Bookshelfie: Women’s Prize Podcast - S8 Ep8: Bookshelfie: Neneh Cherry

Episode Date: March 18, 2025

Recorded live at Bailey’s HQ in London, singer-songwriter, rapper, producer and Women’s Prize 2025 longlisted author Neneh Cherry discusses her career, the power of women and the process of writing her deeply personal memoir, A Thousand Threads.  Neneh first achieved global success in 1988, with 'Buffalo Stance', a groundbreaking mix of music genres. She has released six critically acclaimed studio albums and won two Brit Awards, an MTV Europe Music Award and was nominated for a Grammy for Best New Artist. Neneh has collaborated with the likes of Peter Gabriel, Cher, Four Tet, Gorillaz to name just a few. And her most recent album, The Versions, a compilation of reworked songs from her back catalogue, features SIA, Robyn and many others. It was released in 2022. Neneh recently published her beautiful memoir, A Thousand Threads, which tells the story of her journey to becoming the artist and woman she is today. It also shines a light on her family; the extraordinary three generations of artists and musicians that are her inheritance, and legacy. Neneh’s book choices are: ** Beloved by Toni Morrison **The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock by Imogen Hermes Gowar ** Women Who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes ** White Teeth by Zadie Smith **There are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak 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 continues to champion the very best books written by women. 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.  Don’t want to miss the rest of season eight? Listen and subscribe now! This podcast is sponsored by Baileys and produced by Bird Lime Media.

I just turned 61 yesterday and I feel like I can be slightly cocky about that. Yes. Do you know me? I can. As you should. I'm still learning. I have so much to learn. But I also like, don't give me any shit.

This is the Women's Prize for Fiction bookshelthy 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. Well, welcome everyone. We're coming to you live tonight from Bailey's HQ in London,

our lovely Boot Shelfy sponsors, make some noise. We've got a gorgeous audience and it is so good to see everyone clutching their books tonight because tonight I'm joined by singer, songwriter, Rafa and producer Nenna Cherry. So many beautiful faces in here. So many gorgeous women. It is. It's a female audience and it's so good to see. It's such a great energy in the room tonight. So thank you so much to joining us. Nena first achieved global success in 1988 with Buffalo Stance, a groundbreaking mix of genres. She's released six critically acclaimed studio albums and won two Brit Awards, an MTV Europe Music Awards, was nominated for a Grammy for Best New Artist, Nena's collaborated with the likes of Peter Gabriel, Cher Fortet, Gorillas, to name just a few, and her most recent album, The Versions,

a compilation of rewit songs from her backcastlogue. features Sia, Robin and many others. It was released in 2022. Nena recently published her beautiful and deeply personal memoir A Thousand Threats, which I can see in everyone's hands in the room tonight, which tells the story of her gin to becoming the artist and woman she is today. It also shines a light on her family, on the extraordinary three generations of artists and musicians that are her inheritance, that are her legacy. So please, just, just, join me in welcoming, Nana Cherry. How does it feel looking out and seeing and seeing your fans and seeing your book in everyone's

hands? It's kind of, it's wild. It took me a while to separate from being in the space of writing the book and wanting it to be as good as it can be, knowing that it could never be perfect. But just like for as long as I had time left in the zone to work with it, I was like kind of obsessed, slightly obsessed until my publisher is just kind of where that's it. You can't do anything else. And my brain was just like kind of a can of worms. I felt an incredible kind of responsibility, I think, to my ancestors, to my parents.

to all the people who are a part of my life, my kids, people who are gone, who have been really important to me to tell this story. You know, and it's like, okay, it's, it's my story. Writing it, you tell your truth, right? And, but there's a kind of also within line between telling a truth and being self-indulgent. And I think that like, I felt such a need to do that, be with the truth, but also to kind of honor the journey. And so I think I felt it was quite overwhelming. So when I got to the end and when I was kind of shutting the door, I just didn't know if it was enough, but I think I gave everything.

And then I just went through this whole kind of turmoil of stuff. And it just, yeah, it took a while to be able to kind of literally sit, this in a room and look at it, like it's there. And I think also you, when you're in the middle of something, and I think we all had that in one way or another with things that we're doing that matter to you, sometimes you're just like, am I ever going to be able to finish it? Like, I couldn't also see the end. I mean, as I was going through it, there was, I started to see a light. But, yeah, and now it's just very exciting, seeing it in your lap.

