Bookshelfie: Women’s Prize Podcast - S8 Ep1: Bookshelfie: Diane Abbott MP

Episode Date: January 28, 2025

Diane Abbott is parliament’s longest serving Black MP. A political trailblazer, a passionate advocate for social justice and a writer. She kicks off series eight of Bookshelfie talking about Trump, feminism and navigating a world of social media trolls. Diane was the first Black woman elected to Parliament and has served Hackney and Stoke Newington for more than 35 years. In 2024 she became Mother of the House – an honorific title given to the female MP with the longest uninterrupted service. She is the founder of several initiatives, including ‘London Schools and the Black Child’, and ‘Black Women Mean Business’. Her memoir, A Woman Like Me, is out now. Diane’s book choices are: ** Little Women by Louisa May Alcott ** The Color Purple by Alice Walker  ** Heart Of The Race: Black Women's Lives in Britain by Beverley Bryan, Stella Dadzie and Suzanne Scafe ** Confidence Man by Maggie Haberman ** Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo Vick Hope, multi-award winning TV and BBC Radio 1 presenter, author and journalist, is the host of season eight of the Women’s Prize for Fiction Podcast. Every week, Vick will be joined by another inspirational woman to discuss the work of incredible female authors. The Women’s Prize is one of the most prestigious literary awards in the world, and they continue to champion the very best books written by women. Don’t want to miss the rest of season eight? Listen and subscribe now! You can buy all books mentioned from our dedicated shelf on Bookshop.org - every purchase supports the work of the Women's Prize Trust and independent bookshops.  This podcast is sponsored by Baileys and produced by Bird Lime Media.

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.com. I was hopeful as a school girl and I'm hopeful down. A lot has happened and is happening to make me less than hopeful. But I think, you know, what's the point of politics if you're not hopeful?

If you don't believe that there can be a better world. This is the Women's Prize for Fiction bookshelfy podcast supported by Bayleys. Join us in celebrating women's writing from around the world in the 30th anniversary year of the Women's Prize for Fiction, sharing our creativity, our voices and our perspectives. I'm Vic Hope and I am your host for Season 8 of Bookshelfy, the podcast that asks inspiring and brilliant women to share the five books by women that have shaped them and their lives. Join me and my incredible guests as we talk about the books you should be adding to your reading list. Today I am joined by Diane Abbott. Diane was born in London in 1953 to Jamaican

parents who are part of the Windrush Generation. She's been the Member of Parliament for Hackney in Stoke Newington for more than 35 years. The first black woman elected to Parliament. She is also the longest serving Black MP in the House of Commons and in 2024, became Mother of the House, an honorific title given to the female MP with the longest uninterrupted service. She is the founder of several initiatives, including London schools and the black child and black women mean business. For 12 years, she's appeared as a regular contributor on the BBC's Political Digest Show this week. And her memoir, A Woman Like Me, is out now. Diane, welcome.

It is such a pleasure to see you today to get to discuss your favourite books and just to get to chat to you. It's great to be here. Now, you are a parliamentary trailblazer, but you've worn many hats over the course of your career. you've, you know, a broadcaster, a commentator, reporter, now an author. Was writing always an aspiration of yours? Books have always been a passion of mine.

I remember before I went to primary school, really, my mother teaching me to read. She had big, I remember, she had big multicolored plastic letters. And we sat in the conservatory at the back of the house. And she taught me to read. And then when I started primary school, she signed me up at the library.

So books have always been my passion. I didn't think about writing, though, until recent times, because I was too busy doing things. And when you were putting everything that you had done, all the things you'd been doing onto the page, what was that process like? Was it cathartic? It was cathartic, but it also really made me think.

about my life. Because my life has been quite varied, I just got on with things. As I say in Jamaica, I just put one foot in front of the other. And writing the book made me stop and look back, which was very interesting, but also very, oh, it made me sort of wonder at myself. How would you ever do that? How did you ever put up with that? Why did you ever do that? So for instance, I became an

MP in 1987 and for 10 years I was the only black woman in the House of Commons. I never thought about it at the time. It's only when I wrote the autobiography, I looked back and thought, wow. And looking back, thinking, well, how did it make you feel? What did it tell you about yourself that you didn't really think about it at the time? Well, that's the only way you can do it. I mean, I spent my early life and my early career being the only black woman in institutions. So I was the only black child at my primary school. I was only black girl at my grammar school.

