Woman's Hour - 17/08/2019

Episode Date: August 17, 2019

Somaliland’s first midwife, first Foreign Minister and former First Lady, Edna Adan Ismail tells us what galvanised her campaign to end the practice of FGM and why now in her 80s she still works at the hospital she helped to build in her homeland.We discuss the rise and fall of the bonkbuster with the author Lauren Milne Henderson, Maisie Lawrence editor at Bookouture and Sareeta Domingo editor at Mills and Boon. The Composer Errollyn Wallen’s work stretches back four decades, she tells us about her latest work with the BBC Proms. A new orchestral work titled This Frame is Part of the Painting.We talk about the impact of The Country Girls by the Irish author Edna O’Brien. It was banned by the Irish Censorship Board and burned publically in her hometown when it was first published. We hear from Lin Coghlan who has adapted it for radio and from the literary critic Alex Clark.How should you talk about the subject of race and racism to your children? Behavioural Scientist Dr Pragya Agarwal and blogger Freddie Harrel tell us about their personal experiences.We discuss the latest show from Zoo Nation Youth Tales of the Turntables with dancer Portia Oti and Director and Choreographer Carrie-Anne Ingrouille.Presented by Jenni Murray Producer: Rabeka Nurmahomed Editor: Lucinda Montefiore

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. I'm Natalia Melman-Petrozzella, and from the BBC, this is Extreme Peak Danger. The most beautiful mountain in the world. If you die on the mountain, you stay on the mountain. This is the story of what happened when 11 climbers died on one of the world's deadliest mountains, K2. And of the risks we'll take to feel truly alive. If I tell all the details, you won't believe it anymore. Extreme. Peak danger. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Good afternoon. In today's programme, Edna O'Brien's Country Girls is to be the next Woman's Hour serial. Why was it considered so shocking it was banned and burned? Errolyn Wallen is the first black woman to have had her music played at the proms. Why did she become a composer?

Though I'd studied undergrad and postgrad, it wasn't until I'd say sort of mid-twenties, I thought, no, I must be a composer. I remember a day when I'm thinking I'm actually going to die unless I write a string quartet. I'm actually going to die. It's just like a burning inside and it took hold of me. Another kind of music at the Queen Elizabeth Hall on London's South Bank. Zoo Nation youth perform Tales of the Turntable with hip-hop, funk, soul, disco, house and rap. Talking to your children about racism, what's the best way

to approach the topic? And the bonk buster, once selling millions of copies, why is its popularity waning? Perhaps the Bonk Buster served a purpose, you know, five to ten years ago. When I think about the kind of literature that we're producing, I look at our political time. And our political time at the moment is quite scary and quite frightening. So, yeah, maybe we're interested in kind of domestic psychological thrillers where we can be in the house and everything can be scary. But let's not talk about what's going on outside. Now, if you listened to Book of the Week a couple of weeks ago, you'll already be familiar with Edna Adan Ismail, because her story, A Woman of Firsts, The Woman Who Built a Hospital

and Changed the World, was read by Cathy Tyson. Today, you can hear Edna, a midwife, former foreign minister, former First Lady of Somaliland, and worldwide campaigner against female genital mutilation, tell her story in her own voice. She took me back to when she was eight years old and had the most severe form of FGM. It's very difficult to accept when something so drastic and so painful and so damaging is done to you. The people who arranged it were my mother and my grandmother, women I loved and admired and who had cared for me until then. And for them to catch me one morning and arrange for a woman to come with dirty hands and dirty knives,

squat me on a stool, and cut away healthy flesh from between my legs was something so painful and horrific that to this day I find it very difficult to accept. And the fact that it was arranged on the day when my father was out of town, literally behind his back, and seeing how angry he became when he came home that evening and found me done. How angry he was, how the tears I saw in his eyes of shock and pain and suffering and the feeling of helplessness that there was nothing he could do about it. The damage had already been done. That stayed with me. And the fact that my father disapproved of it

proved to me that what had been done to me was wrong. It shouldn't have been done to me. And the fact that my father disapproved of it, proved to me that what had been done to me was wrong. It shouldn't have been done to me. And it became my challenge too, in later life, to make sure that it does not happen to others. But how were you able to challenge something which you have done all your life, that was such a widespread cultural practice, but never spoken about? It was taboo. You don't speak about this. Other girls in my neighbourhood, in my town, who had had the same thing done to them, never spoke about it. And you bottle it up.

And later in my life, I became a nurse, I became a midwife, and I was going to work every morning and trying to get a baby out from between the legs of a woman whose body had been so damaged. The elasticity that allows the baby to come out of the birth canal was damaged and gone. To get a baby out alive, we had to cut and open and do episiotomies and extensive openings to let the baby out. But then you don't speak about it. You bottle it up. You keep it inside.

The anger builds up until one day, like a volcano, it bursts. And when it does come out, there's no stopping. That's when your campaign must bear fruit. You must see the end of this. You were the first girl from Somaliland to win a scholarship to study in the UK. Yes, I was very privileged. And, you know, again on this FGM question, you describe in the book how you were asked for a urine sample as part of the medical exam you had to have before your training, but said you couldn't because of your FGM. What did

the sympathetic nurse say to you about it? Well, it was a question of refusing to have a medical examination, a thorough medical examination, and not pursuing my lifelong career of nursing. Or because they had grown bacteria from my urine, they needed a sterile specimen of urine through a catheter. And of course, it could not happen in my case because of the infibulation. And when a nurse saw me sitting there in this dilemma of what do I do?

