Levy's,

and the Guardian asked me to go and interview Andrea Levy because her new book, Small Isla, was coming out, and the editor said, we've got to give her a break because she's a really good writer. I said she is a good writer. She's a great writer. So I go over to Andrea Levy's council house. She's a very guarded person,

but there's probably her shyness as well. She's hard worker, hard working woman. And I went into her house, and I got the book, and I started talking to her, and she said, Bonnie, if I have to go door to door to sell this book, this book is going to sell. I said, well, she said, I will go door to door with this book. I said, well, Andrew, what part of this book is like, and I don't think I wrote this, but I asked her, what part of this book is like the thing that really got you going? She was interested in the soldiers, like the ones who fought in this particular campaign,

and then everything else came out from it. I don't know if that's emphasized in the stage version or anything. I don't know because I haven't seen any plays of this or seen it on TV. I don't want to. I remember her saying that the Japanese, the soldiers who fought in Japan, the British soldiers and that whole thing, that it really interests her. I remember we were sitting there. We had some tea, and I was writing, I was thinking, you know, going to write my piece.

I remember her saying, if I got to go door to door, this book, I'm going to sell this book because she hadn't sold any books. And did she believe it would sell because of its subject matter? I mean, it's worth saying that this book is an unbelievably epic and humane account of the experience of the Windrush Generation and a portrait of post-war London, as you're saying, and its inhabitants and racial conflict. Yes, that's what interested her. Did she feel confident in it because it was this beautifully artistic piece of historical fiction?

No, no. She was utterly driven as a person. She was an utterly driven private person. She was a very driven writer. I mean, I didn't hang out with her. I didn't know her. I just met her on two occasions because I interviewed her for her second book as well. And when she had, I then had gotten her status, which she was very driven to get.

Because she knows good she was. the person I met was private. The second time I met her, she said she had been invited to have tea with the queen, and her mother just, like, freaked out. And, you know, she had a great ear as a writer. And that's really what I love about her work. She's also, she is not a writer who is in love with writing. I mean, she has something she has to say.

She has some information. She's a journalist in that sense. And she puts it into fiction. She has no illusions about anything, which is what I love. She's not a fantasist. She's an observer of human nature, but she's an observer of the human nature as filtered through the Caribbean British person,

which I think is quite wonderful. And what was your initial response to, to reading the book? I read it for information because when I first arrived here in 86 it was the first time I was called an American and a Yankee. I had never been called any of those things in America.

I'd never been called an America in America. I never been called a Yankee in America. I thought, gosh. And my first response was, this was in Brixton Market in 87. And my first response was my parents are from the South. I'm not a Yankee.

But they didn't know. Anyway, I wanted to understand this group of people and still want to. The African Caribbean British person. That's what she was an expert on. So this was wonderful for me. And also the experience of being in a country where you were told that this was your country. And then you get here and you find out it ain't. She's so brilliant at writing the second generation immigrant experience. Which is what she was. She, for me, is one of the writers that tackles the black metal class in a way that just isn't done often, really, in popular art in this country. It's taboo.

It's not supposed to exist. It's not supposed to exist. which is why so many of them become Tories because they're not accepted on the other side. That's interesting. I just thought of that. I was thinking of all the black people who are that I know. Yes.

And that's because they're not accepted on the other side. It's not accepted. You're not supposed to be left of center or whatever and be black in this country. It's not acceptable. And so they drift away from these things and they go to the conservatives or the liberal dems or the Greens is something

and they stay out of the working class party. What feels very pertinent about discussing Small Island and Andrea's work in general is I feel like she examines states of blackness also. She does. As you said earlier, because the negotiations that her characters in Small Island have to make when they arrive in the UK are based on race.

And then she's also interested, specifically, I feel like in daughters of immigrants, actually, probably because, as you're saying, that's exactly who she was. But she's then also interested in the children of those immigrants, wanting to step into a negotiation about their identity, about their presence in this country that is not based on race. And the way that she handles both of those,

again, probably because it's in her experience, her direct lineage, is, I think, just exceptional. And that is something that we are talking about more and more and more. Do you think? This is so interesting. I see, if you have a white partner and she did, and I do, I'm going to use the word exile, but I don't mean that word because that's too harsh. I mean, there's a kind of step away that you've done, even if you're not aware of it.