I walked past the bookstore near to where I live, but just before Christmas, and it was in the window. I actually went inside. I said, oh, thank you for having that book in the window. Oh, my God. I don't know if people do this. Do we go in and, like, talk about your own book to the bookstore? But yeah, so it's a trip.

And I didn't really, yeah, it's a trick. With literature, with novels, with memoirs, they so inherently belong to you until they don't, because now it belongs to everyone here. And a book takes on its own life in the way that it affects the reader, what it means to their, which will depend on their life, their experiences.

And I've heard this from both writers and also musicians. You know, you make the song, but then you put the song out, and it's kind of not yours anymore. Did you feel that? Definitely. And I think that's the gift at the end of the day is all the stuff that bounces back off the wall, you know, that, yeah, just things like, you know, meeting someone on the street that will tell you something that they took from the book. And I guess my dream with the book, I was just like, wow, just if someone. like, reads the book, buys the book, and then feels like, I want to give this book to someone else or buy it for a friend. Like, if two people do that, I'm happy as shit. Like, I've done that

with so many books that I have been through that have been, like, life-changing or that have really affected me. And, you know, there was a series of book that I have passed on to my kids to friends. You know, it's different depending on who you think you read. But my brother, Eagle Eye and I were always giving each other books. That's what this podcast is about. Yeah. It's about passing on those stories.

It's about sharing them. I do want to say, though, before we get onto the books that you want to share, that you've passed on, that you care about, congratulations, because long-listed for the Women's Prize. 25. Yeah, that was big. Big surprise. Did you celebrate?

Big surprise. Big surprise. Actually, I spent about an hour talking to my really close friend, Andrea, Oliver, Andy Oliver. And, like, we've shared it's, like, pretty much a lifetime together. I mean, I got lots of hugs for my kids, but we shared a really deep conversation. And I think that was kind of how I celebrated. She knows me better than anyone else in a way. We're so close.

And she was like, when she read the book, and I think I was really scared, you know, there were certain people who were a part of the story, and I was like, my brother, I grew up with one brother, but I have a range of other siblings. And it was like it was them, some of my parents' people who were still alive. Andrea, and I was terrified, you know.

And she read like one chapter, and she called me with like, she said, she was like, I'm crying, you know, you're there, you're inside, I feel you, I hear you. And then she could only read a chapter at a time because there was just, you know, like, too much and I guess just bringing up our bits of what she knows about me but also things in life that we've shared. And yeah, to me that was like really deep. But she, I was completely shocked about the news, but she was like, yeah, I told you. Auntie knows. But I still, you know, I can't take anything for granted. But it's just. such a huge surprise and I'm just honored I think to be included in such a great you know

group of women and also having a slight kind of imposter's syndrome when it comes to doing a book you know because of of having such great admiration and loving books and having been kind of schooled by books and having been so inspired to write thoughts because of books that I've read, I've always felt like, well, I just write these little, you know, three, four minute stories. And so the concept of getting through a whole book and holding on to the threads and making it a finished thing to me was like,

so, yeah, so to be included is deep. I've never met Andy Oliver, but I feel. like from watching a lot of Great British menu. Yes. Don't we all? If something like this happened, that would be a great person to get congratulated. You mentioned there the books that have shaped you. So let's get into them. Okay.

The first book that you brought to us tonight for Book Shelfy is Beloved by Tony Morrison. First published in 1987, Beloved is Tony Morrison's best known and is Tony Morrison's best known and widely considered her greatest work, exploring the devastating legacy of Svabry. Terrible, unspeakable things happened to set at Sweet Home, where she lived as a slave until she escaped to her hire. Her new home is not only haunted by the memories of her past, but also by the ghost of her baby, who die nameless and whose two spoon is engraved with a single word, beloved. Because that's all she could afford. Exactly. Yeah. Now, Tony, She's a favorite here at Women's Prize.

I can see a lot of heads nodding in the audience. I'm sure she's a favorite for so many of us. Shortlisted for Paradise in 1999, so often selected by our guests. Tell us why you pick this book. Why do you love her? I mean, she was one of the many women who had been so important to me, you know, like Alice Walker and Maya Angelou and Ansuk and Sasakashangay. and there's a whole family of women who I feel have brought me up with their word.

Tony Morrison, she writes in such a kind of direct but also complex kind of way. And I love that sometimes she'll just write a sentence that's like a paragraph long, you know, And it's, the magic and the power in her words has been such an inspiration with kind of understanding how much you can do with language, how it's kind of endless. And that book in particular, I mean, she wrote The Bluest Eye also, I think, which obviously came out before that. I mean, I can remember being on a plane. And I'm always, always slightly more emotional when I'm.