I went to Newham College, Cambridge. I was only black girl there. There was another mixed race girl and a South Asian girl, but I was only black girl. And then when I came down from Cambridge, and I went to work for the home office, I was the only black person there. So I just took it for granted that I'd be the only black person institution. So I didn't think too much about it. Again, it's when I look back, I think, gosh.

As the only black girl in these institutions right back to the beginning, right back to school, a time when, as you said, you've always loved books. Do you think that influenced the books that you gravitated towards? I know personally, also in a very similar position, the only black child at my school up in Newcastle, I always gravitated towards stories where I saw myself represented because I sort of needed that. Yes. I mean, some of the books that have stayed with me

and books I sought out were books by black women writers. Because particularly in my 20, it was a revelation to me, a world where black women were front and centre. And I started to read a lot of black women writers at the same time as feminism was on the up search, although there was a distinction between white feminism and black feminism. And the books, I... red, not all of them, but some of them open the door to black feminists, and particularly

black American feminists? Well, on the subject of feminism and sparking that awareness inside yourself, let's talk about the first book that you've brought today, which is Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, originally published in two volumes in 1868. Little Women is a beloved American classic, adored for generations. an instant success that has since been adapted multiple times for the stage and screen. It tells a story of four little women, the March sisters, Meg, Joe, Beth and Amy, as they navigate the complexities of growing up, pursuing their dreams, and experiencing the bonds of sisterhood during the American Civil War.

Who were you when you read Little Women? Take us back. What age for you? What was your family situation? I was at primary school. as I say I loved books in the beginning I remember there was a shop on the corner and had a little shelf of books and I bought little women and it was the first book I ever bought

and I was so proud to have my book because in my house there were no books not being judgmental it was just the way it was the only book we had was the Encyclopedia Britannica and I think a lot of working class West Indian families had the encyclopedia, Botanica, in their living room. It was a sign of respectability.

We didn't consult it very much, but we had it there. Nigerian household here. We had, for some reason, we had several encyclopedias on the show. So I was very proud to have an actual novel. I bought it with my own money. And I love the book. Obviously, I love the book. And of the sisters, I've,

was Joe, who was a bit of a tomboy. But I think what appeals me about the book, I mean, it is a classic, obviously, but it was a kind of pre-feminist book about women in their lives. So I like it. And looking back, it was very important as the first book I ever bought. Do you think at that age you understood it to be a feminist book? Or was it just your perception of women that was in? impacted. It's only looking back that I see it was actually a kind of pre-feminist book. At the time, I just thought it was about women, women and girls, and I really enjoyed it. But it had an effect on me.

It was one of the things, one of the very earliest things, which shaped my understanding of what it was to be a woman and how we should support each other, just as the March girl, support. to each other. Talking of supporting one another, of paving the way for the women who are to come, which is something you have done throughout your career, how does it feel looking back now to welcome a new generation of young black women into the spaces where you used to be the only one

in Parliament, you know, have to be the only one in Cabinet for 10 years? Well, it's very exciting. I mean, having been the only black woman in Parliament for 10 years, I think we now have, I think the Labour Party now has 19 black women. And when you tell young girls about it, they say, is it only that? But it does represent a big step forward.

And it means that they're not under the pressures that I was under when I first became an MP. And, you know, some are left wing, some are right wing, some are centrist. But they're allowed to be their own person. Whereas when I first became an MP, you were kind of pigeonholed. And it was fine. I was a left-wing, black female MP, and I was fine with that. There's nothing I said or did in that period, which I regret or would resile from. But you were kind of in a bit of a box.

