How To Fail With Elizabeth Day - S8, Ep8 How to Fail: Bernardine Evaristo

Episode Date: July 22, 2020

It is the SEASON FINALE, BABY! I know, I know - it goes so quickly doesn't it? But here we are, two months after we started season eight, with a truly phenomenal guest. Bernardine Evaristo was the first black woman to win the Booker Prize, with her stunning novel, Girl Woman Other. She joins me to talk about her failure to be an actor, her failure to drive from London to Australia (hey, it happens to the best of us) and...brilliantly...her failure to be a lesbian. Along the way, we talk about writing, motivation, race, coercive control, age, gender and the courage she found to create her own work when none was offered to her. Bernardine is the embodiment of that overused term - an inspiration - and a truly jouyous interviewee. Thank you for listening!*If you've enjoyed this season of How To Fail, you might like to join me for a livestream event I'm doing on 2nd October to mark the launch of my new book Failosophy: A Handbook For When Things Go Wrong You can book here*Girl Woman Other by Bernardine Evaristo is available to buy here*How To Fail With Elizabeth Day is hosted by Elizabeth Day, produced by Naomi Mantin and Chris Sharp. We love hearing from you! To contact us, email [e-mail]* Social Media:Elizabeth Day @elizabdayBernardine Evaristo @bernardineevaristowriterHow To Fail @howtofailpod      Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by card, other conditions apply. Just a note before we start, this season of How to Fail with Elizabeth Day was recorded remotely under lockdown. This episode of How to Fail with Elizabeth Day is sponsored by Aurelia Probiotic Skin Care, which provides intelligent skincare with integrity. Their probiotic concentrate is a potent probiotic skincare treatment designed to support the skin's natural defenses and to boost your skin's natural production of collagen and hyaluronic acid, all the good stuff. There are literally hundreds of

five-star reviews online that show this product is effective for any skin concern, from dullness or aging to rosacea and even acne. It's super easy to incorporate into your regime. You can mix it with your favorite moisturizer or serum or use it alone for a stronger treatment. I personally love starting with the CBD super serum which is super lightweight and makes my skin feel glorious. You can now shop the entire Aurelia range with an exclusive 20% off excluding gift sets with the code howtofail20 on www.aureliaskincare.com that's Aurelia spelt A-U-R-E-L-I-A, skincare.com. Thank you very much to Aurelia. Hello and welcome to How to Fail with Elizabeth Day, the podcast that celebrates the things that

haven't gone right. This is a podcast about learning from our mistakes and understanding that why we fail ultimately makes us stronger, because learning how to fail in life actually means learning how to succeed better. I'm your host, author and journalist Elizabeth Day, and every week I'll be asking a new interviewee what they've learned from failure. The author Bernadine Evaristo won the Booker Prize in 2019 for her novel Girl, Woman, Other. In many ways, her recognition was overdue. She was 60, had written eight previous works, and had spent a 40-year career in the arts. She was the first Black woman to win the prize, which she shared with Margaret Atwood, and the achievement was all the more notable,

because Girl, Woman, Other is a polyphonic novel about 12 primarily Black British women, written in an experimental mixture of poetry and prose that Evaristo calls fusion fiction. It was also one of Barack Obama's favourite books of 2019. At the time Evaristo wrote the centralising of primarily black British women in my novel is a positive counterpoint to our invisibility. I am saying that we are here and we are as human and heterogeneous as everyone else and the stories of our lives are fascinating. Her own life has definitely lived up to that statement. She was born the fourth of eight children in Woolwich, South East London, to an English mother and a Nigerian father. Her father was a welder and local labour counsellor, her mother was a schoolteacher. As a child, Evaristo

said in a recent interview, books were my comfort, my education, my conduit to the rest of the world. At first, her love of storytelling showed itself in a love of acting. In the 1980s, she co-founded Theatre of Black Women, the first theatre company in Britain of its kind, which offered a necessary alternative to the dearth of interesting parts for black actresses. She has been an activist and advocate all her life, working tirelessly for the inclusion of artists and writers of colour. Evaristo's work spans novels, poetry, essays, verse fiction and drama, and she is Professor of Creative Writing at Brunel University London. Of Girl, Woman, Other, she comments,

I'm not really pursuing a thesis with this book, other than the infinite possibility of who we are. Bernadine, welcome to How to Fail. Well, it's great to be on the podcast. Thank you for inviting me. I'm very excited to have you. And I love that quote about the infinite possibility of who we are. And I wonder how much you feel it in your own life. Do you believe that it's never too late to change your life? Oh, God, yes. Absolutely. absolutely you know I think we're living in

a culture where if you're not achieving or you're not living a certain kind of life by the time you're 30 or 40 then it's over for you and I think that's nonsense because actually as human beings we're constantly evolving and also changing some of us. I think if we're open to the infinite possibilities of who we are, then we are also open to changing. Life is very exciting and it's an adventure. So I definitely feel that we shouldn't be bound by age in terms of all the possibilities of who we might be. And I think that as women, we have been sold this lie that age diminishes our power rather than increasing it. What has the experience of age been like for you? Well, you know, I try to be really positive about getting older, because our society tells us

otherwise, you know, we're supposed to be completely marginalised and uninteresting and physically incapable, mentally deteriorating as we get older. And that's a load of nonsense. But my personal experience is, of course, when you're young, you just take it for granted. You know, absolutely. In every way possible, you take your youth for granted, as I did. And then as I got older, I started to register my age more. And I remember when I was 40, which actually was 21 years ago now. And a friend gave me a birthday card that was made of porcelain, which had 40 on it. And I'm like, why would you give this to me? Do you think I want this on my shelf to remind me of how old I am? And so, you know, I have also been brainwashed by our society into believing