I'm on an airplane. Yeah, it's true. It's the old shoot. Oh, God. Wailing. Yeah. But I was reading Beloved, and I was at the bit where you understand or it's revealed how and why she killed her children. Because she actually kills, I think it's more than one.

I think she has two kids. And I don't know, I just, I'll never forget it. She kills her children to save them from slavery. And the reality of that as a mother, the weight, the terror, the magnitude of It just hit me so hard and it was like I went through a light year of pain and understanding some inside the grain of the feeling of the pain, not just the story took me out and I just, I think I sobbed for like two hours.

In fact, I just put the book down and there's other things in that. book descriptions of like where she's been beaten and she talks about the scars on her back looking like broccoli yeah it means me slightly speechless it's because those words are so evocative in a way that we can't put into words because they transcend that that that weight that you speak of that heaviness but also the lyricism of the prose it feels impossible that you can be so beautiful at once while also being so painful. Yeah, it's a contradiction between the pain

and the beauty in the expression and the need for the expression to be... That theme of motherhood that you just touched on is at the heart of this novel, I think, described or evoked in a way that... It's beyond anything else I've ever read since. And it's since Twyter's Sacrifice, which is also something that your memoir reflects on family, sacrifice, motherhood. I'd love to know about the lessons that have been passed down to you and that you then passed on as a mother.

Wow. That's, I feel like I have awakenings all the time. I feel like I have awakenings, maybe not on a daily basis, but of things that my mother said, of things that my mother did, of things that my grandmothers have done. And I guess we, what we pass on to each other, I think what I is, you know, we're survivors. Women are incredible survivors. And both in being very strong and sensitive and vulnerable. And I guess what I try to convey to my daughters is that all of that.

But you can be all of that. All of that matters and to kind of try and stay in our light. I mean, I think it's a kind of complicated, and I don't know that I can answer that question really eloquently because I also feel like there's so much of our experiences as women and as mothers and as human beings and as people that I feel also transcends through us instinctually. Yeah. Sometimes maybe that point is to

to how important it is to maybe try and honor those aspects of ourselves that I think comes from a very ancient place. Honor in the instinct is a really good way of putting it because that's at the heart, that's at the heart of love it. Because I feel like we turn around so often

and go like, oh, I wish you wish I'd listen to myself and I wish I'd done this. And I just, and it's also very noisy outside, you know, there's a lot of stuff every day telling us how we should be, how we should look, how do this, how think like this, you're not good enough, you know, literally, you know, what's it called when you do that thing on the phone when you, you do the scrolling. Not the scrolling, when you change, like you filters. Oh, you know.

Nothing's real. Nothing's real. All the filters and all the filters that, you know, we feel that we should be kind of putting in front of our faces. And I guess with my daughters, it's like I just, I saw who they were in the first seconds after they came out of my body. And I feel like I, that's all I try to tell them. It's like, be who you are.

and that's enough. Healing is also at the heart of the lovers. We follow set on her journey to healing. Was the process of putting pen to paper quite a cathartic one? I think, I mean, it's pretty hard for it not to be. I definitely got to a place in life where I felt that I had a need to be kind of with my own story just to reflect and remember stuff, you know, because I think like every day

is, like I said, it's noisy. I think that we're survivors, and I feel like I've just also taken a lot of things in my stride and just got on with it without worrying or thinking about it too much. And it gave me a chance to sit down and also just, yeah, reflect. and be present in some of the stuff that sometimes I know that, like, when I've been asked about, well, why did you do this? How did that happen? Sometimes I'm like, I don't actually know. So I think, yeah, it has been quite deep and actually, in a way, when I narrated the book, it hit me harder than when I was actually writing, because I think the process of doing is, you're doing.

Yeah. Or sometimes knowing that I needed to go and write was harder than writing because of like, you know, it's like being out running and like needing to go through a pain barrier. Before you can enjoy the run. Do you know what I mean?

I was not one of those. You know, don't bother me. I have to write four hours. Don't talk to me until after midday. I think also like the way that I've done a lot of things has always been inside the core of the family. I had my first kid when I was 18. I was also making music.