And I'm so glad for the young women coming up now that they're not put in a box. They can be themselves. And one of the young women that I'm proudest of is the MP. for Stratton, Bell Rear Addie, and I'm proud of her because she worked for me for 10 years and then she became an MP. And she says people refer to her as a spawn of Abbot. There is something so liberating and I think that as young women, there's a moment where you realise that having been told you can be anything, which does still put you in a box, you realise actually you can be everything. you can be in a lot of boxes and outside the boxes.

Exactly. I read that used to have a Parliament WhatsApp group chat called Sisters in the House. Is that still active? We've got different WhatsApp groups now, but that was important. Why was it important? Because it was a way of reaching out to each other and it was a way of expressing solidarity in an institution where you were very much in a minority

and you could be all day, the only one. But with the WhatsApp group, we were able to keep contact and have solidarity. And support on a day-to-day basis. Sometimes it's the little things, the smallest things, and you need someone to talk to. And maybe that doesn't get talked about enough

because you're human beings. Well, yes. There's a sense where you can be objectified. I was even coming here this morning, walking through the courtyard of the building. And this man, a black man, in fact, said, oh, dial out of a blabber. And I said, you know what, and a bit of a hurry, a bit of a hurry. But it's like he's seen you on the television, so he thinks he knows you. And it's that objectification.

I mean, it's good that people can see you and relate to you. But sometimes, just occasionally, you'd like to be anonymous. I get that. You set up a fantastic initiative. We mentioned it in the little intro there called Black Women Mean Business in 1992 to celebrate and uplift black female entrepreneurs is still going strong. What's it been like fostering that community? Why has that been so important to you?

Well, I think that black women tended to be a little type car. A lot of women, my mother's generation, were nurses. That was a big thing for the Windrush generation. And we tended not to be at a management level. And we tended not to have our own businesses. So black women businesses were bringing women together and encouraging them and supporting them in having their own organisations and aspiring to be business women.

Well, sisterhood in all its forms, we move from little women onto another novel with sisters at the heart. Your second bookshelvy book is The Color Purple by Alice Walker, one of my absolute favorites. Sisters Seeley and Nettie share the pain and struggle of growing up as African-American women in early 20th century rural Georgia. Forced into an abusive marriage, at least Sili can offer Nettie refuge from their violent father in her new home. That is, until Nettie catches the attack. of Seeley's husband and is forced to leave and forge her own journey. Through a series of letters spanning 20 years, first from Seeley to God and then between the two sisters, they managed to sustain their hope in each other across time, distance and

silence in a triumph of resilience, bravery and ultimately love. This is a bootshelpy favourite amongst many of our podcast guests. Can you tell me a little bit more about why you chose it? Oh, because it was part of a wave of black American women writers at the end of the 70s and beginning of the 80s, there was Tony Morrison, there was Maya Angelou, there was Autry Lloyd, and there was Alice Walker. And they made a huge impact on me because growing up and being at school, you were never exposed to black women writers. and it was like fireworks going off in my head to realize there was a world out there which black women framed and black women spoke for themselves and black women wrote about other black women.

And it made a huge impact on me that cohort of writers. And I remember when I ran for selection in Hackney North, And the way Labour Party selection works is you have to give lots of speeches until you give your final speech, your final speech of the selection. And I remember my final speech, which I gave in front of the whole sort of Labour Party delegation, Hightly North Delegation, I suppose there were. I don't know, 80, 90 people, I don't know. but the point was that most of them were mandated or committed to vote for somebody else. And I made my speech. And sometimes when you make a speech, you can feel the audience kind of focusing in on you.

And I made the speech and I could see that the faces of the people, the Labour Party members in the audience, they were wrestling with someone. And what they were wrestling with was the fact that they were committed to vote for someone, but on the base of the speech they felt they had to vote for me. I've never forgotten the final lines of my speech because there were lines from a poem by Maya Angelou called I Rise. And the final two lines were, bearing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the hope and the dream of the slave. And at that point, I, the audience, the invigilators, we knew I'd won.