that aging is a negative thing. But as I got older, you know, and I remember when I was 40 and then I remember when I was 46 and I was thinking, oh, my God, I'm going to be 50 soon. And then when I was 50, I was like, oh, my God, I'm going to be 60. And of course, because of the way we have been brainwashed in society, thinking of those ages, thinking of becoming those ages is a really scary thing. Because of course, we're not supposed to celebrate it at all. But then in my 50s, I started to change my attitude. And I had to consciously, and I still have to consciously change my attitude to aging. Because it's inevitable. I'm never going to

be the sort of younger ages again. And right now, especially winning the book, I feel that I have a duty to just be positive about being the age that I am so that younger people coming up don't see it as something to be afraid of. So these are some of the thoughts I have around aging but I still have to struggle with it and I do dye my hair I'm never going gray so we're in an ageist society and I just don't think I could deal with myself as a gray-haired person visually it would be such a change for me but also people will then think of me as being older the other thing to say just sorry I'm not to just finish off, is that women of color don't show our age in the same way. So I have always been the age that I am, but people have always thought I'm younger, right?

And that's another reason why I need to say, well, I am 60. Actually, I'm 61 now. So it's about making a positive statement about being the age that I am. Otherwise, people think I'm 61 now. So it's about making a positive statement about being the age that I am. Otherwise, people think I'm younger. But at the same time, I'm not going great. And that could appear contradictory, but I'm not doing it. Well, as all of your work says, you are allowed to be multifaceted, integrated and whole. So you're allowed to have that contradiction. But Girl, Woman, Other is such a wonderful novel in so many ways and i just want to pay tribute to you for that it's just an astonishing book and if anyone hasn't read it they must rush out to do so now but along with a variety of

cultural backgrounds sexualities classes and occupations you also have a big age range you write characters from the age of 19 to 93 and I wonder like which age did you find easiest to write or most informative to write and did you find it very easy to embody a 19 year old as well as a 93 year old interesting question nobody's asked me that this is great oh good tick yeah tick I found it extremely perhaps worryingly easy to occupy the mind of a 19 year old I think you know some people say well I'm still a teenager and a part of me still feels like a teenager although part of me feels very wise and mature so I do love I love the energy of young women I love the fact that they don't carry so much baggage

because they are young and they're coming into themselves. So I found it a real joy to write Yaz, who's 19 and is a woke, young, black British woman who comes from a middle-class background, doesn't really understand that she's actually privileged in many ways. And then all those ages in between. And I didn't have a problem with the ages, actually, even Hattie. Hattie is 93, and she's a farmer living in the north of England, and I did not find it a challenge

to write her age. It was quite a joyful experience writing her age, because I knew that I was writing against all the assumptions that people might have about older people, especially a black woman of that age, living in that part of the country who's a farmer so it was really joyful to create the kind of 93 year old I wanted to create as opposed to the kinds of images we might get of people at 93. Is it true that you visualized winning the booker 20 years ago? Yeah it's true it's true I admit. I admit it. Tell me that story. I love it. Yes, creative visualization. I'm a big believer in it. And I used to do these courses in the 1990s. I did lots of courses about how to set goals, unrealistic goals, because they're the only ones worth setting, and how to work towards achieving them. I learned how to do creative visualization, how to write affirmations,

and how to just take steps towards achieving my goals. And winning the book has seemed to be the obvious thing to strive for, because that is the biggest prize for the novel in this country. And I knew it would be a career changer for me, even back then, when I was really, I wasn't marginalized, I was just almost invisible to be honest so I used to write these affirmations about winning the booker and then at some point after so many years I stopped doing it and it wasn't that I gave up but I just stopped I stopped writing as many affirmations as I did because it was a really important part of my life for many many years and it really did make me the was a really important part of my life for many, many years.

And it really did make me the kind of person I am today. I strongly believe that because actually, when you're writing affirmations and doing creative visualizations, you're actually training yourself to be a really positive person who is really self motivated to achieve what one wants to achieve. So at some point, I stopped writing the booker affirmations, but I'd done them. This may sound strange to people, but I had somehow laid the groundwork for it. Then when I did win it, I was like, yes, I set that in motion all those years ago. That's amazing. So what I find interesting is that you wrote an affirmation, but there was a sort of practical element to it where you were working towards it as well. So it wasn't just writing, I'm going to win the book. No, no, no. So it's then writing my books and then writing my books, but not writing my books to win the booker,

because one kind of predict who wins the booker anyway. So what I want to make really clear to people is that it wasn't that I was writing the kind of book that might win the booker which was definitely not the book that won the book would go with another for a start until it won it it was not the kind of book to win the booker but it was just writing the best books that I could write and just believing that it may be possible for me one day to win the booker but not really knowing how that would happen. So there is this gap between what you want, what you kind of try to create in your life through affirmations, and the end result. It's like Barack Obama. I'm a huge fan of Barack Obama. And literally, I did not believe he was going to become president of America until he became president of America. He believed it. He would not have put himself up for it.

I don't actually know when Barack Obama wanted to become president. He might have written about it. I can't remember. But I bet that was set in motion many years before he became the candidate for the Democratic Party. And you talk there about how it's not that you went out and you tried to write a novel that would win the Booker.