And I don't mean it in a negative way. I mean, most human beings do not go out. of their tribe. They just don't do that. That is not how we're constituted as human beings. So when you step out of it, either in love or in friendship, you've stepped into a huge kind of constellation. And you might even be wanting to unconsciously examine something. And in a way, and I would say this is true of anybody who steps out of anything to love somebody or to work with somebody, you're reconstolating yourself.

And so there's a part of you that is an observer. Part of that reconstellation is observant. So Andrea was an observer. She was a skeptic. She was somebody who looked at you with her eyes narrowed, in a sense, trying to figure out what constituted you, what made you. So I love Small Island because it's a joke title in the sense that that's what Jamaicans say about everything else, but also that's what this is.

This is a small island. And we're all crammed on this. I don't even know how people function with such small land space, but they do. And with so much diversity, but people do. and people live in relative peace relatively. So she does an examination of that. Bonnie, your second bookshelfy choice is Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neil Heston.

I couldn't love this choice anymore. Mostly because, and this is hard for me to admit, it is the book that sits on my bedside table, unread by me. And I'm just so glad that you've chosen it. I have read a couple of pages of this book, this novel, okay? So I'm not going to, and I'm going to tell you why. I love that we can be honest like this with each other.

I'm going to tell you why, because this book is so searing to me. You know, every thing, every line, every word, I just, I go through very slowly, like once or twice a year. I just learn from this book. This novel written in 1937 is considered a classic of the Harlem Renaissance. And it traces the story of Janie Woods, who's married to an older man at a very young age, endures two painful marriages before meeting someone who she has a very healthy relationship with. But it is more than a love story.

It is a polemic for a woman's right to self-her. and actualisation. Janie is searching for an independence from a society that has defined her by gender and race, neither of which permit her to exist freely. So I'm going to hazard a guess that this could be the reason why we're finding it a little too close to the...

Well, as I say in French, she was an... anthropologist. And she was, I love her because she was an outlaw. She refused to be part of the black set. She refused to be part of the politically correct people, which is why she was literally canceled between 1949 until Alice Walker rediscovered her in the middle of the 70s. Cancel, gone. No, you know, she was like considered an Uncle Tom. She was horrible. She was buried in an unmarked. Oh, yeah, she was poor woman.

No, yeah. And Alice got her, Ms. Walker got her a headstone. She had white patrons who knew how brilliant she was. And that was part of the Harlem Renaissance thing. I mean, because I've written about Langston News, and he had the same thing. That was part of that scene. Then the 30s came, and it was, like, more politically aggressive.

And so, you know, that kind of black white patronage was like, no, no, no. And then, of course, it got more and more of that. way. She liked country black folks. And for some people, that was like, what are you like being condescending? Are you looking down on them? I came to her because she copied verbatim by listening an incredible sermon that you have to read. It is unbelievable. She copied this black, the African-American preacher in Florida. She heard. heard him and she copied it word for word. It is an unbelievable sermon, the musicality of it. And she loved the musicality of black rural voices. And my dad was a farmer. And even though, you know, he was very much an urban man too because he moved to the north when he was in his 20s.

But he had a garden in his backyard. In the backyard, he had a garden. He had a row of cabbages and things. that he hold, he loved to farm. And, you know, I come from that kind of soil. And so she, for me, when something grabs me like that, I crawled through a book. I just crawl through it. I'm not a fast reader. Not, you know.

And so I just crawled through stuff. And, you know, every line, I think of the archive at the Smithsonian of former slaves. They luckily captured these people in the 30s, while they're still alive as part of the WTA project. And so you can hear their voices. And those are my kin. Those are my people.

That's where I come from. So to be able to have that kind of ear, that kind of empathy, which was she had. And I love that. And that's why I love this book. I think being an outsider as an artist is the most important space you can be in. And even if you get inside, try to find the outside and the inside. inside. Even if you're inside, you know, as far as other people can tell, if they look at you and they say, oh, you know, even if you're in there, make sure you find the outside of the

in there. I love that. Just find that spaces outside of the thing that you're in and then try and be in there if you can do it. Isn't that what the Harlem Renaissance was doing? Wasn't it a group of people who were wanting to make the inside and outside aligned, who were intellectually and culturally creating a movement that re-celebrated, recalibrated blackness or the African-American experience. They wanted to be outside, although they were embraced by white society because that was fashionable to do. I mean, Zorah Neal heard. first than call themselves, call all them the niggerati, which I thought, I love that. And they had their own newspaper.