So I owe it to Maya Angelou. I always say if I was going to have that dinner party with the guest, it would be Maya, it would be Tony, it would be Audrey Lord. And it would be Alice Walker. This novel also explores the character's resilience in the face of adversity to. to go back to that scene, that picture you've just painted in front of all those people and trying to convince them. You have devastatingly, for so many of us witnessing it in real time, being the victim of adversity of racism and misogynate the hands of the media of online trolls and even your peers over the years.

I actually read according to an Amnesty International report that you received almost half of all of the abusive tweets sent to female MPs in the run-up to the 2017 election. How have you navigated that? That's been quite terrible in some ways because it's an awful feeling to know that all those people out there that really hate you in a really irrational way. It got much worse with the rise of online

because before the rise of social media, if you wanted to abuse an MP, you had to get a piece of paper, you had to write a letter, put in an envelope, put a stamp on it, take it out to the letterbox. But with the rise of social media, You could just sit at a keyboard and send abusive messages to any number of members of Parliament.

So it felt horrible. I can't deny that. And, you know, threats of violence, all sorts of things. So in the end, I've stopped reading a lot of the communications that come online. Because if I read them, I would go out. off my head, to be quite honest. What impact do you think social media's having on political discourse at the moment? Do you think it's a positive thing that we can engage the younger generation,

are more informed perhaps? Or has it given these trolls, extremists, more licensed to spread vitriol and perhaps engage as well with those same young people? Well, I think social media is a good thing, in some ways because it enables you to communicate with people much more easily than when I first started in politics and it enables you to share ideas

and also learn what people are thinking about. So it is a good thing in that way. But I think it's Corsons political discourse and it's sort of helped to create a very angry and unpleasant mass of political commentators. And what happens? With social media, you read something and it kind of extrapolates. So one person writes something abusive and many more people see it and think, oh, I know, I'll write something abusive. So, as I say, it's got a good side in terms of communication, but it's got a bad side in terms of

generating more and more abuse. It feels like we live in a very ignorant world a lot of the time if you were to just look online. And in the colour purple, education is a theme and the power that it gives NETI. You've done some incredibly important work with schools in London to increase educational attainment for black children. Can you tell us a little bit more about that? How could the London schools and the Black Child Awards possibly have benefited you to have a role model like yourself as a child? Why is it important that we tackle this gap?

Well, I was very conscious all along that it was my education, which had enabled me to be aspirational. I mean, both my parents left school at 14, and I didn't know anybody that had been to university, but my education, first my grammar school, and then Newnham College, Cambridge, left. me convinced that I was as good as anybody else. And in more practical ways, you need education to have the qualifications to move forward.

And I was very struck as I moved through the British education system of how the system was really failing black children, particularly black boys. I think particularly with black boys, I think it was a director general of the prison service whose name I can't remember who said that on the day, you exclude a child from school, and black boys have a very high rate of exclusion. So on the day you exclude a child from school, you might as well give them a date and time to turn up at prison.

So that school to prison pipeline is so serious and so damaging for a lot of our young boys. So I was interested in education, partly because I wanted people to be able to aspire, partly because I wanted to close the gap between black children and white children. I mean, you know, I disemounted that, but a lot of children weren't able to.

But also because I was particularly concerned about black boys. As I say, that's school to prison pipeline. It's an amazing thing. I remember when I first arrived at Cambridge, I couldn't believe the confidence that had been instilled in a lot of these boys who'd gone to certain schools.

And what really struck me wasn't that they knew the answers. was that they put their hands up even if they didn't. That confidence to fulfill your potential, whatever it might be, was staggering. And being able to know that you can put your hand up too was so powerful. Baileys 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. Baileys is the perfect adult treat, whether shaken in a cocktail, over ice,

scream or paired with your favourite book. Check out baillies.com for our favourite bailey's recipes. Let's talk about your third book, Shelfy book now, which is Heart of the Race, Black Women's Lives in Britain by Beverley Brime, Stella Dadesy and Suzanne Scaff. Heart of the Race is a powerful corrective to a version of Britain's history from which black women have long been excluded. It reclaims and records black women's place in that history, documenting their day-to-day struggles, Their experiences of education, her work, healthcare, and the personal and political struggles that they've waged to preserve a sense of identity and community. First published in 1985 and winner of the Martin Luther King Memorial Prize that year,

Heart of the Race is a testimony to the collective experience of black women in Britain and their relationship to the British state throughout its long history of slavery, empire and colonialism. What effect did this book have on your own political, education and the work that you've gone on to do? Well, it was a very important book, not least because I knew some of the women that had written Stella Dancy, for instance. But why it was important was because I had started off engaging with feminism generally, although you had to be quite a determined feminist to stick with it as a black woman in the 80s.