This is going to be the end of my career. This is going to be the end of my ambition. She understood that there was something lying beyond my refusal to have a catheter specimen. And she must have been, you know, informed about it. She might have become acquainted. She may have traveled abroad and found out about, you know, infibulation. And she came up and sat with me with kindness and compassion and said, is it because it cannot happen? Is it because there is no way to do a cath specimen? And I said, yes, because I didn't know how to tell anybody about this.

And she understood. You begin the book in Mogadishu in 1975, where you tackled the military director of the Medina Hospital in the most extraordinary manner. Just explain what you said to him. I had a premature baby that was weighing less than a kilo, fighting for its life. I had spent three days fighting, feeding this child, clearing its airways, feeding it through a pipette. And I sent out an empty cylinder of oxygen to be refilled.

Twice the cylinder returned to me empty. And if I don't have oxygen for this baby, I would lose this child. So the only way I knew how to make the stupid idiot of a man understand that I had a life, the baby's life was in danger, was to burst into his office

and say, I want you to come with me and shoot a baby. Because if you don't want that baby to live, then come and shoot it. And if you don't want patients to live in this hospital, then why call it a hospital? And, you know, in anger, that was the gist of what I said. And you got what you needed.

I got what I wanted because there was no way I was going to walk out of this office, of his office, just to go back and watch a little baby die. There are so many firsts in your life. You've fought throughout your life, you know, military dictators who

imprisoned you. Yeah, house arrest, detention. Yes, the most extraordinary life. But in 1997, you sold everything you owned to build a women's hospital in Somaliland. Why were you prepared literally to build it brick by brick? This is something I've wanted to do all my life. My country, Somaliland, was literally level to the ground. Everything that had existed before the war with Somalia had been flattened.

Hospitals were level to the ground, homes, schools, dwellings. I had come to the end of my UN career. I was entitled to a very comfortable terminal benefits and pension. And I've been there. I've done that. I've owned it. I've had it. I've lived my life. And what were trinkets going to do for me? What was a Mercedes going to do for me? As much as I love the car. So I just sold it, recycled my life, turned everything I had into cold cash, went home, built a hospital and now live on it. And it's the best thing I've ever done. And I am so blessed to have had this idea into my heart to do it.

The final thing I wanted to ask you about is last year, the religious authorities in Somaliland announced the most severe form of FGM which you suffered is banned. How optimistic are you that things will change for women there and of course in other places because you have said it's not just an African problem? It's a global problem because you have more women in Europe or America coming from any of the 16 countries where FGM is practiced, having babies and living in your countries. It's no longer confined to Africa. How confident am I? Well, 42 years ago, when I first started the campaign against FGM, this is not a campaign I started yesterday or the day before. It's something that I have been fighting for 42, 43 years. And it's the first time that I have a government and I have a religious fatwa backing up my campaign. It's not all I wanted. I want total abolition. But then using the old

Mahatma Gandhi philosophy, when you're hungry, even half a loaf is better than no bread at all. So if I get a fatwa criminalising the most severe form of FGM, it's a good start and it's for future generations to keep fighting it and fighting all the other forms. I was talking to Edna Adan Ismail and the BBC's recording of A Woman of Firsts is, of course, available on BBC Sounds. Now, there was

a time when the bunkbuster was the reading of choice for an awful lot of us. In the 80s, novels such as Riders, Scruples and Hollywood Wives sold millions of copies across the world, but the genre seems to be falling out of favour.

Why? Well, Jane spoke to Sarita Domingo, an editor and author at Mills & Boone, Maisie Lawrence, the editor at Book Couture and one of the founders of Pride in Publishing, and the author Lauren Mill Henderson, also known as a writer of bunkbusters, Rebecca Chance. Well, she's now writing crime fiction under her own name. What sort of work did she read when she was young?

Judith Krantz was awfully good on the central point of a Bonk Buster, which is that sex is not just there to have you lose your virginity and then marry a millionaire with and not go with anybody else. She was particularly good about that. And that's what makes the books bonk busters rather than romantic novels. And you did write them, but you've packed it in. Why? Because they just aren't as much in demand as they used to be. Well, this is obviously the huge question, isn't it? And I think that right now women are buying different stuff. They are buying a great deal of depressing crime novels, or they are buying very, very happy novels involving cupcakes and chocolate and Cornwall and camper vans. And so, you know, you go with the tide and you, you know, the tide is moving, moving away from them, I think. Now, you were pulling a face there at some of that, Maisie.

So what was missing from women's lives that made them want bonk busters and why have they rejected them now? Well I think partly you've got to think about like what kind of time we're living in and perhaps the bonk buster served a purpose you know five to ten years ago. When I think about the kind of literature that we're producing I look at our political time and our political time at the moment is quite scary and quite frightening. So yeah maybe we're interested in kind of domestic psychological thrillers where we can be in the house and everything can be scary, but let's not talk about what's going on outside.

Or the antidote to that, as you said, is the kind of lighter stuff, which is like, let's go to the sea and open a cafe and enjoy our lives. It's a trend. I do agree that the domestic noir thing, I think, is very political. And a smart friend of mine

basically came up with the idea that women are still really angry about the patriarchy, and they don't feel they're having an effect politically. So it becomes translated into the domestic sphere. What we've got to acknowledge is that bonk busters were overwhelmingly heteronormative. So Sarita, they were also very, very white. And that was clearly an omission. Absolutely. I think that's true and I think there are a lot of self-published authors now there's a great author called Talia Hibbert for

example he's a black British writer who self-publishes I think she's actually got some traditional publishing going now but who are writing sexy stories that do feature people outside of what you might have seen in a traditional bunkbuster. But I also think that there's a different landscape now. I think bunkbusters were an escapist story. They were glamorous. But I think people, women in particular, kind of take their sexual empowerment for granted maybe now. They expect that it will be the case regardless.