What would Girl, Woman, Other have been like had you tried to write it with that express intention? That's another really good question. Nobody's asked me that. I think it would have been a book about white men. Oh, you mean a state of the nation book maybe yes and very very beautiful sentences perfectly constructed sentences and very traditional if it was a book about black life then i imagine it would be a book where we were positioned as tragic victims probably slavery i would have written a book with a lot of tropes around slavery in it that would pull at people's heartstrings. It would be a book that people

would describe as heartbreaking because that's sometimes the label that's put on black books. It's almost like there's this sense in which we are celebrated when we're presented as victims. And so I think it would have been a really tragic slavery book. You did, of course, write a book about slavery called Blonde Roots where you inverted what had actually happened. Just tell us a bit about the plot of Blonde Roots. Yes so that was my slavery book as such but it was a world where I created a world where Africans enslaved Europeans and it was satirical so it it's actually a sort of comedy, although there's also obviously a lot of tragedy in it, but actually the sort of overriding sensibility of the novel is satire

about a world where a woman called Doris is taken as a slave to the new world by Africans. And it's about her life and her trying to escape slavery. And I subvert everything you can imagine around slavery, but also around race. So through looking at her life, and because I've created this alternate universe where anything is possible, it's not historically set in a particular time. It's set in the past, but it also feels very contemporary. I also reflect on the legacy of slavery, which is racism as we know it today. So it's doing lots and lots of different things. It's a brilliant book. And it's really before its time in so many ways, which is in itself quite a depressing statement. But it reminds me of The

Power, the Naomi Alderman book where she inverts historical sexism in the same way. But you wrote Blonde Roots in 2008 so you know if that book was coming out today I think it would get a lot of attention yeah final question before I move on to your failures it is impossible to talk to you without acknowledging the seismic change that is going on outside our windows so we're recording this in lockdown at a time when the unlawful killing of George Floyd in America has triggered anti-racist protests around the world. And really, Bernadine, I just wanted to know what you made of that and whether you've been able to write in the midst of it. I'm not working on a novel, which has been great. I just have not got the

time to work on a novel at the moment. So I've been working on small commissions that don't demand a lot of attention. I wrote something for Vogue, actually, it was published at the weekend, which was looking at Black Lives Matter in terms of literature in the publishing industry, and looking at the ways in which we writers humanize our characters, and the effect that can have on readers when they make assumptions and their heads are full of stereotypes of people they consider to be the other so that was one direct thing that I wrote as a result of it in a more general way it's I mean it's in a horrendous time you know for African Americans for Black Brits for many people around the world because of all the reasons why Black Lives Matter exists but also because of the disproportionate number of Black people, especially Black men. And in

America, people of color generally, and also people of color here who are dying from COVID. So the whole I can't breathe phrase has multiple resonances right now. The thing we will take out of this, and that's happening at the moment that hasn't happened before, is that Black Lives Matter, the spread of it is phenomenal. All kinds of people have taken on board, including a lot of white people. It feels like the civil rights movement, the scale of the protests in America, the scale of the protests here, the protests in America, the scale of the protests here, and completely integrated people protesting is phenomenal. And the way in which the media is responding to it and the way in which institutions are responding to it. What's going to happen now is that a lot of self-interrogation

has to take place, let's say in this country, in terms of the institutions addressing institutional racism. They need to do that now. And I think this Black Lives Matter movement has been a trigger for it. And because it's being embraced throughout every aspect of our society, I am more hopeful that we will see some changes as a result of it. And one of the things that I think is incredible is that people are curating black reading lists. And those black reading lists are not just books by African Americans. A lot of those books are by black and Asian British writers writing from all kinds of perspectives about being black and being in this country or being people of colour in this

country. And I think if people read those books, then they are going to be transformed by the end of it. And these are white people who are curating this reading list and it's just so prevalent on social media. And that's a very interesting phenomenon. Do you think that publishing is institutionally racist? Do you think that publishing is institutionally racist? I think if we look at who gets published and who doesn't get published, then we have to say yes. It's always been like that. Some publishers are doing better than others. Obviously, there are publishers that are black-led.

There aren't many of them. Dialogue Books is run by Charmaine Lovegrove. Bibi Bakari Youssef runs Cassava Republic. There are other publishers. And then you have the multinational companies. My publisher is Penguin. And I have to say Penguin is doing much better than a lot of the other big publishers. If you look at a lot of the books by writers of color in this country that have been published in the last few years, a lot of them come out of the Penguin stable. And that's incredible. But then if you look at some of the other publishers, they can barely publish writers of colour. Now I'm going to name and shame here,

Faber Poetry Publishing has been in existence over 90 years, right? They have never published the black women. They have only published one woman of color mary jean chan who was published last year and they have published four male writers of color two black men neither of them are british and if you put that into context there are quite a few writers of color black women black men who have been published in poetry presses in this country in the last few years who are literally walking off with the top awards right so they they are so brilliant they are just walking off with all the kinds of laurels that are out there so it's not as if we're not good enough but Faber just does not publish us so is that institutional racism? You tell me. Wow, that's shocking.

It's a horrible question, yeah. Yeah. Well, Raymond Antrobus, who is an incredible poet, who I know that you've been a mentor for, it would be a prime example. Yes, brilliant poet, you know. And actually, the small poetry presses are the ones who are publishing most of the poets of colour, and they're doing phenomenally well. Ray Antrobus, I think he won like four awards for his collection last year. So we'll get on to your failures now and you've sent them in a

certain order which I'm going to slightly mix up so I hope that's okay but I would love to talk to you first of all about your failure to be an actor. So tell me, first of all, what led you into acting? Yes. So I went to a youth theatre at the age of 12, Greenwich Young People's Theatre, as it was then called. It's now called Tram Shed. And I absolutely loved it. It was very close to where I lived in Woolwich. And my parents allowed me to go there because my parents are very strict. They didn't really allow us to play out or anything, but they liked the youth theatre. They thought it was a safe space for me, and it was. And I spent the whole of my childhood there, really, from the age of 12 to around 16, 17. I went every Friday.