I was a young mother. And so to do anything other outside of the kind of the hub of the family, for me, it had to happen inside that hub. So I was quite often like writing songs, stirring your pops, you know what I mean? And so I'm also quite comfortable, like a lot of the, book was actually read and sitting in my laptop, like in the kitchen with people's. And I was actually living in my daughter's Mabel's house at the time.

So it was like barking dogs, hours and delivery too, like people coming in to like record vocals. Yeah. And I think that's also in a way where maybe because you have to like basically feel and think, but also let go. to just get his sound of the flow to make the connection for the words. And that's just where I feel less self-conscious, I think. It's interesting that you mentioned and narrating that because the next book

that we're going to talk about, I know you listen to as an audio book. Your second book, Shelfy book, is The Millade and Mrs. Hancock by Imogen Hemis Gower. On one September evening in 1785, the merchant Jonah Hancock finds one of his captain, waiting eagerly on his doorstep. He sold Jonah's ship for what appears to be a mermaid. Its arrival spins him out of his ordinary existence and through the doors of high society, where he meets Angelica Neal,

the most desirable woman he has ever laid eyes on, searing both their lives into a dangerous new course. What will be the cost of their ambitions? And will they be able to escape the legendary, destructive power a mermaid is said to possess. This was shortlisted for the Women's Prize of Fiction in 2018. Oh, is it? Oh.

And you said in your notes that you love a good Victorian yarn. Yeah, except it's Georgian, isn't it, apparently? But you know what? Historical fiction. Yeah, no. No. I love the kind of the setate, that environment, like a good costume drama or a book

that's set in that world. My kids are always laughing at me because I'm always saying things like, I'm sure that I led a life in that time because quite often when I'm like, and I have lots of places, like I think I had a life in the desert, I think I had a life maybe in somewhere like Persia somewhere.

And I'm sure that I had a Victorian or a Georgian life because I have a thing with like almost being able to feel the essence of like rustling skirts and sometimes being like in parks. Maybe it's just from Washington. He can't. But just having your fascination. And that book is bonkers and great and lovely. And actually me and my husband listened to it together during the COVID era.

You were in Sweden. And we were in Sweden. And it was winter. And the family, the house, my family house that I grew up in is, it's an old school house. And it has no central heating. It's just wood-burning fires. So it is, I mean, yeah, it's hard work in the winter. And then, yeah, we had a really, we were like kind of obsessed listening to this book.

And we were just like sit in front of the fire. listening to it. And also this setting, because actually the house, my family house, is like kind of built in that time. It's the perfect setting for this. It was great. It was good. And also being in the forest in Sweden, it was really comforting, like being taken to London because that book is also in London. And I think like the bruffle where the leading lady was, is like on Brewer Street or? So you really recognize. And I used to spend so much time going out,

running around in different clubs in Soho and my teen. So I always kind of, you know, like, it's fascinating when you know a street, but also like knowing that the houses have like buildings, have a whole history and a story. And so I'm quite often like that when looking at them and going, God, I want these walls and see. Yeah, leg blaze.

Yeah, so I was kind of doing that, like picturing the streets and, you know, adding the pictures of the book. And there's elements of magical realism as well in there. Yeah. This book, as much as it's grounded in a recognizable reality, there's that escape as well. And I can imagine at that time, you know, we all needed an escape. I mean, I love, I've always loved Isabella Lenda. My favorite. of either being able to weave a story that goes from into a kind of surrealist space that becomes

that's also really real. Yeah. You know, it's not science fiction. It's like magical. And actually, my mother met Isabel Allende in Mexico in the 70s, I think. And they were talking apparently about that part of the world. and, you know, lots of other places in the world are kind of, that's the reality. Yeah.

Like a lot of South American reality. And like my mom had these friends who had lost one of their sons. They were also Mexican. And they kept his bones in a box just on top of the fireplace or the mantelpiece. And anytime they had anything difficult that they needed to kind of think about or deal with or get through or get over, they would just bring him down and bring him out and hold his bones, you know, and you think, wow, that's quite a lot. But that was their reality.

