Woman's Hour - Edna O'Brien's The Country Girls and Rohingya women refugees

Episode Date: August 16, 2019

The Country Girls by the Irish author Edna O’ Brien was banned by the Irish Censorship Board and burn publically in her hometown when it was first published in the 1960’s. This story of female friendship and the restrictions of rural Irish life for women became a best seller and the first of a trilogy now recognised as an iconic work of twentieth century Irish fiction. BBC Radio 4 is dramatizing all three books and Jenni speaks to Lin Coghlan who has adapted it for radio and the literary critic Alex Clark about the impact of the trilogy and why the description of female friendship and female experience feels contemporary even 50 years after the books were published. For the last two years hundreds of thousands of men, women and children have left their homes in Myanmar and made a perilous journey to refugee camps in Bangladesh. They’re Rohingya Muslims. They have their own language and culture but the government of Myanmar, a Buddhist country, refuses to recognize them. The first exodus began two years ago when Rohingya villages where burned down and civilians, including children under 5, were attacked and killed. But even though some of them have made it to refugee camps in southeast Bangladesh, it can still be risky, especially for teenage girls. Karen Reidy is from UNICEF and joins us from Cox’s Bazaar, the world’s largest refugee camp.Stories of lives changed by youth work in our series “Off The Rails”. We’re talking to young people in danger of getting into trouble and to those who help them back from the brink. Nequela, who is now a senior youth worker sees her teenage self in the young people she works with. Jo Morris joined her as she talked with teenager Shenique who has been working with ‘Nix’, as she calls Nequela, after repeatedly getting into fights. Zoo Nation dance company are celebrated for their narrative hip hop dance productions. Their younger company Zoo Nation Youth now has a new show, Tales of the Turntable, which features some of the best young dancers and looks at the early origins of hip-hop, funk and soul, disco, house and rap. Jenni is joined by director and choreographer Carrie-Anne Ingrouille and by dancer Portia Oti.Presenter: Jenni Murray Producer: Helen Fitzhenry

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. Hello, Jenny Murray welcoming you to the Friday edition of the Woman's Hour podcast. It's two years since hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims were driven from Myanmar to refugee camps in Bangladesh. UNICEF reports that teenage girls in the camps are increasingly at risk from sex traffickers. What's being done to help them? Earlier in the week, we heard from Nikila in our series Off the Rails. Today, the former offender talks to Shanique in an attempt to save her from trouble. And a high-octane show at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, Zoo Nation Youth Company's Tales of the Turntable

traces the origins of street music and dance. Now 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 really 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, in 2007, Edna spoke to Jane Little on Woman's Hour about her feelings when the book was banned and burned. Well, I mainly felt frightened because they were very, very cross. My mother was, they were both cross and I suppose ashamed. It was, if you come from a small place, a small community,

people in a sense think, still do, whether it was 1960 or not, in a sense, you belong to them. So what I felt, I'd always wanted to write, and I still always want to write, and it's something stronger than ambition. It's a fervour. It's a longing. So what I think upset me very much was that I was doing something from inside my being, my mind, and that admittedly based on experiences around me, and that that should incur such wrath, seemed to me, I would have liked to have said to them, no, I'm not against you. I'm not mocking you. And as for the idea of the book

being, you know, very sexual, well, it isn't. So it's longing and it's two young girls trying to escape the fetters of parents, of nuns, of jump frog. I would say it's more wild than it is, you know, sexual. But a bit too wild for its time and for your roots. Well, I think being a woman and a young woman, actually, I came to England in 1959 and I wrote it in the first three weeks that I had left Ireland. And it's quite, I think, fairly humorous book. But I never stopped crying when I was writing it. I missed the country and the locale that I had wanted to leave. And that's what writing, writing in a way captures, it both captures what is gone and seeks to capture what cannot exist. Because although I write a book may seem fairly realistic and it's written in simple style, it's more complicated than that, because it's not a diary. It's a story. It seems extraordinary that you became a writer at all,

because you've said in the past that you only had one book in the village, a copy of Rebecca. There was, yes. I was just in Cornwall this weekend, and I passed where Manderley was, and I thought, yes, there was one copy of Rebecca, which, as I have said before, but I've never to you, it was loaned by the page. Unfortunately, not consecutive.