I loved the community that was there, which was a very welcoming, egalitarian community of children and people who were running the youth theatre. I felt very welcome there. I grew up in a very white area. There weren't many people of colour around me. And certainly in my secondary school, I was the only black woman for most of my time there. And I went to the youth theatre. And even though I was still the only black woman for most of my time there, I just felt incredibly happy and welcome there. And it was wonderful wonderful and I loved the

creativity of it I loved acting and using my imagination and creating plays with the other kids that was the beginning of me becoming an actor it was also I felt valued I think that was it I felt valued as a young person and I think creative spaces for young children should be an essential part of every society because often it's where we discover ourselves and where we find a home. And I had a home at the youth theatre. And then I went to drama school, Rose Bruford College of Speech and Drama. I also did plays at school. We had a very good drama teacher for a while there. So I went to a drama school and trained to be an actor and then left and became an actor around my own theatre company and the course that I was on at Rose Bruford College of Speech and Drama which is now

called the Rose Bruford College of Theatre and Performance was what was called a community theatre arts course and it was set up to train actors to create their own theatre which is what I then did for several years. And the drama club that you mentioned there I talked in the introduction about how you're one of eight children and I wonder how much of it was also about you finding your own voice within your family because was it quite difficult to make yourself heard with that many children? Yes what's happened with my family was that we had four boys, four girls, and everybody paired off according to gender and age. But I didn't get on with my younger sister, who was the closest in age to me. We shared a bedroom for about 15 years.

We didn't talk to each other. And so people have this myth that you know there is a myth about happy families large families that you know you're oh it's wonderful you've got all these children to share everything where it is so fantastic and just you're having parties all the time well that's not true it's certainly not true in my family I think when you have so many in a family you just kind of balkanize in a sense and that's what what happened. And I was a fourth child, you know, like Madonna. Madonna was the fourth child of eight children. I always think of that, you know. That's a great fact. Isn't it? Yeah. I also share a birthday with Kylie Minogue, I hope you know.

Different age, but same birthday. Anyway, I think perhaps there was something like that going on. I mean, of course, I wasn't aware of it at the time. But they do say that middle children get overlooked, let alone middle children in such a large family. And my mother was a schoolteacher. She went back to work when the youngest was of school age. So she was very busy. You know, she was a schoolteacher, which means that she would come home and mark books. know she would spend hours marking her pupils work let alone looking after you know eight children so there is possibly some truth in that observation I think. And you say that it was a predominantly white area was the whiteness talked about at home? I don't think so when we were very young, but my father was very political. He was a socialist, Labour councillor, as you said, and he went on demonstrations. He took us

on demonstrations, but that wouldn't have been until I was about, probably about 16. I think it was probably felt rather than discussed in the family. I didn't grow up with a strong black consciousness, for example. I just grew up as somebody who was half-caste. That was the term that we used then. It wasn't a disparaging term. It wasn't considered that. And are your parents still alive? My mother is. My father died 20 years ago. Okay, I'm sorry. Your mother must be enormously proud of her Booker Prize winning daughter, I'm imagining. I think she is. She's 86. When she's asked, she always says, I'm proud of all my children, as she should, you know. But I think winning the book is such a big thing. She was watching it on telly and she just couldn't believe it, really. You know, one of her children walking off with

that prize. Wow. Anyway, so you were an actor, but you you failed in what way did you fail yes well I really liked having to think about my failures because essentially I don't actually believe in the idea of failure I think everything is a step towards the next thing that you're doing excellent that's very on brand for this podcast oh good good yes yeah because that's what I wanted to do from the age I did it from the age of 12 and from the age of 14 I played Captain Cat in school play and I must have done a good performance playing this old Welsh fisherman because I got great feedback and I that was at the point at which I decided that's

it I'm going to be an actor I had all this kind of approval from people and so that was what I wanted to do then I went to drama school and then I formed my own theatre company and it was I had no doubts that my vocation was to be an actor for the rest of my life and the failure if we're going to call it that is that by the time I got to 26 I stopped acting and I didn't know at that stage that I was going to stop acting forever. But that was the last time that I acted. So I was running the Theatre of Black Women. And, you know, we were having trouble getting good administrators to run the company. And I decided then that I needed to do it. So I'd begun it, the company with Patricia St-Hilaire and Paulette Randall. Paulette's still a theatre and television director. Patricia left

theatre a long time ago. And we ran the company together. And then Paulette went off and became a director. And I, Patricia and I ran the company. And then we were able to bring in other people to run the company because we had enough funding. And then that didn't really work out. And then I went back to running the company with Patricia initially. And I just stopped acting. running the company with Patricia initially and I just stopped acting and I was actually I remember feeling quite relieved actually because I had lost the love of performing I became very self-conscious so before I went to drama school as all young people are unless they're formally trained I was very intuitive in my performance drama school teaches you to be really self-conscious, obviously. So you have to really analyse and they have to break you down so that you really

understand who you are and ways in which you can become someone else in performance. And I think through that process, I lost my sort of intuitive feel for performing I'm not blaming the drama school because this is how drama schools run right you just got to go through it and come out the other side and I wasn't kind of put off to the extent that I didn't act because I did you know I did several plays but I realized that actually I didn't enjoy it I didn't enjoy being out there in front of people I felt too self-conscious whereas I've known other people who are actors who are actors who have said to me that when they're doing plays and it's their time to come on stage they can't wait to do it and

literally they they want to jump onto stage prematurely elbow the other actors out of the way so they can do their thing and I'm like yeah that's a real actor that's somebody who's so hungry for it and I wasn't hungry for it and not comfortable doing it so when I stopped I didn't miss it so I didn't go back to it what kind of roles were you being offered yeah so that's the other thing in the early 1980s there simply weren't enough parts for black women. And the parts that were available were not the kind of parts I was interested in playing, because I had been politicised at drama school. I was taught by

strong, powerful, actually powerful theatre makers who are predominantly women, who are coming out of the profession, and who are running theatre companies, women's theatre companies, political alternative theatre companies, and were coming in to train us. So I was a very political animal by the time I left drama school, strong black feminist, in fact. And so what parts was I going to play? I was not going to be compromising my politics in order to play, you know, whether it was a prostitute or a nurse, which was a stereotype, or a cleaner, which I would have seen then as being demeaning. So there were very few opportunities for us, which is why we formed the theatre company.