I remember I was still at school actually. I think I was in the sixth form. And I found a women's group to join. And I went along and it was all housewives really, but they were feminist. And it was fine for a bit. Then one day I went along and one of them said, why don't we have a fundraiser?

Another one said, oh, we could have a black male stripper. And I thought, no, I never went back there. But I remained a feminist. As I said, I was a very tenacious feminist. And then I went up to Cambridge. And Nuneham, in a general sense, reinforced my feminism because, you know, women tutors. It was all women, women, woman principal.

You couldn't go to a women's Cambridge College and not come out with a strong sense that women could do anything. But I went to the women's group at Nuneum. and again it was fine for the first few times and then one meeting the woman who I think must have been the coordinator or something said

we need to invite a woman from the town and I didn't quite understand what she meant by that and the woman from the town what she meant was a working class woman and this poor woman she came and she sat on a chair we were all sitting on the floor around her examining her as a woman

So she was a specimen. And again, I had a slight problem with white feminism. But first of all, the Tony Morrison and Maya Angelou introduced me to black American feminism. But then when I came down from Cambridge and became politically active, I got involved in black feminist groups. And the particular one of the time was called OAD, organization of women of African and Asian. I remember going to my first meeting, which was in Brixton at a community centre, which I don't think exists anymore. It's called the Ambeng Centre. And it was so exhilarating, so amazing to be in a room full of black women who were also all feminists.

And it was a revelation because that hadn't been my experience of feminism before. Adopting an intersectional view of feminism is so important in the fight for women's rights. What was it like entering Parliament? Take me back to that day as the first black female MP in the 80s. Well, it was... It was extraordinary, really, because not only was a lot only was the only black woman MP, I was one of the few black women there full stop. I mean, in some organisations you might expect to see black women sort of cooks and doing that

sort of thing. But in Parliament, in the 80s, nothing like that. Everybody was white, where it was the ladies that served you in the restaurant or everybody was white. So it was it was extraordinary because I'd moved a bit, bit by bit, away from situations which were all white. And now in Parliament, I was flung back into a situation with all white people. Mostly white men. My first day and my first session in Parliament, I think there were 11 women out of 650. was a revelation in that way. It was, I mean, Parliament then, and quite a bit now, was all about hierarchy and ritual and formality. And some of the rituals were extraordinary. So, for instance,

in Parliament you have a cloakroom, and everyone has a peg with their name on it, and a hanger. and every hanger had a long loop of red ribbon. And when you asked, which I did eventually, because you couldn't see what it was for, when you ask what is the loop of red ribbon for, I was told, well, it's there for you to hang your sword. Now, nobody has worn a sword in Parliament for, I know, 200 years, but that's how long it takes Parliament to adapt to change.

Oh, my goodness. So it was just kind of a different world from anything I'd expected. You might imagine that Cambridge, Francis, might have prepared me for it, but it was just. It was just in another world. It was very male. And largely, we're certainly on the conservative side and a bit on the labour side, you know, men that had been to private school or in any case,

had a very strong sense of confidence. So it was just extraordinary. Well, aside from not having a sword to hang on your peg, you've been very vocal about the misogynoir that you've faced during your time as an MP. And this book actually looks at the ties between racial and gender equality. You've been very critical, as you say,

white feminism, the fact that it doesn't encapsulate the intersectionality that we need. And this book talks about how black women tithely fought to present a sense of community. I love the way you spoke about finding your black feminist group and the importance of that. Do you think that art and community can be a transformative force? Oh yes. I mean, I think it was books actually that helped to shape my understanding of myself and it actually helped to shape my politics.