Yeah. And that magic sort of, it permeates every part of the reality. Exactly. And yeah, this, the, the, the, to go back to the book, I love the way it does that. really like beautifully and comfortably, you know, natural with a letter word. I always think with magical realism, it's the world that we know, but we're on the wings of a butterfly while we're observing it. Isabelle Ejende is an author who tackles societal issues head on,

and this novel actually highlights the society's treatment that women faced in the 19th century. you yourself have had sexist bias level at you. You famously received pushback from your record label when you iconically performed on top of the pops whilst pregnant. You've not shied away from dealing with that, from talking about that. Why was it important for you to go ahead with that performance? I mean, I, well, at first thought, I had no choice because,

I was fully praying it. I don't think that, you know, alone, I'm the kind of person who's going to change things in a way, but I think that the little things that we can do are, is what makes bigger changes. And I think that I wasn't even interested as a woman to be in any kind of, under any kind of lights, unless I could bring the things with me

that actually mean more to me in my life and being under the light. So I think it wasn't planned. I got pregnant. But I also find a power in like, not just sitting down and making the decision that I was going to put out the records and that it was like actually

kind of important to just carry on. And my record company, by the time I went on top of the pop seven months pregnant, they like got over it. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? When I first went in there before the record came out and just sort of said But sorry about, I'm bred a dent. And it's going to be fine because also I had already had a kid. And I was in it back when I had my first daughter, Naima, and we were out Tori and faggays. And in fact, she came with me when she was six weeks old.

So I'd already had the experience of, like, managing. And we were a funny little village of people. So it wouldn't have happened if I was alone. And for each woman and for each child that comes into this world, it's a different experience. So Mara Dona Tyson, we were talking, obviously, a lot before she had her, my grandchild, Boer. And, you know, it's impossible to know who that person is that's inside of you and whether it's going to be possible to move around and do all the things that you want to do. But for sure, you need a village around you to deal because she was like, well, you did it, Mom,

and you did it like this and you did it like that. And I feel very careful and I feel very respectful towards women that we all have different experiences. And in my case, I'd been to visit with my family in Sierra Leone when I was. I was 15. And it was like such a big and important trip for me. And from being out with my family and my aunties and like in the village where my family are from and seeing how they mothered and how they carry their kids and where they went and how they did things, I was just like I just want to be like them.

Yeah. And so. But then to go back to that kind of forum of. climbing out on the stage, I think, beyond that kind of really stereotypical, um, over-sexualized kind of forum where women are supposed to be, how it's all about how we look, how we move our bottoms. And I was just like, fuck that shit. I'm not pulled out like that. You know, and that, so that was a little revolution. And I was just, yeah, I was like, I'm not doing it. 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. Bailey's is the perfect adult treat, whether shaken in a cocktail, over ice cream, or paired with your favourite book. Check out baillies.com for our favourite bailey's recipes. On the subject of leaning into our own power, and that village as well, it feels quite appropriate actually to talk about your third book, which is women who run with the wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes. Within every woman, there lies a powerful force of energy, creativity and self-knowing. They're wild woman.

For centuries, she've been repressed by an air-oriented value system that trivializes her emotions until now, With a combination of time-honoured stories and myths and fairy tales and casework, this feminist classic, loved by over 2 million women, helps readers reconnect with their inner wild. Tell us about this book. How has it inspired you? I mean, it's a very big book,

and it's full of amazing, important information. there's mythological tales, folklore, I mean, the research and the detail is amazing. But I think, like, the way I've used that book is more like a Bible. Like, I just pick it up, and I'll just read, choose something and read it. So it's a book that I've kind of had with me. I've never read it from front to back in one go. And actually when I wrote a song called Woman Once Upon a Time, and actually most of the second verse comes from that book. And it was a section which was about the history of witches, actually.

And I'll always have it around and I do exactly exactly that, just find segments and always discover something new. It's like a reference booth. Yeah. You can dip into, like an encyclopedia. Yeah, an encyclopedia. Of the wild woman. Yeah. How has that then impacted, in turn, your creativity and your life?

Is this something we could all dip into? We could all use a reference for whatever we might need? I mean, gosh, I think there are millions of impressions. And I think with that book in particular, what's, really nourishing is that it talks about our power and again, our intuition. And there are stories of lots of things that I haven't heard before that I found they really fed me and nurtured me. And I think that we have an idea of who we are and of our ancestors. And of our ancestral links as women to our ancestors and to each other, who we are and where we come from.

But sometimes it's just really important to hear it or to read it or to have a conversation. Like I was talking to my Auntie Barbara, who's in South Central in L.A. the other day. and she was talking about she had she Catherine Dunham was going to um she was a great dancer yeah and she had been um i think invited to come and dance with the dance company and she got pregnant and then my dad had two children that he left behind with my grandmother my step-grandmother, and my auntie ended up raising those kids. And, you know, my dad went off and played his trumpet. He made some great music, but nonetheless, he's a man, he broke off, and, you know, he was...