So they don't necessarily need that sort of extra level of glamour and escapism. Fan fiction is a whole new world. And it there is something for quite literally everybody out there, Maisie. For our older listeners who may not know about fan fiction, just describe it as a challenge. Fan fiction started in the 60s. And allegedly, it was first Kirk Spock fan fiction started in the 60s and allegedly it was first kirk spock fan fiction so star trek so kirk slash spock which is where you get the word slash from and slash fiction which is a lot of fan fiction but not it entirely means love stories between two men and of course the reason that you know your your fandom starts is because fans look at the series and they're like but i just really want those characters to get together and they're not getting together.

So you go away and you write your own. Very simply, the reason we can't publish it is for copyright reasons. You know, I can't have Harry Potter, me in Kirk's box and getting together and then publish that. But someone's written that. That wouldn't be allowed.

I am very sure they have. Go look it up. You'll have a great time. If I just say clamorant to everybody, some people will know what that means. I know that's making Maisie feel a little queasy, but it's out there. Also out there in fan fiction, which we need to make clear is free. And it's, I've heard it described as the biggest library of erotic fiction in the history of human civilization. Is that right, Maisie? I mean, I certainly hope so.

But I'm going to turn to our Mills and Boone editor here and ask if there's more Mills and Boone. I mean, I think it's probably true that fan fiction can allow people to explore fantasies that maybe we wouldn't be able to publish. But while Mills and Boone isn't necessarily erotica, I think there's still a huge demand for it. There's still a huge market for sexier books. And a lot of them are still quite glamorous and probably in the vein of a blockbuster. And there's a newer line called Dare, which is probably the sexiest line that Mills and Boone do. In terms of what you might class as erotic fiction,

I think fan fiction probably is the biggest pot you could find. Yes, I mean, there is stuff out there in fan fiction. I'm thinking of the many tentacled, absurdly well-endowed space creatures. Oh, there's so much of that nowadays. I'm sounding like I know what I'm talking about, which is worrying. It's absolutely hilarious. There's an entire series. I have a lot of friends who send me this kind of stuff

and we put it up on my Facebook page. And there's an entire series with these obviously larger than life in every respect purple guys of another race and they have horns and the horns get involved too there's also a lot of comic gay stuff as well like there's a guy called chuck tingle to a certain extent but also allows you to explore completely out there fantasies that you may not find in your traditional fun there is a guy called chuck tingle who specializes i'm sorry chuck tingle it is not his real name good lord it is his nom nom de gay plume and he writes these wonderful books which are literally like taken by the dinos the republican dinosaur senator which i don't think i'm actually making up

and he is absolutely legendary in his own world and also has a very funny twitter feed i think so there's great dealers and that is you know purely for fun it's also sexy but there's a great deal of humor there yeah yeah are there any limits to this at all maisie go on well i think i just want to say like you know if you are a woman or a man who's looked at kind of mainstream erotica that we find in smiths and thought you know what that's not for me i think what's really beautiful about what's being self-published and what exists in fan fiction is that there is something for everyone and it is written by someone who appeals to you or is similar to you. So if you are a woman, I think this is a super interesting trend

and you see it both in fan fiction and also if you look at the British Museum's recent exhibition on anime and manga, it's there as well. Women writing stories for women about gay male relationships which by the way was something that straight women were not supposed to be interested in who knew but it turns out that men are interested in lesbians and women are interested we've always we've always accepted that men are quotes interested in lesbians but why didn't we know about the truth i think we did I think we just couldn't talk about it frankly I mean I have a lot of men on men sex scenes in my books I have lesbian sex scenes

I really have all sorts never have I had any pushback from readers whatsoever apart from specific requests for instance more men or men and one of my tenderest love scenes ever is a footballer losing his virginity to a gorgeous concierge in a Russian oligarch's fur closet. And people always say how very sweet and romantic it was. I don't know whether I can top that. Sarita, how far are Mills and Boone prepared to push things? Because Maisie's already indicated there's something for everybody. And the internet is a place of no shame. What about Mills and Boone? I think Mills and Boone are catering to a very specific audience who are looking for a specific source of romance. And while there is a really wide range of different types of romance, you know, you've got medical romance, historical romance, all sorts of different

types in terms of genre, I think perhaps it is largely heterosexual relationships. And there's Carina, which does based up the States, but it has a wide range of different types of stories, LGBTQ stories. But yeah, I think it's something that perhaps the readership would be open to, but it's not something that we're currently doing in our main lines. Have you ever been genuinely shocked by something you've read in fan fiction? Well, I think what's beautiful about fan fiction and a bit like Mills and Boone,

there's a little set of codes at the top and it'll tell you what you're going to get. And if there's something there that you know you're not going to be keen on, it's signposted. And I really appreciate that as a reader. I know what I want and I know what I don't. Maisie Lawrence, Sarita Domingo and Lauren Milne Henderson.