And you have to understand after the war, after the fact that people had escaped the South that got out of there, after that, there was that huge pandemic of what they call the Spanish flu. There was all of that. And these people, this small crew people, Langston, Zora Neal, they were going to break out of all the conventions. They're just going to break out. And then, of course, white society and conservative black society reigned them in or exiled them. And so Zorro was canceled, and Langston was canceled. And Josephine Baker was kind of canceled. And all these people were

canceled because they didn't fit in the black community the proper thing to do you. proper. They weren't proper. And of course for white people, they were black people, so they had to go. But, you know, the thing with blackness is there's a proper, properness of it. Even now, even in BLM is proper. And if you don't adhere to the proper, then, you know, our people will, you know, we get dealt with. I want to talk about the posthumous success of black female writers. because it's abound. And when I talk about this, I'm thinking about Kathleen Collins. I'm thinking about Lorraine Hansberry.

What is this about? And of course, I'm thinking about Zora. This may sound like a detour, but let me do it really fast because it goes back to what I'm saying. I met James Baldwin once, and he asked me to take a taxi ride with him to the airport. Now, I'm writing a book about this, okay, because it's taken me 50 years to actually remember what he said. One of the chapters is called the best career move being dead.

It's always good to be a dead woman writer, and it's always good to be a dead black woman writer. That helps. That helps your career. It certainly helps your book sales. So when you die, your books will soar. Why? It's because nobody wants to hear what we have to say.

Okay, so if you're dead, you're posthumous you can't say nothing you can't be on the talk shows you can't actually say nothing so it's best to be dead you have to laugh in the face of very bleak truth like that's funny

I mean who would want to hear you don't want to hear with Zorneill Hart I mean Tony Morrison managed I was at dinner with Tony Morrison once okay I'm sitting next to her so somebody said to me after the dinner and I mentioned

dead. She said, would you talk about? I said, what do you think you talk to Tony Morrison about? And they said, what? You don't you talk about the weather. You don't sit there talking about the books, are you? That's ridiculous. You talk about the weather or clothes?

That's what we did. So, it's like, now I can talk about Tony Morrison in a deep way. But I wasn't going to sit next her and talk to her about a book. I mean, how ridiculous. It's like being dead is your best career. move because they don't have to listen to you.

You know, with all this is macabre. With all the stuff around it, you know, because your book comes from somewhere. And your book comes from your experience as a woman and as a black woman. So they don't want to hear that part. They shut you down. That's your fate until we are in charge. The podcast is made in partnership with Bailey's Irish Queen. 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. Bayleys is the perfect adult treat, whether in coffee, over ice cream, or paired with your favourite book. Enjoying the Women's Prize for Fiction podcast, share the literary love and be a part of the future of the Women's Prize Trust by supporting our charitable programs for writers. and readers. 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. Let's move on to your third book shelfy choice, which is Harry Potter the Philosopher's Stone by J.K. Rowling. Okay, I read that book on the tube. And I'm telling you how I remember. I don't even know how I got it. I got it before it was

actually published. And I think it's because I was on this show. And I remember I was on the tube coming out of West London. I opened the book and I read the opening sentence. I thought, oh, this is interesting. I thought she had a very good eye. I thought that's really good. You know, the awe and everything. I remember that. I thought that's impressive. So I read the book. It took me the two bride, and that was it. But I just really, because it was the kids, I wasn't going to read anymore, but I just thought what interesting eyes she had. And I thought, you know, this whole idea of this wizard and everything, I had no idea was going to become this phenomenon, you know, but I had an unpublished copy. I mean, she took that book all over the place, too.

And I remember around, they turned it down and everything, so I'm sure people got fired immediately. I remember reading it. It took me the whole tube right I finished it, and I thought, well, gosh, that's very good. I didn't know it's going to be anymore. I don't think there should have been anymore, actually, to be honest with you, but because she hid it there to me. Everything else rolled out, but she hit it. And I chose that book because that's one of the examples of what I call a coup de foote for a book. It's a book where I'll open a novel up and hits me. And I'm thinking, what a talented writer. This is talent. This is interesting. I haven't seen this before. This is a talented person. And so I remember. It's obviously an interesting moment to be talking about JK's work. It has kind of created this conversation for me about what do we do with the art when the artist becomes controversial? Well, I don't know what JK did. So I will look, check that out. I mean, there's so much stuff going on online. And I didn't know what she said, so I can't comment on it. But the dilemma is the work versus the person.