So page 84 might reach one and then page three. But people, more women than men, were very, very hungry for it. So you used to share the story orally as well? Well, people would tell you what Max de Winter and where, which you didn't want to know because you wanted to get the book. But the thing that interests me very much and something that applies still, because although the world has changed and got rackety,

the primal emotions of love, of longing, of this, that and the other are still there and I hope they're there. But the thing that interests me in my own experience is, although I had no access to books and no, as such, education, I had the wish to, and that somehow one is able, through will or through luck or through a whole other unnameable thing, is able to find language. I sometimes ask myself, where did all these words that I think know and value

come from without a literary education? And I think the greatest education, and I would like anybody who is listening to us, the greatest still education in the world is to read, not so many, but to read extraordinary and great books. Edna O'Brien speaking in 2007. Now central to the first of the three novels is the really rather edgy friendship

between Kate and Baba. 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 Baba. I want to sit here all night and dream. I think you've gone mad. and confesses her passion to Baba. 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 Barbara by Avian McGinty. Well, Alex Clark is a literary critic who joins us from her home in Ireland. 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. And it's amazing hearing Edna O'Brien talking because 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. She reads James Joyce and tells boyfriends about him when they're not very interested. 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. No, but there's desire. 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 book, you know, came out, the first book came out in 1960. And, you know, we were still 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. Well, what would you say we do learn about being a woman in Ireland in the 50s and 60s

from the book? I mean, Kate's father is just so infuriating. But she loves him, doesn't she? I mean, the awful thing is that her mother, whom she really adores, and she essentially kind of live in fear of the disruption. And I think there's that sense that they are entirely responsible for maintaining the ongoing stability of the household. Now, Kate's father is in contrast to other male characters in the book but i think there's that sense that women have the responsibility to ensure continuity to ensure stability to ensure home and yet absolutely no power in which to do that then this is not the first classic you've dramatized for the radio mansfield park four set saga to name just two 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 is 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. There was still, even though the pill was, you know, 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.

And Alex, what was going on in Edna's life when she was writing The Country Girls? I mean, she said that she wrote it incredibly quickly. She was in London. Yes. What was going on for her? Well, she had sort of, as it were, kind of a scapegoat. She was sort of frying pan and fire.

She'd left County Clare. She'd come to Dublin. She'd got a, I mean, probably in many ways, had a licence to practise as a pharmacist. But then she'd come to England with much kind of attendant drama. She'd married the writer Ernest Gebler. And I think it's fair to say that even at that fairly early point in their relationship, it wasn't awfully happy.

She was exposing herself and becoming exposed to all sorts of literary and intellectual currents, which also underpins quite a lot of what the country girls are about. It's not just these girls' hunger for male company, for sex, for romance. It's also just for the wider experience of the world. So she was in some ways away from Ireland. And yet, as she said in that clip, she was beginning to miss it. She was missing the sort of calendar complexity of it,

the countryside, the rootedness. And you can feel that in the writing, can't you, Lynne? I mean, 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 Emo 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, the second and third books moved their focus, you know there wasn't anything quite as dramatic they had moved 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 so I personally I think they just stand together as a great work. And it's brilliant that the whole thing is being dramatized 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, who could ever speak for Edna O'Brien? Why wouldn't she? You know, her last book, The Red Chairs, was about a Balkan war criminal who fetches up in rural Ireland. She'sairs, you know, was about a Balkan war criminal who fetches up in rural Ireland. 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 rest the pen from her hand will not give up alex clark and lynn cocklin thank you very much indeed and we're very much looking forward to the country girls beginning on monday that's at 10 45 here on woman's hour and you can hear an extended interview with edna o'Brien in a front row special programme. That's going to be on Bank Holiday Monday,

which is the 26th of August. And thank you both very much. And we would like to hear from you too. When did you first read The Country Girls and what impact did it have on you? Now, for the past two years, hundreds and thousands of men, women and children have fled their homes in Myanmar and escaped to refugee camps in Bangladesh. They're Rohingya Muslims who were driven from Buddhist Myanmar.