Because, you know, if you were an 18-year-old living in Harrow, which is where I was, how would you ever engage with feminism, apart from the world of the book and the world of the novel? So I found literature a way of engaging with worlds that otherwise I wouldn't have been able to engage with. And maybe might not have thought of engaging with, but book by book by book, I went football. foot by foot into the world of feminism and black feminism. And I think art is actually very important. I haven't had as much time as I would like to spend in galleries and taking in art. But it was, art was one of my favorite subjects when I was at secondary school.

And in fact, I was at secondary school and you got to do three A levels. I did English, history, and I think the third one was philosophy. Anyway, so you were allowed to do three. And I insisted I wanted to do four, and the fourth one was going to be art. Well, my teachers were very unhappy. He said you can't do that. We're not going to let you do that. It's too complicated to timetable it.

But I was, then as now, quite stubborn. So I did do art at the fourth A level, although it meant doing some stuff in my lunchtime and stuff like that. I've never regretted it, even though I didn't go on to be an artist, because I think the arts are very important. And being able to understand the world around you, not just through the medium of politics and meetings,

but writing and arts and sculpture is very important. And when I finally stop being an MP, one of the things I want to spend more time on is going to art galleries, not just here, but across Europe. When I finally stopped being an MP, I want to revert to some of my earliest passions and one of my earliest passions was the arts. And also picking up that paintbrush because there's nothing more therapeutic than mark making. Yes, very much. much so. I don't know when the day will be that you stop working in politics. I mean, do you, do you know?

No, I don't know. If I did not, I wouldn't tell you. That's what I was suspecting. So I was very tentatively tiptoeing around that. But it does bring us onto a particularly polemic voice in politics right now. And your fourth bookshelfy book, which is Confidence Man by Maggie Haberman. Few journalists have covered Donald Trump more extensively than Maggie Haberman. And few better understand the polarising 45th president or his motivations.

In this astonishing, illuminating book, all is revealed about Trump, the man, the president and the phenomenon, chronicling Trump's entire career from his rise in New York City to his tortured post-presidency. And at the time, potential comeback, Confidence Man is a man. significant, disturbing reckoning of the president who pushed American democracy to the brink. Diane, another nonfiction pick. Do you tend to read fiction or nonfiction or a bit of both? I think before I was a member of parliament, I read much more nonfiction. But since I've become an MP in recent years, I've read a lot more sort of political

books, books about issues and so on. And when did you read this book? Was it before or after Trump was re-elected? Oh, before. Right. It was before. And I found it absolutely fascinating. Maggie Habin was a New York Times journalist and she literally was physically around Trump from the beginning when he was a property developer in New York to when he became president the first time. So it was a lot more personal in a way than some of the abstract political books around Trump. She was really writing about Trump the man and to an extent how she engaged with him. And she really illustrated and made you see how awfully he was. Just awful.

incredibly obsessed with personal publicity, incredibly superficial, incredibly vain, and incredibly having no interest in democracy or even in politics at all. It was all about politics as a vehicle for his ego. And it's so extraordinary and disappointing that the American people have elected him again. I always believe that books make the world a better place, that they make us empathetic. They help us understand ourselves and help us understand others and the world around us. Did reading this biography of Trump make you understand him anymore? I mean, much of Trump is apparent at first viewing, but it did make me understand

him in more depths. And like I say, it made you understand how much of this was about his ego. And how much of it was considered? He wasn't somebody that suddenly became president and suddenly developed these traits, his vanity and so on. His traits have been there all along. And it tells you something about the American political system that he was able to rise to the top.