What do you do with Picasso and then-oiselle d'Avignon, which is, you know, you can say as a racist piece of work? I mean, first time I saw Picasso in New York at MoMA, and it was a huge show at the beginning of the 80s, I remember walking into there and thinking, I have never seen a man display his masculinity essence so violently in my life. But I'm also looking at a genius. So I do this Bicaso show.

And this is where we are right now. Thank you for letting me talk about this. It's important. So this young woman, one of my young women, my young women friends said, you know, he's disgusting. How can you look at this picture. Look at this picture. It's about his, he's almost got his penis.

erect and it's the shadow of it is over this young girl's head and I mean, he's disgusting. I say he's a genius too. So what do you do with this? I don't have the answer for you and you're right. That is exactly what

that is. But it's a genius. You look at Gogan who painted women of color who in reality wore Sunday, you know, they were Christianized, they wore Sunday clothes, they were all buttoned up, but he painted them naked

because that was his fantasy of a brown woman in Tahiti. That was his trip. But look what he made. And for you, Bonnie, do you feel like there's a place where the woman ends and the artist begins or vice versa? How do you navigate and negotiate those identities? Are they, separate for you? Are they one and the same? They are the same. So I guess what I'm saying,

and we don't talk about this, because even to have this conversation is a bad thing for a lot of people. You have to accept that the art comes out of the person, and that that thing that you hate about that person also created that art. We have to be able to figure out how you accommodate a work of art and a person who's not nice. So how do we do this? And, you know, if we can't figure out how we do this, we're going to blow ourselves up. Literally, we're going to explode, and we're going to kill everything else that's alive on this planet, too, because we're going to kill each other. We're going to kill each other because we're at this point.

And social media has conflict algorithms. They're built in, and they stimulate that part of our brain because we are a species that is fight or flight. We are very protective of ourselves and we're very defended because through millennia we've had to defend ourselves because we can't fly away. We can't, we're not fast enough to get away from a lot of animals so we have to fight. So we're fighters as a species.

If you can't sit, we can't sit down as human beings and find that space, but we can be people, especially women, cis, trans, or non-gender. and we can sit down and find a space, we can be human beings, we're going to blow up, we're just going to go. And not only are we going to go, we're taking this poor crowded planet with us. So that is what I'm trying to say.

I feel from this point in my life that we don't know how to learn how to talk to each other, if we don't learn how to bridge these divides, I think this time this is it. I think we're going to do it in this time. Wonderfully put Bonnie. Your fourth bookshelf choice, Bonnie, character breakdown by me.

I can't say it without laughing. Are you laughing? I'm laughing because... I think I'm laughing because maybe I just always have not taken myself seriously in any way, shape or for... Yeah, but you took yourself seriously enough to do it.

And I took myself seriously enough to write a book. You did, you want a novel. And I am so grateful to you. because you are a big part of the reason why becoming an author felt very pleasurable as an idea and as a reality for me. Your novelist is different. I'm a novelist, you're right. It's different. It's a different thing. I knew that when I was organizing my book launch, that you were the only person who I wanted to come and talk to me about it.

And also someone that I was extremely, extremely excited to send the book to you. just hear any feedback that you had on it. And I think I became a writer because I thought it would give me access to a very bohemian world. Oh, how interesting. I think in my head I live in the past any old house. But I imagined when I became a novelist

that suddenly I would have doors open to me that would lead to rooms with soft furnishing and kind of sheepskin rugs and there would be people lounging on those rugs and those soft furnishings talking about philosophy and art and literature and I would suddenly be one of them. I would be part of the cultural elite. And together we would all save the world.

And of course what you realize when you put a book into the world nowadays is it is relatively corporate and being generally. you story. I'll tell you a tiny story and I won't mention this person's name because this is a very famous white too, but this person wrote me out of the blue. And it was so naked that I thought, God, you must really trust me because it was sent by email. So I thought, I mean, this is a huge author. Huge sells millions. And this person said to me, I realized suddenly that I I'm part of a machine. And this person said, I can't take it anymore.

I can't take this machinery of publishing. And there's a lot of people out there. I mean, novel writing is very particular. And there are a lot of people turning out books of fiction. And it's always been like this. So it's no big deal. But it's like, yes, why I don't read a lot of stuff. So when your book came, I was just struck at how visceral you were.