The parts I was playing were parts that I wrote myself, because I wrote some of the plays and then co-wrote some of the theatre and then eventually took part in a play by Jackie Kay, which I was part of the development of, but I didn't actually write the script. So I was not going into productions where I was playing parts that I had not been part of the conception of, except for one play I did with Gay Sweatshop. I was terrible in it, actually. I was really terrible in it. That was the only one. So if our society had been different in the early 80s when I emerged from drama school, and there was a host of amazing plays for actors, Black British women actors to perform,

then I might still be acting. Because I would then be performing in plays that I had not been part of. I would then be working with theatre companies that were more professional than my theatre company because we were new. We were just young women trying to do our best. I would have worked with very experienced theatre directors. I would have been part of the whole kind of structure of theatre that was rooted in centuries of British performance but that wasn't the case. I think that is such a powerful point and it reminds me of something that I read last week a tweet by the author Sarah Collins who was talking about how phenomenal black writers like James Baldwin were constantly being asked to explain race to others. And imagine if that

creative space had been freed up, imagine what kind of work they could have done, which I hadn't ever thought about before. And it sounds to me as if you did not come face to face with yourself in the culture that you were imbibing at that time, even though you were imbibing so much culture. That's right. Sort of those great female roles, they were not going to black women. I mean, Josette Simon was a sort of RSC National Theatre actress who was cast, for example, as Cleopatra. And there were rare exceptions. But generally speaking, those roles were not available to us.

I mean, it's hard to think now about how society was so limited back then when you have the BBC producing so many cross-racial casting programmes. That was not the norm then. People did not accept it. You know, there was an all-black production of Measure for Measure, I think it was, that I saw in the 80s,

which actually was staged at the National. There was a lot of criticism of it because it was like, how dare you just cast black people in this production? But they were making a statement, I guess. Now you get black actors and Asian actors playing the range of roles available in Shakespeare and elsewhere. And also with Shakespeare, you get women.

You get Glenda Jackson playing King Lear a few years ago, which would never have happened then. But back to Sarah Collins' point, and I know Sarah and she's amazing. I don't necessarily see the fact that they were race advocates as a failing or not as a failing, as a limitation in terms of their creative output and their intellectual thinking, because look at the work that they produced. Toni Morrison couldn't have done any more as a novelist in terms of the brilliance of her work and she herself would always say well I am an African-American writer that is the perspective from which I write. She didn't see it as something that was limiting for her. Other people might have seen it as limiting but she saw it as no less limiting than white writers writing out of white experiences.

And likewise with James Baldwin. James Baldwin made his name as a writer, but also as somebody who articulated the predicament of the black race or race as such as we know it. So both of them actually were just embedded in the culture around them and were speaking to and from it in the same way that all writers are doing that. Whether or not they are aware of it or not, whether or not they're consciously talking about white experience, probably they're not. So I think it was the making of them, in a sense. So I think it was the making of them, in a sense. So you mentioned there that you don't really believe in failure, which I completely agree with,

because I believe that failure leads you ultimately to where you're meant to be. So where did your failure as an actor lead you? What was it a stepping stone towards? Oh, the other thing to say about my acting in terms of failure was that I don't think I was very good. I don't believe that. I bet you were brilliant. Well, who knows? Who knows? It was a long time ago and there is no video evidence of it. But I felt that I was limited because I could do strong and feisty and kind of chipper, but I don't think I had the subtlety or the depth that one really needs to be a great actor.

So I say that I wasn't a very good actor. And for most of my life, I have felt that. And to be honest, it's only kind of recently that I realized that I didn't do it for long enough. I didn't actually gain the experience to make me a better actor. So what kind of actor would I have become if I was still doing it today? And of course, we've watched actors because actors are very public figures.

I have watched actors who I don't think were very good when they were starting out, who I think have become great actors. So sometimes it's how long do you stay in the game and learn the skills that you need to learn until suddenly you're able to achieve some kind of greatness. So for me, acting, I was writing and acting at the same time. And that led to me becoming a writer.

It's an interesting question that like knowing when to quit. Do you think you're good at knowing when to quit? I think other people in my position would have quit writing a long time ago yeah yeah if it's about reputation and economics then I think a lot of people would have quit a long time ago there are people who go into writing or are thinking of going into writing who are then shocked when they realise they're not earning much money

or shocked that they're the chances that they won't earn much money and they then deviate and detour and go off and do something else. Whereas I was so passionate about writing, I never stopped. But if you looked at the bare facts of my career, then there would have been an argument for me stopping.

I was very lucky in that I've been with the same publishing house for 20 years. So I always had a home. And actually, most of my reviews were great. So I always had that support. But I wasn't selling many copies of my books at all. And for a lot of people, that's the bottom line. But for you, there was an instinct and a passion that meant that you couldn't not write. Is that? Yes. Yeah, absolutely.

It was the only thing I wanted to do. So when I left theatre behind, so I ran the company for a bit and then we disbanded the company. I went off travelling, came back to the UK and then I was like, what am I going to do? And I didn't know what the opportunities were for me, really, because I didn't that well there wasn't really anything I wanted to do other than write so I thought I'm going to invest in my writing and see where it takes me and this was in right about 1991. So you you mentioned there a stint of travel and your second failure is your failure to drive from London to Australia in the late 80s.