In 1998, Errolyn Wallen became the first black female composer to have her work performed at the Proms. And on Thursday, a new orchestral piece she was commissioned to write was played at the Albert Hall by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales conducted by Elim Chan and sung by Catriona Morrison. It's called This Frame is Part of the Painting

and we had a short extract which was recorded in rehearsal. I wish I could sing like another girl. I wish I could sing like another girl. Errolyn, that sounds very exciting. That was recorded in rehearsal. Just yesterday afternoon. Amazing. What inspired the piece? It was my great love and deep admiration of the paintings of Howard Hodgkin, who died in 2017. I had the great pleasure of meeting him in 2015,

but I've always loved his... From the moment I saw his paintings, I was really not sideways by them. So when David Jackson, who is head of Cardiff Sing the World, wanted to commission a work for the winner of Cardiff Sing the World, which is Katrina Morrison, he said, what ideas would I have for a piece for orchestra and voice? And immediately I said, I want to pay homage to this great painter. Looking back, what was the impact of your invitation in 1998

to have a piece performed at the Proms and be the first black woman to be performed there. It was a wonderful thing. Obviously, the Royal Albert Hall and the Proms are just this fantastic institution for every composer. It's a real landmark, so I felt deep honour. But actually, it's myself who noticed, made a note of thinking, oh, actually, I was the first black woman

to have a piece performed at the Proms. I wrote an article in the Proms Guide, and I was looking back 50 years ago, there weren't any women composers, there weren't certainly no composers of colour, so things are changing slowly. Yeah, but only 6% of the competitions this year are by women. How much really are things improving?

Well, I do know that the BBC are really planning for that by 2022 it'll be 50 50 and you know that day obviously I'd love that day to be now but because I teach composing I see the great talent that's right across the board how did you begin your career you know it's the love of music that's driven me as a little kid i just music came easily to me but there's nowhere i had an idea that i would be a professional musician so it's just i've just followed my own nose at a time you know when certainly i would have been deterred by teachers of of going into the profession of well going to classical music but i just have this great love of you know to be able to write for the orchestra we had this great teacher in Tottenham my primary school who

introduced us to orchestral music when I think about that that inspired a love of of orchestral music and classical music now raised in Tottenham although you came from Belize I think when you were two and you were raised by a white aunt and an uncle from Belize. What was that like? Well, I think it was very enriching. We were different to other children. So my aunt, who's from the east end of London, so on Sundays, she would send out for jellied eels for the month and outside the pub. So we'd have jellied eels, and then we'd have rice and beans and planted. So I remember it to do with food. Food was always, you know, pie and mash with rice and things like that.

So we certainly were unusual to certainly other black children, but, you see, it meant that we grew up totally unprejudiced. We had a broad outlook. And there was music in the family, wasn't there? Your father was a jazz musician? Yes, he wrote songs, had a beautiful sort of crooning voice, and he had really wanted to be a professional singer. And he went to New York?

We have a big extended family in Flatbush, which is almost like a little Belize, and my grandmother lived there, cousins and aunts and uncles, so they moved moved there the idea of sending for us but um that actually never happened so we stayed in england with my uncle and aunt but i'm deeply grateful because i think my uncle particularly was so such a cultured man and he instilled in us the love of poetry and music and this idea of just trying to get a good education at what point did you decide right composition is what I'm going to do, it's for me?

Though I'd studied undergrad and postgrad, it wasn't until I'd say sort of mid-twenties, I thought, no, I must be a composer. I remember a day when I'm thinking I'm actually going to die unless I write a string quartet. I'm actually going to die. It's just like a burning inside, and it took hold of me. How did your work come to orbit the Earth in 2006? You see, I do get about a bit. I was in Houston having my work performed,

and at the same time I was writing an opera, and I made up the story of a black woman astronaut getting ready to go to Mars. And this was around about 2005 or something. And so when I was in Houston, I said, surely there's an astronaut I could talk to about space. And sure enough, I was introduced to Stephen McLean, who went on to become head of Canadian Space Agency. He was just about to go on the STS-115 mission to the space station, and we became very friendly in preparation for that trip. We talked for hours on the phone about what it was like in space.

He'd been before, and it was only after he came back from this mission he asked for my address, and then this CD turned up, framed from NASA, saying it orbited. So isn't that wild? It had gone all around the world several times, I from NASA, saying it orbited. So isn't that wild? It had gone all around the world several times, I think, hadn't it? Now, in 2017, you composed Mighty River to mark the abolition of the slave trade in England. Let's just hear a little bit of that. © transcript Emily Beynon Now, you just corrected me.

I was right on the 2017 when it was actually recorded, but you composed it in 2007, much longer before than it was recorded. But what did it mean to you to be asked to mark that anniversary? Well, the work is dedicated to my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandmother. It caused me to reflect on my ancestors. And I don't take anything for granted in my life. I know that, you know, it's not that long ago that I would have, you know I would have been a slave on a plantation somewhere. But the piece, this Mighty River, is a very optimistic piece.

It's about that freedom is like the sea, is like water, always looking to flow into the sea. And so as long as human beings have that need for freedom, there will always be a resolution of some sort for the good I think and talking of the sea I know you happen to compose in a lighthouse in Scotland why well number one it's what I could afford and number two there's a website called lighthousesforsale.co.uk are you you serious? Yes and I stumbled across, my dream has always been to live on top of the sea, to be in a place fairly remote and it's so hard to find real quiet in London and so this would be a place I could go and work. I didn't mean it to be as far away as Scotland because it's you know 600, it's at the very top in Sutherland,

very top, right in the middle of the United Kingdom. But anyway, having seen this place, I just, yeah, fell in love with it. And it's my second home. And I go up there, you know, as often, I'm going up straight after the proms, in fact. And the light works, does it? Well, it's no longer operational, very sadly.