And she was just actually, because she had read in the book. My auntie Barbara is about to turn 90, and she had listened to the book, and she said, I put it on and I listened to it from beginning to end. I listened all day. I laughed. I cried. And of course, it brought up a lot of things for her because my dad, her brother, was an addict. And there was a lot of things that as a family, I don't think, that she talked to her mother, bad.

And the sacrifices she made, she has made. But she is the most. hopeful, generous woman. And so she's one of those people that when I talk with her, like, and I've gone into this dialogue now because of where we were with talking about the book, women women with the wolves, the passing on of knowledge, of the instinct, of a feeling, you know, and my auntie was bored into segregation in Oklahoma. She lived through the what's riots, you know, lots of things. Like, it's like we all have stories.

But, but, and actually now I'm going to do a little jump. But, like, the day I called her when trumpet got him, the look on her face was like, I never thought I would see this shit. She's got out here, so she just said shit. This. This I get, yeah. She's like, we have to pull the hatches down now and stay close. but she said, we will survive.

She was like, there's a reason for this. And so this is like, you know, the ancestral connections to me. I think that's where I find things in the pages, but I also think the exchange that happens in real life is also so valid. Well, on the subject of passing down, passing on sharing these words, We do this with all art forms, like we said at the very beginning, that's how they take on new lives. And your career... It's how we continue.

Exactly. It's dynamic. It's ever-growing and ever-changing. And actually, like your grandmother said as well, we see these things come back. We see them happen again. And that knowledge helps us navigate whatever comes next. your career-spanning project, The Versions, features songs reimagined by other female musicians. It's taking them, giving them a new life.

And similarly to all of these pieces of literature that we're talking about, breathing that life into them and into the people who listen. Did you know that you wanted it to be a women-led project from the offset? And also tell me about the friendships and the reconnections that you made on that journey. I think it was like a no-brainer that it should be led by women. And some of the women I knew, some of the women I did not know. But they were my kind of, it was like my dream team. Yeah.

Do you know what I mean? And kind of pretty much everybody said, yes, a few people that they wanted to do it. I think that really it was like that was the prize. I didn't want to get involved in like kind of working with them on the tracks or having any input because I think the beauty was just waiting for their interpretations to come back, you know, just to hear the songs, like you said, have a new life force and to take a kind of new journey. and it was, yeah, it was like a very exciting project. I do have to mention for anyone listening to the podcast,

just a bit crying going on in the background. And the streets of London police cars, but it is the perfect segue into a book absolutely rooted here in London, which is now our home, your home, my home. Your fourth book, Sharded Book, is White Sea by Zadie Smith. On New Year's Day, 1975, the day of his almost suicide, life said yes to Archie Jones. Promptly seizing his second life by the horns,

Archie meets and marries Clara Bauden, a caromere girl, 28 years, his junior. Thus begins a tale of friendship of love and war of three cultures and three families over three generations. Now, this was actually Sadie Smith's debut novel, cast our minds way back. It was shortlisted for the women's prize in 2000. Seems like such a long time ago now.

Is that when it came out? Yeah, it must have been. It must be 1999, 2000. How did you come across? White T. Can you remember where you were, how you were, who you were when you first write that? I mean, I think I was definitely here in 2000.

And I didn't think it took long for the reverberations to just know like a young sister. put out a bug. And it is dope. And everybody was being it. And we were all so excited. And I've lived a lot of my life in London around West London. And it was just like talking about my streets, speaking in a language that was like so familiar, but also highly intelligent. And I just, I can remember, I love it with books when I'm like, when I want to look at the picture of the person in the back who's written the book. And I kept, like, reading and it's just like wanting to look at her face, like, oh my God. I can't believe that.

I came out of her. And yeah, I can't believe it. But so it was a very uplifting and important book. Very important book. and uplifting in the sense that I felt a kind of closeness with her, with Sadie, even though I didn't know her. And in fact, the first time I met her, I was completely starstruck. She ran past me on the canal where I used to live by Elaborate Grove.

I was walking with my husband, and she was like, she ran past. I was like, oh, my God, oh, shit, that was the same, isn't it? Oh, my God, oh, my God. And about five minutes later, she came running back and just circled around. And she was like, oh, I'm just going to tell you, you know, some things about you. She might have been thinking the same thing when she ran past you. She might have been like, oh, shit. Yeah. Yeah. So that to me was a really important book.