Now, this is a story that I definitely want to hear. Yes, yes. It was such an adventure. Don't forget, young people, this was before the internet as such. You know, okay, the internet was there, but nobody had it. And it was before mobile phones. So when you went off somewhere, you could not keep in touch with people, right? And you could not use some kind of city mapper or anything, Google Maps or anything.

That's also why it was such an adventure because we just took off. And as people did then, I had a friend who decided to drive to Australia. Crazy, I know. Why? Just because it was there? Oh, yeah. Because the friend had a son in Australia. So the idea was, well, let's drive to Australia.

And there used to be a bus that would take people from London through to India via the Middle East and via Iran and then down through to India. I think it's called the Magic Bus. That then made it possible for us. And then we were looking at the map of India, as you do on the map, and we thought, wow, not that far to Australia. Put the car on ferries.

Let's see how far we get. So what we did was we traveled. And this friend had done a lot of traveling across Europe by car. And I had done some traveling with her across Europe by car, but only going as far as Greece. So it wasn't as if we were completely inexperienced. The car was a Lada Niva. Yeah.

Amazing. Always breaking down. Not like a Jeep, but actually wasn't a Jeep. So we took off. We spent time in Spain and then we spent time in Greece, which was, as I said, as far as we'd gone before. And then we eventually drove from Turkey through Iraq and down to Kuwait. So yes, and this was just before the Iraqi invasion

of Kuwait. So what we did was we went to Ankara, and we went the I think it was the must have been the Iraqi embassy and said we want a visa to drive through Iraq through to Kuwait because we are going for job interviews at the university to become English professors I have to say it was so ridiculous but the person I was with was somebody who could black their way into anything okay I'm much less successful or willing to do that kind of thing but anyway I was along for the ride in a sense so they gave us a visa to drive through Kuwait and I still got that visa in one of my old passports it's beautiful beautiful old visa so at this point then we drove through eastern turkey and then got into iraq drove through iraq and got to the kuwaiti border i mean that was all experience in any case because

i actually wrote about this in my book soul tourist which nobody reads but anyway i kind of use that journey to describe a relationship between a man and a woman as they drive to kuwait and also looking at ghosts of colour of history who the man encounters along the way. So this is something that it was inspired by this trip, but I haven't otherwise, I don't think, written about it. But once we got to eastern Turkey, it was like just us on the road. It was like driving through a moonscape, because there was just nobody driving, hardly, and certainly no foreign cars. What we did encounter were oil tankers, hundreds, hundreds, hundreds, hundreds of oil tankers going backwards and forwards from Iraq. And a lot of oil tankers that had an accident overturned,

burned out on the side of the road. So it was quite surreal. And then when we got to Iraq, it took ages to get through the border because there were just like hundreds of oil tankers lined up. And then us, you know, two black women, by the way, with a large number plate. And then we took this route down through Iraq, completely ignorant of the geopolitical situation that we were traveling through and circumnavigating Baghdad. And I remember, I'll never forget, all these young men were kind of like crowding our car and asking me to marry them. What is going on here? And then realizing that actually they wanted to leave. They saw me as their way to leave Iraq. and then driving down to the border with Kuwait

and taking a wrong turning to Basra and then seeing all these kind of army vehicles that bloody hell was it scary yes that was scary they were abandoned army vehicles so they had been in whatever skirmish had been going on with Iran previously, and they were abandoned. But that was incredibly scary. Driving down through Iraq wasn't particularly scary. There was quite a lot of traffic on the roads. It was just fascinating. And then we get to Kuwait, and then we say to the Kuwaiti border guards, where we're coming to be interviewed for jobs at the university, and they literally turned our car inside out but they let us in eventually and so then we drove through Kuwait in the early hours of the morning to Kuwait city

and I remember seeing camels charging along the desert and thinking oh this is so real so we get to Kuwait city and we go to the university and ask to see speak to somebody in the English department who then directs us to the person who is somebody important at the university and asked to speak to somebody in the English department, who then directs us to the person who is somebody important at the university. What I haven't said so far is that we saw in a newspaper in Turkey that they were looking for English teachers at the university. So we carried that with us, the advert for English teachers at the university. So we get to talk to this person at the university who somehow I don't know if he bought our story or not he might have thought we were two crazy nutters but I remember having that conversation with him and I remember him I don't know how he got into this conversation he was

talking about the royal family and how people should never disrespect the royal family and how they would never disrespect the people who were the leaders of Kuwait, and us saying, oh, no, in the UK, we can disrespect the royal family. So I don't know where this conversation was going with him. In any case, clearly we were not there to be given jobs. We did not have any qualifications in order to do that. But what he did do was put us up at the university for three weeks in the accommodation university and feed us. And we couldn't afford to spend any money in Kuwait anyway because it was incredibly rich and we were doing all of this on a shoestring believe it or not and petrol gets cheaper the

closer you get to the source of it so it was actually very cheap if you sleep in the car and so on you know you can live very cheaply and food is very cheap so we stayed at the university for three weeks and so once we were there, we very quickly discovered that the route from Kuwait to India, which we had been thinking about, had been shut down many years previously because of the Iran-Iraq war.

So we couldn't get to India. So that was the end of the journey, which was probably just as well because what were we going to do in India? How are we going to get to Australia? How were we even going to get back? So they got rid of us, the university. They put up with us for three weeks.