We're all really sad about that, but it's an incredible occasion. It's something magical about it. And so I'm always encouraging, you know, friends to go and stay there too and do their own work. I was talking to Errolyn Wallen and, of course, this famous part of the painting was broadcast on BBC Radio 3, so it's available now on BBC Sounds. And Rohan sent us an email and said, I was particularly struck by Erin Wallen talking about her lighthouse. I had the privilege of owning and living in a decommissioned Stevenson lighthouse on the east coast of Scotland. I'm not musical, but we've had a variety of musical people, friends and relatives mostly, who've played fiddles, bagpipes, guitars and clarinets here. We've also had singers. The acoustic is amazing. Still to come in today's programme, talking to

children about racism. What's the best way to go about it? And a high-octane show at the Queen Elizabeth Hall on the South Bank. Tales of the Turntable examines the history of street dance with Zoo Nation youth. And for the next two weeks, the Woman's Hour serial will be a dramatisation of one of the most iconic books of the 20th century.

Edna O'Brien's The Country Girls was published in 1960, then came The Lonely Girl and finally Girls in Their Married Bliss, and all three novels in the trilogy will be broadcast in the coming months. The Country Girls is the one where Kate and Baba are living at home in rural Ireland, go to convent school and are expelled for some rather shocking behaviour. They go together to Dublin for more carryings on that were considered so appalling the book was banned by the Irish censorship board. It was also burned in Edna's hometown on the orders of the local priest. Well, central to the first of the three novels is the rather edgy friendship between Kate and Barbara,

but it's also about teenage girls with bubbling hormones in a deeply religious and restrictive atmosphere. Kate has her eye on the much older married Mr Gentleman and confesses her passion to Barbara. I want to sit here all night and dream. I think you've gone mad. What's happened to you, anyhow? Love.

Who's the fool? You wouldn't know. Is it Declan? Nonsense. Hickey? No. Tell me. I can't. Tell me or I'll tickle it out of you. All right. All right.

It's Mr. Gentleman. Not on your life. It's a brazen lie. It's not a lie. He gave me chocolates and took me to the pictures. He told me I was the sweetest thing that's ever happened to him. He said the colour of my hair was wonderful and... and my skin was like a peach in the sunlight. He didn't say anything about my skin or my hair exactly.

But once I start telling lies, I can't stop. Go on. Tell me more. You won't tell anyone. You won't tell anyone, Baba. No. Only Mrs Gentleman. Don't tell a single solitary person.

No, only Mrs Gentleman and Martha and Daddy and your old fella. I was only joking. I never met him. I was only pulling your leg. He just gave me a lift to Limerick, that's all. Really? Well, Martha and Daddy and I are having dinner with the gentlemen tomorrow night,

and I'll mention it to them. No, don't. Don't tell. Turn off the light, would you? I want to go to sleep. But, of course, Kate had been telling the truth. Kate is played by Charlie Murphy and Baba by Avian McGinty. Well, Alex Clark is a literary critic.

Lynne Coughlan dramatised the novels for the radio. Lynne, it is an edgy friendship. How would you describe these two girls? They're opposites, which is one of the reasons why I think they work so well together. So Kate is the dreamy one, the romantic one, the introvert, the sensitive, lyrical girl. You feel there's a lot of Edna O'Brien in her, that writer who hasn't really understood yet that she might be a writer and that words might be something for her to find.

So Kate is the quiet one. And Baba is reckless, outrageous, selfish, a bully, and charismatic and great fun. And you can see how their complicated relationship has got the ingredients to last a lifetime. Alex, why was the first book, and then indeed the whole trilogy, considered so scandalous? Because as Hedna says, there is no sex in that first book. There's desire and there are huge stirrings of a desire not just to have sex, to have romance, to escape control, but to really shrug off the kind of shackles of what was still an incredibly repressive

and in many ways misogynistic society I mean the first book came out in 1960 and in Ireland was still you know very much a country kind of in the thrall to a sort of agrarian religious vision of Eamon de Valera who'd just been elected as its president. So, you know, things have not changed. Lynne, this is not the first classic you've dramatised for the radio. How difficult was this one to do? Obviously it's daunting because it's such an important piece of writing and it's pivotal in all sorts of different arenas in terms of our storytelling. But the writing is so wonderful and so honed and economical

that actually I couldn't pretend it was a terrible struggle. It really was easy to dramatize because we want to be with those two women. Their journey from being 14 when we first meet them through to being in their late 20s and having children of their own throughout the trilogy. It's very honed. The point of view is very tight on them and on their inner lives. So therefore it just cries out to be a radio adaptation. It's very intimate. The storytelling's very intimate. So it just lends itself perfectly.

You say it's pivotal in so many ways. Yes. In what ways do you see it as pivotal? Well, I think, you know, from a personal point of view, I was a little bit younger, so I was growing up in Dublin in the 70s. And obviously the world had changed in the 70s, but we still, nobody ever talked to us about sex.

Even though the pill was available, and even in England I was reading last night that family planning made the pill was available, and even in England, I was reading last night that family planning made the pill more available to unmarried women. That was still coming on into the 70s. I was growing up in the 70s in Dublin, and sex still wasn't talked about. Women were largely expected to wait until they got married. therefore there was no point in telling you anything about sex. There was Edna writing about sex in 1960 and the kind of often funny and outrageous and confusing experiences that young girls were having, which is part of the reason why she got such a backlash because that was 1960. In 1975 we hadn't moved ahead. So it was really quite a radical piece of writing. I read it again, having, frankly, not read it since 1962.