Absolutely. I mean, did this book provide you with any sort of valuable context or nuance on what is just happening now in politics? One of the reasons Trump's been able to do so well is actually because it's a reality television style. And people nowadays don't get their politics from books at all,

not even from newspapers like the New York Times or the Washington Post. What they're doing is, in America at least, they're watching Fox News and they're watching reality TV and they knew Trump from that and that's how I was able to be so successful that and a capacity

for telling lies time after time and it's really frightening to me to believe that I don't know 40% of the American voting public because I think that's how many votes he got 40% of voters they really believe that he would

won the 2020 election. So that's, you know, him telling the same, like, over and over again and convincing people of it. I think that because people get their politics much more from online and TV, in a sense, it makes people's politics more superficial. And that is very sad. Yeah. And you posted on X on Twitter, criticizing Kiyosdama,

for praising Donald Trump as gracious was his word, using the hashtag, hashtag Trump is a convicted felon. How do you think our prime minister should interact with the president of the United States? How can you balance your moral standing with the fact that he is the president? And ultimately he does have to work with him. Yeah, we, the British government, have to work with whoever the American public elects. No question about that. but you don't have to call him gracious because it's anything but.

And here in the UK, you know, we have also witnessed a lot of division over the last few years, particularly very recently the attacks from right-wing groups last summer. Now that labourer in government, what are your priorities as an MP to work towards a better future for all of us? Well, I think the violence last summer was very chastening. I was struck by how Kirstalma described it as thuggery, as if it was just individual acts of violence. Actually, it was racism, pure and simple. You know, if you're attacking mosques,

if you're physically attacking black and brown people, if you're trying to set fire to hostel with asylum seekers in them, that's just racism. And I was disappointed he couldn't. call it out. Sadly, some of the things that got involved in as a very new young politician are still relevant now, standing up for black and brown people, standing up for fairness, standing up for equality. Those things are important now. One has to continue to fight for them. The multi-generational tension and the way that racism can trickle

down is actually a key theme in your fifth and final bookshelby book, which we're going to talk about now. It's Girl Woman Other by Bernardine Everisto. From Mayenne's Newcastle to Cornwall, from the birth of the 20th century to the teens of the 21st. Girl Woman Other follows a cast of 12 characters on their personal journeys through the UK and the last 100 years. They're each looking for something, a shared past, an unexpected future, a place to call home, somewhere to fit in a lover, a missed mother, a lost father, even just a touch of hope. This, again, is a popular read amongst our Women's Prize community. It was shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2020.

Can you tell us why you picked it? Oh, well, one of the things about the book was it covered the black woman's experience in all its complexity. We're not just victims. We're not just matriarchs. It showed us every dimension and every type of experience that we have. It was also a book of prize winner. And so I really enjoyed it.

I mean, some of the other books I've chosen showed a particular dimension of the black women's experience, particularly, to be honest, black American women's experience. But Bernardine's showed it in its totality. And actually I saw her recently. I did a kind of event, a reading of my book, in a community centre in Tottenham, the Bernie Grant Centre. And she was my sort of invigilator. We discussed the book. So it was really nice to see her.

There is a lot. We just discussed a lot of multi-generational tension going on in this book. Every generation has a different point of view regarding feminism, gender roles, sexuality and culture. How do you think each of us, with all of our different things going on, can best navigate the world and protect our energy? It is very difficult. I said at the beginning, it's sometimes frustrating if people try and put us in a box. You know, you're either a glamorous nightclub singer or you're a matriarch or whatever.

I think it's important to understand intersectionality. I mean, I've always been a feminist. I've always been a feminist coming at feminism from a black perspective, but I've also always been a socialist. I've always been someone on the left. And so I've lived out that intersectionality, even when it's been tricky to navigate race and class perspectives all at the same time. but I just think in our own lives

we have to try and understand and engage with that intersectionality and I think it's very important that people relate to an older generation understand their experiences I mean I think the whole windrush thing I got a tiny bit irritated with it because it was a bit sentimental

as if the experience of black people that came in 50s and 60s was all kind of I don't know roses and kittens or something like that. But it did actually pay some kind of testimony and honour that earliest generation of black migrants. There's an oft-quoted line in the book which reads,

we should celebrate that many more women are reconfiguring feminism and that grassroots activism is spreading like wildfire and millions of women are waking up to the possibility of taking ownership of our world as fully entire. titled human beings. To what extent do you agree with this? Can we remain hopeful when sometimes it feels like steps backwards are being taken for the progression of women around the world?