And I think we were being spied on, to be honest. We felt that when we were driving around Kuwait and couldn't afford even an ice cream because it was so expensive that we were being tailed, you know, as I'm sure they were. You know, the country was invaded not long afterwards. They kicked us out and we drove back to Turkey and then camped there for about nine months and we had been in Turkey a long time prior to that so the stops in Turkey and Spain had been very long and then eventually drove back to the UK wow so wait so how long did this whole process take well over a year like oh my gosh oh maybe three weeks in Turkey driving through Kuwait was very quick I think they gave us 24 hours to do it

and then driving back up so and what what did you do for money maybe maybe 18 months we had our savings okay we had our savings and we had a credit card. You know, 30 years ago, that part of the world, incredibly cheap, especially when you don't need accommodation because you're sleeping in the car. And in Turkey, we had what was called a combi camper. Right. Which we left there. So we, you know, sort of got our own accommodation on the trailer.

I'm so admiring and impressed by that you just went and did that it's ridiculous you just you didn't know anything you know today if you were to google can I drive from London to Australia well you soon find out that you can't even you know what's it like driving through Iraq well not advisable youable. But we didn't have any of that. So we were completely ignorant. And like I say, didn't even get the rough guide. Not that it even existed then, probably. The rough guide to the Middle East or the rough guide to Iraq.

So we just blagged our way through. Which part of the world did you feel most welcoming on that trip? We were fine, you know, driving as two black women with a GB number plate across Europe. It was absolutely fine for us. I would say that we spent a lot of time in Turkey and we lived on a campsite in a place called Oludeniz, which is like a beautiful kind of beach down a very, very steep hill. And the campsite was some way off from the beach but it was by a lagoon and it was the most beautiful place and you know we were probably in total there probably about a year and we were very welcome a lot of people came from other european countries to to stay there

but in the winter it was almost empty and we were there on our own and the people running the campsite were just lovely and yeah and we'd there on our own. And the people running the campsite were just lovely. And we'd go into Fethiye, which was the nearest town, and people would be lovely. And have you ever been to Australia? Yes. Okay, by plane. Actually, yes. Well, I mean, I could talk about that failure.

That could be a whole other podcast series, to be honest. But we're coming on to your third failure, which I think is one of the favorite failures I've ever heard which which is as you put it failing at being a lesbian so this is something that I you know I I talk a bit about my lesbian years, especially in the context of Girl, Woman, Other, simply because there are quite a few women on the queer spectrum in the book. And it just felt natural to say, well, I was a lesbian and I was in my 20s. And then I kind of turned in my 30s. By the time I was 30, I turned. So I had a boyfriend.

I had two boyfriends up until the age of about 20 and then I I got into women I thought I was bisexual which is the transition period a lot of people go through and some people stay there they always feel that they're bisexual and some people actually completely turn and I completely turned and I led a life as a lesbian in my 20s actually and had lots of relationships. And I thought this was it forever, which is why I find it so interesting when people are so adamant about their sexuality when they're young. Because I always think, yeah, I was like that once. And I changed and I never saw it coming.

So I was somebody who went clubbing. I used to wear the sort of you know lesbian badges I was on lesbian separatist demonstrations in the 80s before everything became more inclusive and I was part of sort of the lesbian community especially the sort of black lesbian community but I had girlfriends of all races and I had a very enjoyable life actually feeling very incredibly marginalized from society as a whole but I had my community I had my community around me and then I started to find men attractive and it changed in fact I'll tell you what happened I actually think I was quite a political lesbian as opposed to somebody who's always felt that they have been attracted to other women, because I wasn't attracted to other felt that I was a lesbian. And so I had this relationship, which was very hierarchical and quite abusive in terms of the power dynamics.

I remember thinking, well, I thought relationships with women were going to be on a more equal basis. But this woman is behaving worse than the most domineering man. And there was a shift that happened and by the time I left that relationship I was back to finding men attractive and having relationships with men and I've never looked back I haven't had a relationship with a woman for over 30 years so it was a real shift the hierarchical abusive relationship that you described there, you write, if I'm not overreaching, but you write a similar relationship in Girl, Woman, Other. Do I? Yes, you seem like I've picked that up.

Oh. Which is one of the things about the book that I most remember, actually. And how was that to write for you? Oh, fun. Yeah. Revenge. Yeah. to remember actually and how was that to write for you oh fun yeah revenge yeah you know I enjoyed writing that relationship because as a writer I really want to write the kinds of stories that are not out there whatever those stories are and this is something that I hadn't read about before although I'm not saying people haven't written about dysfunctional lesbian relationships. I'm sure they have. But I actually really enjoyed subverting the notion that somehow relationships with women are somehow morally superior and on a more equal basis than relationships with men. That may be the case with a lot of relationships, but there are always exceptions.

And also, we are all human. The kinds of abusive power dynamics that play out in heterosexual relationships also play out in homosexual relationships. And why would we think that they wouldn't? Because as human beings, the sort of dynamics of power are integral to our lives. It's part of who we are.

It's part of how we connect and relate to each other. So I really enjoyed writing about Dominique and Nzinga and how this strong and feisty young black British woman ends up in a relationship with an older woman where she is stripped of her power and can only get it back when she leaves that relationship and people do mention it to me that particular thing and they're surprised and I think the fact that they're surprised kind of shows that there aren't many stories out there about lesbians anyway and that if people do imagine relationships between women they imagine them to be somehow comfy and cozy when people just get on with each other and there isn't the kind of conflict that one would expect in other relationships so when you started dating men again did you feel that it was a failure I

mean you've you've chosen it as one of your failures here and I know that there's a great deal of humor to that um but but did you I was a very successful lesbian I bet you are in one sense I was a very successful I just didn't I didn't continue with it yeah because you mentioned there that your politics was intertwined with your sexuality. When you started being attracted to men, did it feel like a political failure to you? No, I think I had matured over the course of my 20s and realised that nobody's perfect. And also that I could be much more accommodating of what I would perceive to be patriarchal sexist behavior as somebody in my 30s. Not that I was compromising, but my attitude to the human race had shifted and things were not as binary as they had been when I was in my early 20s. Because really, in my early 20s, I wouldn't say I was a