Right. And I went back to it because I knew I was going to be talking to you. But you were an earlier doctor, Jenny. I was. But her passion for the countryside, she's sitting here in London writing about the landscape that she loved. The countryside in the books is a character. And I think it's one of the things we really noticed when we were talking about how to do it for radio. And she so delicately peppers the prose with tiny references.

I mean, there's one that sticks in my mind where she's looking, I think, out the window of the hotel when they're on a date with some unsavoury guys. And she says the rain's falling and it makes her think of all the poor cows that are giving birth to calves alone in a field somewhere. And I think it's that access that she has to detail that's so moving. It's an extraordinary skill, really. To what extent, Alex, did each of the three books enjoy equal success? Well, I think there's often this sense of a kind of splash made with the beginning of a trilogy or a series of books. And, of course, that was only kind of intensified

by the great kind of public furore. And there's an introduction to the entire trilogy by Ema McBride, who calls it the sort of priest wanting his moment of post rosary drama of the sort of public burning. And there was a sense that then, you know, there wasn't anything quite as dramatic. They had moved to the second and third books moved their moved their focus you know predominantly to england and yet in many ways they get kind of darker because these girls don't have the sort of energy of youth they're beginning to be affected by what's happening to them in their lives including marriages including disappointments and heartbreaks personally i think they just stand together as as a as a great work and and it's it's brilliant that the whole thing is being dramatised

rather than just that sort of most kind of obvious first one. Alex, just one last question. Edna's most recent book, Girl, is about the abduction of girls in Nigeria in 2014. Why do you suppose she's taken on that particular subject? She's now 88. Well, I guess she would probably say say who could ever speak for edna o'brien why wouldn't she um you know she her last book the red chairs you know was about a balkan

war criminal who fetches up in rural ireland um she's written you know she simply hasn't confined herself to one canvas or one milieu and it was so interesting at the beginning when you're talking about friendship, and it makes me think of, you know, Elena Ferrante. She was doing it then, and she's doing it now. She talks about the bonds between women, and she talks about the privations they're put through. And I think she's a writer that, until they wrest the pen from her hand, will not give up. I was talking to Alex Clark and Lynn Cochlan and The Country Girls begins on Monday at 10.45 here on Woman's Hour and you can hear an interview with Edna O'Brien in a Front Row special programme on Bank Holiday Monday that's the 26th of August.

Louise sent us an email and said my mother was born in the west of Ireland in 1934 and banned me from reading Edna O'Brien when I was a teenager in the 70s. I read them anyway and found them shocking and thrilling in equal measure. The idea that girls could misbehave and rebel was to me a novel one. My own upbringing was privileged in contrast with my mother's, but religion was hugely important, and the concept of not bringing disgrace on the family through doing anything that would shame us was always there. Anything my mother feared would threaten the status quo was banned. Pop music, watching ITV, attending youth group, talking to boys. Needless to say, all these forbidden fruits became extremely attractive. And Mags said, I remember hunting through the bookshelf at home and reading the book when I was about 11. It was haunting, but my biggest memories are of their knickers being dyed black and my Irish mother's disapproval when she found

me reading it. Now if boys and sex were the subjects you never spoke about in the 50s and 60s, in 2019 it's often race and racism that are the difficult topics to navigate with your children. Regardless of your own ethnic background, your children may ask awkward questions about race. So how should you answer? Jane spoke to the entrepreneur and blogger Freddie Harrell and the behavioural scientist and diversity consultant Dr Pragya Agarwal. She has an older daughter in her 20s and two younger daughters. For them to take pride in their Indian heritage is really important because that might not happen naturally.

And they are also not very distinctly coloured in the sense that they're white passing. So that can also mean that they have certain privileges that come with it. And I feel like, so they go to nursery where they're the only mixed heritage children. There's nobody in the staff. So they're not seeing people from diverse backgrounds around them. So I think for me, it has been really important that I bring in diverse books and diverse media and talk to them explicitly that look, everybody's skin colour is different. And people might have different skin colour because children are not colour blind.

They notice skin colour like any other physical difference, like glasses or long hair or height or anything like that. Children notice everything and say everything, don't they? Yes, absolutely. They have no filter. Freddie, tell us, your son, he is tiny, but he is growing up in London at the moment as a young mixed-race boy. But your husband is, well, he is, you describe him actually, I'm going to leave it up to you.

We had very different upbringings. He was, you know, he grew up in boarding school. And it's like a different world, kind of like more of a posh world. And that kind of background, we'll double-barret names, not his, but kind of this world. And me, you know, I was born and raised in France. I was raised in France. I was raised in France. So it's very interesting. Like our son is, you know, he's half white and half black

and he's not really half French. You know, I realize I only speak to him in French because that's my culture, but he doesn't have French blood. And then obviously like he's British and from, you know, from this background. For me, it's really important as well to frame all of those layers of identities with him and with the family.