Oh, we have to remain hopeful. I was hopeful as a schoolgirl and I'm hopeful now. And a lot has happened and is happening to make me less than hopeful. But I think, you know, what's the point of politics if you're not hopeful? If you don't believe that there can be a better world, So yeah, we have to. And, you know, when I look at how the world was when I left school and how the world is now, there has been tremendous progress.

And that makes you hopeful because just as we've had so much progress, you know, in the past 50 years, I think we'll see similar progress in the next 50 years. and also more international linkage between people in general and black women specifically. I imagine the process and the practice of writing your memoir, of looking back as much as there will have been pain, like we said at the beginning, in realizing the situation when you were so resilient at the time of living it. But there will also have been hope because you see how far you've come and how far we've come. what do you hope readers will take away from a woman like me? Well, I think people that don't know much about me will learn more

because I think sometimes the kind of media, Diane Abbott, is quite different from the real Diana. And I hope people will understand more about the real Diana. But I also hope that people, people will learn what it was like to grow up in a working class Jamaican community in the 60s and 70s. And I also hope that people will be able to track the progress of left politics down the decades. And the left in the Labour Party took a huge step back when Jeremy Corbyn was basically expelled from the party. But as I say, I remain hopeful. And these things are

are cyclical and I believe the left will be back stronger than ever because we're right and if you're right you can't be kept down forever and if you could look back to the little girl at the beginning of the book the little girl who's reading little women what would you say to her what would be your message to her I'd say to her you can aspire so anything you want to aspire. You shouldn't let people hold you back. It's all there in front of you and just keep going. Just keep going. I think that's a message actually for all of us to anyone listening who aspires to a career in politics like yourself, to anyone who just listens to our podcast and takes hope from the books that they read. But it's not just about people who aspire to a career in politics. It's a

about anybody who has aspirations, whether they want to book a prize winner, whether they want to have their own business. It's all about realizing the world is there for you, not just for people who take it for granted, the world is there for them. I remember when I came down from Cambridge and I applied to be a graduate civil servant,

and in those days, It was quite an elaborate selection procedure for the fast track. And you had to do a written exam. You had to go away for a weekend. And you had to, over the weekends, you were in groups and you were observed. And they wanted to see whether you had leadership qualities. Thank God, New York, Cambridge had equipped me to pretend I had leadership qualities. And then finally, you went to find a selection board, which was on Whitehall, just behind Admiralty Arch.

and I remember what I was wearing I was wearing a blue frilly smock, blue floral frilly smock and I had long plastic beads and I had my hair straightened and all these bubbly curls and I went into the final selection board room and there was a big round table

with five people around it on one side there were two white men on the other side there were two white men and chairing the panel was a woman called Mary, who went on to be the principal of Gerton, or may even have been the principal of Gerton at the time. So I bounced him and my bubbly curls and my frilly smock.

Mary Warnock said to me, why do you want to be a civil servant? And I said, because I want power. And the full white men nearly fell off their chairs in astonishment. But Mary Warnock said to her son, who I got to know later, because the way the world was, you came down from Oxford and Cambridge, we met a lot of other people who'd been in.

at Oxford and Cambridge. So I met her son, James Warnock, and he said to me that his mother had said to him that that was the correct answer. So I think it's about hope and I think it's about believing you can do anything you want to do. Well, I'm going to ask you to do one more thing. And that's the pick from your list. One book as a favourite. Which would it be and why? Do you know, I think I would say little women. Partly because it was the first book I actually bought, which was very important. And partly because it kind of prefigured the idea

that women could offer each other support and solidarity. So yeah, little woman, Louisa May Alcott. Thank you so much for the support of solidarity that you've given so many and for taking the time today. I really appreciate it. It's been an absolute joy to chat to you. I'm Vic Hope and you've been listening to the Women's Prize for Fitness. bookshelfy podcast brought to you by bailey's and produced by birdline media thank you for

joining me for this episode you'll find all the books discussed in our show notes if you've enjoyed it please leave us a rating or review to help other readers discover even more brilliant books by women see you next time