And I think White Teeth is one of those books that I have also passed on to my kids. And in fact, I was with a friend's daughter who was like 22. and she didn't know who Sadie Smith was. I was like, girl, you have to, this is a part of your culture now. Like, you need to, this is a book in the same way that I read what I went past through when I read the color purple or something, you know? It's like, you're living in Wilson and you read this book, even this time. Actually, I'm going to read it again because it's quite a while since I've read it.

And also the writing and the way that she talks about the experience of people who have come to this country and started new lives and families and whether it's first or second generation or, you know, it's the way she incorporates and talks about the understanding the way she brings you into, embracing the life of like kind of becoming. British, but also what you have with you from where you come from. Yeah, it's deep. Yeah. Looking back, I mean, NW on beauty, swing time, all these novels, I can very much relate to you. You said in your notes that you feel like Zadie is one of us. I feel like those books for the first time I felt represented on the page of a novel, not just physically, but also like you said that that sort of second generation immigrant Britanness, the understanding of it, the feelings that come with it, someone was articulating it, something that I didn't necessarily have the words to say

she was saying it, and I was really grateful for that. How important is representation in books for you? And did you feel represented when you were much younger reading? I mean, I think that's why the books that I have now listed, or listed or brought up several times, like the color purple, or those books, I mean, I read them when I was like 17, 18 years old. And like me and Andy ate those books. You know, in the same way that we found so much of ourselves through music, because of a lack of representation outside and the rest of the world, those books were like our lifesavers, actually. And I think we had a pretty strong sense of who we were and that it was important to be who we were.

But they were like, we used to sit and say, God, you know, we want to be like those women. And now we say, God, we are like those women in those books. But, yeah, so they were like very important. And like a book like Cyprus, Sassafras and Indigo, which is written by Interestown. Sake shang-ge, that was a very kind of contemporary book in its time in the same way that white teeth is where, you know, it's very relatable to who we are and how it is being in this country, especially if you come from a background. I hate to word immigrants, you know, that's sort of a shit thing, like a non-British background.

I think as well, a lot of the books that, I felt we had and maybe felt the same, whether it was Maya Angelou or Tony Morrison, you know, a lot of them were describing the American experience. So as soon as we had one describing the British experience, it really was. Yeah. There was solace there to be found. Yeah. Powerful.

Really powerful. And Zadale is very much a London storyteller. You moved to London at the age of 15. What was it like starring out as a young, up-and-coming female artist? How did you advocate for yourself? How did you find yourself? I think, you know, I was very much part of a kind of a time where it wasn't so much about me being a female artist trying to make it. We were just out there doing it more than, because I feel, well, I feel like now I look around and there's obviously a lot of people doing really great things.

but it's I feel like there's more focus on this is who you are this is how it's going to be was we were just out out there making music

listening to music dancing I'm not saying that it was better I'm just saying it's how we did things so I could in a way

I feel really blessed because I had really I was part of a really great group of people and it kind of led me from what took me from one place to another in a way.

And I think that I felt it kind of, I wouldn't say that I wasn't scared, but I also had a kind of fearlessness. And it wasn't really about making money or finding success. It was really more about doing the things that we wanted to do. And I was in bands and making music and, yeah, bringing up kids.

I mean, also at the same time. So it was very mad. I'd see pitches of myself and like how young I was. And I'm like, oh my God, I had no idea really in the time, you know. And I think because I came from a more left field place, when I did go into the kind of music, the more, you know, record companies and the more kind of mainstream area, I had a kind of kickback to that thing.

I don't think I really believed it fully. And also we were all like kind of not into selling out. So it became a protective vet. You know, I say to my daughters all the time, like just, you know, my dad used to say, don't let them change you. You know, like you have to just holding on to that thing that makes, you want to do more. Remember why you love it?

Yeah. Nena, it's time to talk about your fifth and final book, Shabby book, which is There Are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak. This is the story of one lost poem, two great rivers and three remarkable lives are like how you're smiling at the mention of the book spanning centuries and continents. In Victorian London, an extraordinary child is born at the edge of the dirt Black Thames. In 2014, Turkey, a young Yazidi girl living by the river Tegreus wades to be baptized.