So what do you say to your little boy? So for me, it's really always insisting on how nice he is. We always say you're friendly, you're nice. You know, even if you not tell him off, but tell him don't do this, don't do that, he can get really upset. For me, it's very important to remind those boys that he has a lot of energy, to remind that he's nice, but tell him, don't do this, don't do that. He can get really upset. For me, it's very important to remind those boys,

and he has a lot of energy, to remind that he's nice, he's friendly. Because it's so quick to say, you're naughty. You know, some boys are cheeky and some are naughty and they're bad. It's very, I don't want him to think that there's anything devilish or anything wicked in him. It's very important that he's human and his feelings are valid, all of his emotions. Yeah, I'm sure you'd agree, Pragya, that the experience of your little girls is likely to

be different, isn't it? They won't be seen in quite the same way. No, absolutely. And we have to accept and acknowledge and be aware of our own implicit biases because the way we are brought up and the way we grow up and the people we have around us and our parents and our friends shape so much about it. And so, in fact, I'm writing a book about unconscious bias at the moment about how we can educate ourselves. And so I think that's what we are doing both as a couple, educating ourselves as much as possible so that they grow up and they understand their privileges, but also when they might be seen differently by other people as well. So I think that can affect their sense of identity. And for

children's mental health and physical health, I think it's really important that they have a sense of belonging and a sense of identity. Do your children go to a nursery? Do they, Pragya? Yes, yes, they go to a nursery. And so I was really surprised that there's no other child who's even mixed race or non-white there or even amongst the staff, which is very unusual in today's world. And so they haven't seen anybody who looks different to them or to except me and their elder sister. So when we actually went to India for the first time in March, they were quite fearful of people who initially and they were really reluctant to be near them. And I realized that they were just because they were unfamiliar to them. And children from as young as three months old start noticing familiar skin color. They were watching us, me and my husband and our reactions to people to pick up cues about how we would react if you were awkward or uncomfortable or if you were just making it a norm. So I think for them, it's really important that they don't understand whiteness is a norm. They understand that people are different.

Freddie, you've been very public about the challenges you know your son is going to face. What reaction have you had to that? Well, I think I've had a lot of positive reaction. Most people, they were really, like, you know, the conversation around first, like, mixed-race couples and then, you know, like, raising a mixed-race boys and having, there's so many things that are said out loud and so many, like, you know, in this day and age, like, people have a lot of opinions around those things.

So every time that you say something and people can relate to your experience, you're always going to be supported. I feel like a lot of people were in my situation and don't really know how to navigate that. I feel like a lot of people think that because we are black or from minorities, we are like born natural to be comfortable in those conversations. And you're like, no, like we're just pushed into them. And it's not exactly. And we come across as these people who can be defensive and can be angry or aggressive, like, oh, you always talk

about these things. But but why do you think that I do? I don't enjoy it as much as you think I do. And if you find it uncomfortable, just imagine that for me, it's much more uncomfortable. It's not nice to have, to completely, to always remind people that, you know, like,

we are the same thing. We are just one. Like, you're not better or inferior. Pragya? Yes, absolutely. I think race is real and consequences of racism and racial inequality are real. And people who are black or brown or mixed race or people of colour, they don't have the privilege to not talk about this because we are facing some kind of

microaggression, aversive racism, and we are hyper aware of our identities. So I think we don't have the privilege. But I think it's important for parents and people who are not people of color or who are white to actually understand that, acknowledge that and actually take an active role in talking about it. That's exactly what I say to my husband. Absolutely. My husband, for me, I always tell him it's an amazing opportunity that you have here because you can, you know just like extend that to your circle you know he was um at a dinner party at a birthday recently i was in there and i was speaking to a friend about hugo and you know him very being careful around the way he's treated and one of his friends was like oh like you're very into these you know like race topics aren't you and then gosh but like yeah i know i mean it's the same as i said yeah but you know you I mean, it's the same as my husband.

Yeah, but you know, you had to say, it was like, do you say, so where do you think Barack Obama is? And the person said, he's black.

What do you see? So I have a black son. So I have skin in the game. So of course, I'm into these topics. What do you mean? I know my husband has had to learn so much.

I mean, he's amazing and he's really talking about these things actively. But we live in this illusion, this myth that we live in a post-racial world, but that's not true. So we can't just pretend that colour or race doesn't exist. Pragya Agarwal and Freddie Harrell. And someone who didn't want us to use a name wrote, as a black mother, I would be very surprised if any parent of colour does not have what we call the conversation at different ages with all their children in our communities.

I love being black and it's so important for children to understand the power and health of their melanin, their hair and the richness of their culture. I ensure my son is proud of these roots by giving him an alternative history, maths, English literature etc at home. Most importantly black boys need to be taught how to behave when stopped by the police. It's a deeply dehumanizing experience and has happened to my son, brothers who remain traumatized by it and husband. Therefore as a black parent I believe it's irresponsible not to plan the time to discuss racism with them throughout their childhood and youth. Now, to describe the new show at the Queen Elizabeth Hall on the South Bank in London as high octane is a bit of an understatement. Tales of the Turntable is performed by Zoo Nation Youth Company and tells the story in music and dance of a grandfather taking his grandson through the origins of funk, soul, disco, house, rap and hip-hop. He's like that. He's like that. He's like that. He's like that. He's like that.

Well, Portia Oti is one of the dancers. Carrie-Anne Henry is the writer, director and choreographer. And we were all sitting here in the studio moving. You just can't help it, can you? No. DJ Baldo's music is too good to not move to. What story, Carrie, did you want to tell through the turntable? I think as I've got older it's become incredibly obvious to me to make sure I make the most of relationships whilst I have them so my grandparents meant a lot to me and I definitely learned a lot through them, through various different parts of their upbringing.