man-hater, but I was kind of almost separatist in some senses, in terms of having very little time for men. And then having matured and grown up, and then having this relationship which proved to me that people are people irrespective of their gender I was then able to negotiate relationships with men where I wasn't just looking at them in a sense as the enemy I wasn't just looking at them and seeing the ways in which they might sort of enact some kind of power dynamic to my detriment and I actually I men. I mean, I did have male friends in the past in my 20s, but not many and they weren't close. By the time I was in my 30s, I began to really like men and to enjoy their company. It feels as though society is not very kind

to people who choose to explore different elements of their sexuality. Do you think that that is something we need to work on? The concept of, yes. Oh, absolutely. But there is a generation of young people coming through who their politics, as far as I'm concerned, is so advanced. And, you know, I don't forget, I'm a university professor. I teach 19-year-olds, 20-year-olds, 21-year-olds. And they are certainly the ones that I come across are so

accommodating of different sexualities and genders it's not even an issue for them but I think my generation and beyond and you know if we take ourselves out of our little metropolitan bubbles perhaps then I think there is still a lot of prejudice. At the same time, we have come so far from the 60s when homosexuality, certainly between men, was illegal through to today in terms of levels of acceptance. Look at some of the models who are out there who are having lesbian relationships

and it does not seem to be to the detriment of their careers at all. That would have been unthinkable several years ago. I mean, Ellen DeGeneres came out and she was one of the first people to come out and to continue to have a successful career but it's very difficult for her at the beginning we don't even think about that today look what Claire Ball do but at the same time if we can count on you know if we can identify the women who have come out as lesbians and men who have successful careers then yeah we still have a

problem because there should be many more who are out and you're married to a man so how long have you been married we've been together 14 years and married 10 years and what does he make of bernadine everisto book Prize winner, former failed lesbian? You know, he's so cool. He's so cool about everything. He's a straight man, always been very straight. And he just he finds it interesting. He just accommodates. He's a very accommodating person in terms of sexuality. We have gay friends. And, you know, when I introduced David to my gay friends and he's not really used to being around gay people, it's just so cool.

Do you know what I mean? They're just my friends and they're now his friends and there's never been a problem. My husband is a very liberal man. He's also very political and very left wing. And that's where he's judgmental. But he's not judgmental about people in terms of their sexuality. And I think he finds my backstory entertaining. their sexuality and I think he finds my backstory entertaining and it sounds as though your failure to be a lesbian has taught you something so important about the fact that people can change yeah absolutely I find that entertaining actually because I do come across students who are so adamant about you know and other young people who are so adamant about who they are today. And yet, I know that can change in time, as we humans change in time, if we're open to it, and we allow ourselves to. So I'm, in many ways, not the person I was when I was 21. I'm now 61,

it's 40 years have passed, I'm quite different in so many ways. But I could never have foreseen who I have become today. I live in suburbia, I call could never have foreseen who I have become today. I live in suburbia. I call myself a suburban housewife. I mean, I'm very tongue in cheek about it because this is not my identity, but I was never going to move back to suburbia. I grew up in suburbia and I was never going to move back to suburbia,

but I do live in suburbia. It's very nice and green and leafy and quiet actually. Can you come back onto the podcast when you're 81? And we will discuss where you are then. I mean, who are you going to be at 81? I don't know. I really don't know. A grand dame, I hope.

Yeah. I hope I'm still writing. I hope I still feel that I've got everything to live for and that I'm still aspiring to achieve things. I don't want to be somebody who says, well, I've lived my life. I read something recently by a journalist, a writer who's 81, and she said, well, I've lived my life. And I'm like, oh, I don't want to feel that at 81. I want to feel that I'm still striving and aspiring to achieve things, whether that's my, you know, my chief things in

terms of my reach in society. That's whether I'm still ambitious for my creativity and the kinds of stories that I can tell. Who knows, maybe I won't be writing in 20 years time, but I'll be very surprised if I'm not. And are you making any affirmations at the moment for the future? Yes, I am. But they're formulating because when i look back on the affirmations of the past i realize when we're going back now to about 94 right so it's 26 years ago i realized that i've achieved a lot of these things and that's staggering because these affirmations most of them i haven't looked at for decades you know they're the sort of ones that i've kept current but a lot of them i haven't looked at for decades. You know, they're the sort of ones that I've kept current, but a lot of them I haven't looked at for decades. And I really have

like a, almost like a trunk full of them. They're on big cards with lots of photographs and collages and there is so much there and also things that I wrote about what I wanted out of my life. So the current affirmations are being formulated because I'm just processing the way in which my career has changed since October. And by the end of the year, I will have come up with my new affirmations and I'll not tell anyone about them forever. They're just private and they're just my little affirmations. So Bernadine, can I ask you you finally do you feel like a success i can't say that i'm not a success and i'm laughing at that because yeah i'm an overnight success yeah having won the booker yeah i do i do yeah yeah it would be disingenuous of me not to

say that i'm a success and also disrespectful actually because all the evidence points to that now an overnight success it took you 40 years to get there and I'm just so honored to be the recipient of your wisdom and your craft and I absolutely love your work so please please please carry on writing and telling stories and doing what you do for the next 20 years at least thank you and this has been so enjoyable because I've been talking about things I don't think I've ever talked about oh thank you gosh that's such a lovely thing for me to hear so thank you yes it was a real it was a real treat thank you this episode of how to fail with Elizabeth Dayabeth day is sponsored by aurelia probiotic skincare which provides intelligent skincare with integrity their probiotic concentrate is a potent probiotic

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