At least 7,000 were killed two years ago when the violent expulsions began and their villages were burned. The survivors expected to be safe in Bangladesh but UNICEF is reporting that life in the camps is particularly dangerous for females, especially for teenage girls. UNICEF's Karen Reedy joins us from Cox's Bazaar which is the world's largest refugee camp. Karen, why is life particularly risky there for teenage girls? Hi, good afternoon, Jenny. So just to explain, daily life in the camps is already extremely difficult for the people that live there. You've got close to a million refugees who are living in really crowded, congested conditions. At the moment, we're in the middle of the monsoon with landslides and flooding in the

camps. And then teenage girls, in addition to that, face extra challenges. Usually, when girls reach the age of puberty in Rohingya society, they have to be withdrawn from, they're often withdrawn from education, and they're restricted from leaving their homes without a male guardian. So it's quite a conservative culture. And this is something that's seen as for their own protection and we know that when children are not you know staying in education for a long time then they're facing extra risks they're facing things like child marriage child labor and also trafficking so how is the trafficking happen at? Who is picking them up? So in this area, it's also a well-known drugs trafficking route between Myanmar and Bangladesh.

So there are different criminal networks that are operating in Cox's Bazar, and there would have been trafficking taking place here before the influx of the refugees. So, you know, you would have a mixture of Bangladeshi and also Rohingya community members themselves involved in the trafficking of young girls and also boys in the camps. To what extent, Karen, are families selling the girls because they have no money and no means of earning any money? It's difficult to comment on the scale exactly,

because it can be hard to get reliable data, and for cases to be verified, it takes a long time. But we do know that since the beginning of the response, in the last two years, there's been 400-plus cases of trafficking that's taken place, that have been reported to have taken place. So what's being done to try and help the girls? So from UNICEF's point, from our programme's perspective, we work on three main areas. We work on prevention, we work on reporting and documenting cases, and also on providing response, providing services to victims of trafficking and their families as well.

So part of our prevention programs are really providing education, life skills, helping children to understand the risks of daily life in the camps and to avoid dangerous situations. We're also documenting cases if they're reported through our partners. I can share a case with you that we came across recently. There was a woman who was a survivor of a massacre in Myanmar, and she came to Bangladesh. Her husband was killed before they left Myanmar two years ago. So she was the head of the household with her three children. And her mother and father also lived there. And one time when her father was sick in the hospital, she had to go and spend time with him.

And during that time, the grandmother sent the eldest daughter, who was 12, to the market to buy some vegetables. And the daughter, basically, she never returned. So the only thing that her mother has left of her is her her red dress her favorite item of clothing um and and you know she's reported it to the to the security authorities but you know there's been no trace of her daughter ever since and where do you think where do you think that girl will have been taken to it's difficult to know if you know there's there's different possibilities the person in the child could have been trafficked within just Cox's Bazaar district itself. They could have been trafficked around the country of Bangladesh or they could have been trafficked overseas as well. to domestic servitude, their promised jobs, their families are convinced to sell their children. In other cases, you have kidnappings or abductions.

So there's many different possibilities that could have happened. Karen Reedy, thank you very much indeed for joining us this morning. Now still to come in today's programme, Zoo Nation's Youth Company at the Queen Elizabeth Hall Tales and the Turntable is the name of a show Welcome in today's programme, Zoo Nation's Youth Company at the Queen Elizabeth Hall Tales. At the Turntable is the name of a show tracing the development of hip-hop, funk, soul, disco, house and rap. And the serial, the final episode of the Latvian Locum. Now earlier in the week we heard from Nikila, who agreed to take part in a series we called Off the Rails.