And I really loved all the music they listened to. And equally, my parents, I used to literally sit there with headphones on and go through all of their cassette and CD collections. And it taught me so much, not only about music, but also the kind of music they were living through at those certain times and obviously as a as a dancer and a choreographer you're so inspired by different kinds of music and I'm really interested in different styles of dance and they kind of come hand in hand. Portia you play the friend of Eric the grandson who has been taken through the history what drew you to this type of dance and music ever since I've been young my mum's always said that when music's come on I've always been bopping and dancing around the house so that's what kind of got me into dancing and with the

show that we're doing now I just love the fact that we have the different eras of music so it's not that we're just like exploring the present day music but we've also got some 40s in there 70s in there that's what my mum listens to at home as soon as that music comes on that's straight like the groove straight in my body i'm at it already because that's the music i like listening to which is your favorite then from those earlier times my favorite probably have to be the 80s. I love that bit. Yeah. Which music? Go on, give me some examples. So like the break beat? Yeah.

I mean, Portia's a really strong all-round dancer, but I'd say popping is one of her styles as well. So basically in the kind of 80s hip-hop and rap music, there would have been a lot of instrumentals there that would lend themselves to people who like to break dance or pop or lock so popping yeah i love popping explain what is so basically popping is basically like you know you might be trying to like flash your muscles you might go like this so you have to like contract

and then release and you just do it really fast and then it just looks like you're popping your body i love doing it and because not many women like to do popping that's why i really try to like dive into the style and training it because i feel like it looks good on women and it just shows how women can be very strong you've got a t-shirt on at the moment i cannot see your muscles i can only imagine what's under those sleeves. And what was the other thing? Locking was the other thing you mentioned. What's locking? So locking's a funk style,

and it's just basically about the up groove, and it's very funky, and we do that in the 70s. You started, though, didn't you, with jazz and ballet? Yeah. Why did you move on to this? So basically, when I started, my mum thought, OK, let's do ballet and jazz. I already did hip-hop at home just because, like,

that's what my mum used to listen to. But then I stopped doing it because I just wasn't, like, I wasn't enjoying it as much. At the time, I was dancing with Boy Blue. And then Ken Rick Sandy was like, you should join Z Nation to help further my dance career. And that's when I joined and that's when I really, like, hit hip-hop. And I was like, yeah, this is what I want want to do because I just prefer hip-hop more I

don't know violin and jazz is just not my thing. What did Zoo Nation set out to do Carrie when it was formed I think it was 2002? That's right yeah I mean Kate Prince again has come from a background where she's had a lot of musical and dance influences but also she was very heavily influenced by the likes of Janet Jackson and you know loved the kind of whole rhythm nation feel and it was at a time where in the early 2000s I think it became even more popular in the UK these kind of styles prior to that they were definitely around but I think potentially a little bit more underground but it's certainly a style that has surged and I think because it's so relevant to any young person at any time or not

necessarily just young person but I think it's the next generation of music that really lets people express what they want to express and because there's so many different flavors and styles of it and like Portia said you know even if you take it back to sort of the the funk sounds of the 70s you know that makes you move in a specific way so I think people really find attachments to certain types of music. You're from Guernsey so how did you get involved in street dance? I can't see street dance being really popular in Guernsey. Not on the beach, no. I did a purely technical background, which I still love and I still do. But when I was 13, I used to go to these roller discos at a local leisure centre. And I always used to see a group of guys with a bit of lino in the corner of the leisure centre, just kind of spinning around on their backs and

their heads. And I just thought that looks fun so I went over one day and just asked them if I could join in or if they could teach me some stuff so that was my I didn't know what I was doing I just thought it looked fun what they were doing so that was my first kind of lead into it and then when I actually came over to London to train professionally that's when sort of the world opened a little bit more as to what I could access in London. And that's when I started taking more classes in these kind of styles. It was really interesting when Portia said she likes popping because it's what the boys usually do. You have got a tremendous mix of boys and girls and racers from all over the place.

Have they all trained themselves to do it? Everybody's come from a completely different background. And some people still train technically. Some people, like Portia said, might have started there and moved on. I think the thing is, is there's something in this street dance family for everybody.

Whereas I think I absolutely adore ballet and I think it's an amazing training. But I think if you haven't got the feet and you haven't got a certain amount of turnout and the hip flexibility then you're kind of restricted to how far you can take that whereas I feel like there's like I said in the street dance family something for for everybody it's very welcoming. Portia what would you say to other young people who might like to get involved if they've got enough? How do they do it? I'd just say go for it. With hip-hop, literally, you can do anything.

In hip-hop, there's loads of different styles. So as we've said, you have the blocking, the popping, the breaking. You have every... Wacking, cramp house. Yeah, you have everything. So you can always find your niche somewhere. As I said, mine's popping. In Zoonation, we're all versatile,

but then there's a few people in the group that are special at doing everything as well. So I would just say go for it. I was talking to Portia Oti and Carrie-Anne Arnwee. Now, next week, it's Listener Week, when programmes from Monday to Friday are completely given over to you. You've already been in touch to tell us some of the things you want to tackle. On Monday, we'll be talking about how we bring up our sons to become kind, considerate men of the future.

And we'll discuss whether society encourages women to drink too much. Also, what is it like to get divorced at the age of 70? So join Jane Monday morning, two minutes past 10, if you can, from me for today. Enjoy the rest of the weekend. Bye-bye. I'm Sarah Trelevan, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered.

There was somebody out there who's faking pregnancies. I started like warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this?

What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story, settle in. Available now.