You're very close to whatever the protagonist was going through. It was unflinching. And I appreciated that. And also I like the thing that you did, as I like to go somewhere I've never been. I've never, ever been. And I've never seen through my own eyes. It was like Treasure Island. It was like being in another world.

And at the same time, I could relate to everything because these things happened to me back in the day too. So you think change takes a long time. It takes a long time. It's just so shocking how long it takes. Sometimes you just think, gosh. And you talk about stuff and you realize, oh, it's still the same. It's not changed.

Change takes a very, very, very long time. And one of the quotes I wanted to put at the front of the book, which is one of my favorite quotes from Miles Davis, which is... Hello, Miles Davis. It takes a long time to sound like yourself. That quote really resonated with me because to write the book meant I had to look at how long it had taken

A, to sound like myself or even something resembling myself. But as you've just said, how little had changed in my industry. Very little. Over a long period of time. And it takes a long time because we're not in charge of anything. Nobody would have the courage to dramatize this novel. Because it's essentially, for me, it is essentially about assimilation. and it is about imposter syndrome.

Yeah, but you see somebody should dramatize it because there's a generation of people who need to see this. They need to see this because people know it, they know, but they need to see it and they need to see the effects of it. They need to see the price. They need to see the price. And that's what James Baldwin called the price of the ticket. They need to see it.

And I'm surprised somebody hasn't put it. it on it. Well, I'm not surprised. I won't we tell me it. Surprise. It's the expose of the whole thing. Well, how interesting, Ronnie. I'm not surprised because it didn't sell. And what no one talks about as an author, as a novelist, is what it really feels like not to sell.

I can talk about it. I was talking about to say. I can talk about it. Maybe you can also mutiny on there. And I can tell you, yes. But you have to come. to your own conclusion about what that means for you. And actually I had to remind myself that I didn't write the book to sell, actually. I wrote it to be in a conversation. I wrote it to be part of

a forgotten world, clearly, of bohemian thinkers and feelers that I think are the vanguard of everything. When I say that to myself, I remember what Samuel Johnson said, only a blockhead would not write for money. So, you know, it's, you know, and I've been a matching T-shirts and blockheads on. I've been a blockhead many times. Man, nah, nah, nah, nah. So, you know, but it's, I can tell when a novel affects me because I remember, when I remember things,

because I used to have to read them professionally, and I would just read them and then I wrote, you know, it was it. But I remember moments. I remember the feeling. I remember the feeling of the book, the way the book felt. And that was a feeling I could match with myself. This is a yearning person

who is not selling themselves, but it's yearning. And yearning to be able to express. And also being quite tough about it. I used to be president of the Bronte Society. It's another story. And I got to read a lot of Emily's things. And you remind me of her in the sense that in the middle of weathering highs and in the middle of character breakdown is incoherence.

And that is very important in a novel. Because if you're writing from where you can't speak, that's what touches people. All the other people who can assemble words like Margaret Atwood and make them really good and be powerful and strong and wonderful. that is a wonderful thing and that's 85% of what's published because it's what you can it's coherent it's what you can read you can read that but the novels that start from incoherence that start from a place where there's a scream or there's silence or there's

confusion those are the novels that you remember and those the novels are worth something And I knew when I read your novel, I felt that you had written this novel at the end. Not at the end of the experience, but the end of when you could speak about it. At the end of when you could rationalize it. At the end of when you could like make sense of it. At the end of when you could go have a coffee with somebody and have a joke about it. At the end of, this was the end of it. This was the end of the experience.

This was the end of a certain point. And that's the great novel writing to me. That's the greatness. That's the great thing when Baldwin writes another country. That's great when Hemingway writes farewell to arms and when he writes all of his work. That's great when Tony Morrison does beloved. These people are writing from the end of something.

I think only renegades write good novels. I think you are one. You have a spirit that, that's forced you to do that. It just forced you. I mean, you didn't have any choice. It's not like you had a choice. And it's nice to get a first novel with a hard cover

because most people don't get them. And so it says, and they have a launch and everything. These are good things. Thank you, honey. But I was very moved by character breakdown. And this is like that Munk painting the screen. That's what the novel's like.

You go and cross that bridge, and it's like monk, the bonious monk's jazz. It's just screaming. He's just screaming through this whole book. And, you know, black girls don't scream because we're taught not to do that. We're loud. Oh, we will raise a ruckus. Or we will make a lot of noise. Oh, we will complain.