And in 2018, London, a broken-hearted hydrologist moves to a houseboat on the Thames to escape the wreckage of her marriage. They're all connected by a single drop of water and a long-forgotten poem, The Epic of Gilgamesh. In this mesmerizing story about love, loss, memory, and the enduring power of the human experience. Why did you pick this book? It was the first book and kind of the only book I read since I did that thing. Because, yeah, my brain was so scrambled. So I read it as an audio book. And yeah, it just for a start, I think I was just rolled over by how bad. bold she was to take is was to take on this mammoth task.

She's a stunning right of telling this story that's like spans through centuries and and I fell in love because that raindrop came into the tale really early on and I just thought that was so magnificent. I just loved the idea of the the continuing water that went from one time to another. And I feel like it's a bold but also very important story environmentally. And also I felt that it gave me a much deeper understanding of that part of the world and the kind of history and the effect of colonialism and all the thread that ties between. of that story through to today, the boy, the Victorian boy.

It's a fantastic book, and it took me a while to get through it, and I feel like it helped my brain heal because it made me listen to it rather than my own fragmented noise inside of my brain. And it's an epic book. It really is. It's epic. She's such an unbelievable writer. Sometimes, I mean, it's so interesting that you felt like you could read this after having written your book and nothing else.

This is the one. What's your mind doing when you've just sat down, you've written your life story and you're in that mode? And then you read someone else's work. How does it affect you? Does it inspire you? it make you want to write more? Does it make you want to write fiction or what happens? Oh, I don't know if I could. I mean, I would love to think that I can write fiction. I wish that I thought that I could. I don't know, but I find it really inspiring. I find worries

really inspiring. I find stories really inspiring. And the, I often think of the person, you know, being there with the story and the fast, I'm fascinated with it, you can weave the tail together and just keep going with it. You know, like for me, I'm just like drawing from my own craft. But, you know, but that, that to me is incredible. And I, and I loved, like, in that book, how she talks about really important things, but, you know, you never, she never lost me, you know, the details and the, you know, the environmental, for instance, points or the historical points that she's making or when she's talking about, you know, wars and all sorts of things. I felt so, yeah, she never lost me.

There's a magic isn't there to storytelling and staying and keeping it alive. That fascinates me. It's so relevant to the time that we're in now. You mentioned environmentally the way she weeds across generations, continents, history. And there's a quote that I love, Zalika notes that women are expected to be like rivers, readjusting, shape-shifting. We keep coming back to the dynamism, to the evolution that we're all undergoing within ourselves and we are as a community, it's a village. how does it feel when you think of yourself as someone like a river who readjusts, who shapeshifts? Is that something you've done over the course of your life?

I mean, I feel like I will continue to do that until the day I drop. I mean, I'm like, I feel like we're the same and then still different every day, you know. I wake up, I don't feel like I did yesterday, today. but I feel like I love getting older. I feel a kind of ease as a woman and a kind of honor. Maybe what I'm trying to say and I'm kind of losing my words a bit, but I think that I feel more at one with the process of whatever it is to be. who I am as I am going through my life.

And that's, yeah, it's quite deep. What a privilege it is to be here. What a privilege it is to have age, to get to be older. What a beautiful thing. I mean, I feel like why would we, I mean, life is hard, right? It's not an easy thing, but the investment of a life and the things that we go through as people, as women, as humans, to then not be able to actually kind of honor it is, you know, and I, yeah,

I feel like I just turned 61 yesterday and I feel like I can be slightly cocky about that. Do you don't know me? I can. As you should. I'm still learning. I have so much to learn, but I also like, don't give me any shit because I'm not. As you look back over the river of your life and your career, is there a specific moment or something that you look back on with particular pride?

Yeah, I mean, I've delimid three girls into this world. I think I take some pride at that. Then I have one final question to ask you. It's if you had to choose one book from your list of five. And they're amazing, by the way, yeah. Yeah, sorry. And I'm not asking you to choose a favorite. child's but it's not dissimilar a favorite book from the five that you brought today which

would it be in why oh I think beloved I think beloved because of how it resonated and where it took me and how like some of the books that we've talked about today I was quite nervous coming in because I was like some of them I hadn't read for ages and if you want me to like talk about what actually happens I can't remember the details whilst the love had scraped and scratched at some bits in me that will never like recover and simultaneously they healed something so and i just want to say huge congratulations on your memoir a huge thank you from all of us at the women's prize for joining us this evening and a huge thank you to our audience as well it's been here a beautiful thing in the rooms

No, to chair, everyone. Thank you. I'm Vic Hope, and you've been listening to the Women's Price for Fiction Bootschelphie podcast, brought to you by Baileys 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.