Oh, yes, oh, yes. We never say. We never scream. We don't do that. Your insight is just everything, Bonnie. Honestly, I just, I want to say on behalf of myself and the other female writers who are out there representing their gender and their race, I speak on behalf of all of us when I say the gratitude to you and the people you stand shoulder to shoulder with is abound. And we know the space was created by you, so thank you. Well, I decided not to be a mother because I knew I was going to be a mother.

So I couldn't have my own little ones when I knew I was going to have lots. So that's what it's coming to. Now we both crying. Oh, buddy. Your work and the importance of your work should not be coming at the end of this conversation, especially not when we're both in tears. but your fifth and final

choice is entropy which is your final book your other novels include as you mentioned before your memoir parallel life Langston Hughes

the value of contradiction Obama music and hanging by her teeth entropy is a physics term and so I am now enabling you to

unleash your your physics enthusiasm through the tears. If I can. Well, entropy is the second law, I've got this right, the second law of thermodynamics, which is a law in physics of matter,

and it's about everything course or leaves a trace. It leaves something behind. And I wanted to write a novel about the relationship between the present, the past, and the future, between three black women that exist at the same time because there is a space in physics where all this, in theoretical physics, where these things can all exist at once.

It's very difficult to talk about, but you can't, the past does exist, the present and the future, in physics terms, can exist at the same time. there is matter that we can't put our hands on. We can only know it by the little traces it leaves behind. It moves. In fact, the minute we look at a quark, a proton, it moves.

So we don't know it's there, but we see the little trace of it being there. And I wanted to write a novel about a black British woman, middle class, in a South London house with a garden. And then at the same time she's listening to an African-American woman who has a radio show in London and she's just talking about being in London, how strange it is. And then there is a woman in the future in Paris

at the time of a flood in Paris, an African-American woman who is able to commune with her ancestors. So all of these people kind of, of meat in this sort of plain, it's called, this an entropic plain. So I wanted to write a novel about these three women on three different planes, being black women, women of African descent, in the diaspora. And I think, the quality I think, that those of us who were enslaved used to survive,

which are not things that are sort of of the head of the logic is literally things that we have forged out of our own sweat, out of the tragedy of enslavement, we became a new people. And I don't think we celebrate that enough. I don't think we talk about that enough. We don't talk about how African people survived enslavement. We don't talk about the crossing. And that's one of the big things for me

is I think African people changed when we're put on the ship. So this book is about the transformation. And the irony of this is everyone who's read entropy, who's talked to me about it, has been a man. And some of them have been white. So I said, why did you read this book? And they said, we thought it was about entropy, the law of thermal. So we read it. I said, you thought I wrote a book about entropy, like the physics book?

He said, yes, why he bought it? But we stayed with it. They stayed with the book about these three black women. even though within a couple of chapters they realize it wasn't. So then I guess it's kind of flattering in a strange way. I've got all these male writers, especially white male writers, especially white male writers are going, oh, you know, I've never read Tony Morrison by read entropy, you know. Getting them with the basic.

Yeah, I mean, they just thought it was going to be a physics book. So nobody reviewed the book, and I guess when I think about it, maybe they didn't know how. And it begins, the prose part with the black British woman. I did something with myself. I came up with the last word and I began the next paragraph with the last word and saw what came out. So it was very experimental.

And then there's a middle part that's very conventional. You say you're still learning from it. Yeah, yeah. And you do. You learn about your own process as a writer and everything. So it's a book that's teaching me still. And, you know, I won't stop doing those kind of books. I won't stop doing those kind of plays

because you get to a certain point where it's not worth it for you not to be yourself. There's no payoff. It just isn't one. So that's me. As we wrap up, I do need to ask you if there is one of your choices that you would take with you into the future if you had to leave all the others behind. I would take character breakdown. And I'm not just saying that because it takes me to the place where I'm most vulnerable. and you need to be in your vulnerable space.

That's where you need to be because that's where you make your work. So that's what I'm doing. I will happily give you as many copies as you would like to take with you, not to your desert island, but into outer space. Into outer space. Bonnie Greer, thank you. Thank you so much for joining us on bookshelfy. Thank you.

I'm Zawi Ashton and you've been listening to the Women's Prize for Fiction Podcast. please rate and review this podcast. It's the easiest way to help spread the word about the female talent you've heard about today. Thank you so much for listening. Hope to see you next time. You've been listening to the Women's Prize for Fiction podcast, brought to you by Bayleys and produced by Birdline Media.