She'd been in trouble in the past and had served a prison sentence for drugs offences, but she managed to turn things around and she now works as a senior youth worker at a centre in South London. She mentors young people who are at risk of getting into trouble in the way she did. Jo Morris joined her as she talked with a teenager called Shanike, who has been repeatedly getting into fights. How's your week been? It's been alright. I didn't think you was coming to me to stay out of bed you know. Yeah I was coming in the closet. No, my mum made me lay.

How's your week been? It's been alright I don't know. How's your week been? It's been all right, Adam. How's that college? All right, from where we left off last week. And I'll be honest, you're very hard-headed. And a lot of last week, yeah, could have gone a little bit more smoother, maybe if you'd listened. Two ears and one mouth for a reason. But when you're in the wrong sometimes, wrong and strong doesn't go.

And last week, you was wrong and strong. So, Shanique, how long have you been coming to see Michaela? It's been, like, two, three months. Wait, no. Before summer? Before my birthday. Yeah, for that little incident in Toadstool. Yeah, June. What little incident? Some boy was having an altercation,

so we took it upon ourselves to go and sort out the issue, but it didn't turn very nice. It was a bit of a messy situation. So this is why I said the importance of this intervention and having conversations, because it shifts the mindset. When people say they don't like me, good, I don't mind. I like the fact that they don't like me. Because at least I know I have haters. I love it.

I actually love it. Because when I succeed, them people that don't like me, they're going to want to be with me. Young people have to find ways to cope and as you've seen that's a coping mechanism. Enjoying the fact that people don't like me because it will allow me to thrive. Yeah, that's a coping mechanism, enjoying the fact that people don't like me because it will allow me to thrive.

Yeah, that's basically it. Yeah, really, that's it. What sort of things have you been getting into trouble doing? It's mainly fighting. I'm not the type of person to carry weapons and get arrested, so it's mainly fighting. That's for people just triggering me off. Even if I'm not in the mood and someone's poking me

or someone's talking to me or saying something I don't like or if someone knows how to get me annoyed and I know they know it and they carry on doing it, it will just make me want to fight them. Also, Shanique not knowing what her trigger points are. So if we know what our trigger points are, sometimes we won't allow others to let us even get to that point because we know it. So diffusing it, walking away, counting to ten,

singing a song, putting my headphones on, writing a note, those type of things, methods to come into play to help her understand where your ticking point is and how to deal with it before it explodes. What does Nikila do differently that maybe other adults

don't? She understands me. Other people think they understand me. They don't understand me. That's basically how it is. So how is Nikila helping you? Anger management, trying to control that to do the opposite to what I would have done before. So instead of wanting

to fight someone, walk away from the situation, instead of wanting to argue with them, write it down and say what i would say but don't actually say it and stuff like that like that old shinnick i would have beat him up i would have said oh so you tried to stab me and i'm not the type of person i don't carry weapons but when it's a boy like because boys will say oh i'm not gonna touch a girl there girl not, I will beat you up. You tried to stab me, so I'm not going to stab you back, but I will seriously punch you up because that's violating. Like, you can't try and hurt me and think just because I'm a girl, I'll just be like, oh, he tried to stab me.

No, I won't. If I wasn't doing this intervention with Shanique, the mentality of Shanique is go and knock you out the humiliation of it would have escalated to someone most probably trying to front up with Shanique's boyfriend to get a reaction because they most people wouldn't have wanted to fight a girl or the escalation of it or they got girls to fight Shanique it would have escalated what was your first impressions of Nikila when you met her? Yeah, I was like, yeah, that's my G. Because it was like, I don't know how to explain it.

That's my people. That's someone I can turn to. In my head, I'm like, that's someone I want to be like when I'm older. Not like, in a negative way. Not the negative stuff of me. But the progression. Because I can say, like, when I'm older and have my children, I could be like, oh, rah. I was like this when I was younger, you know,

and then some lady called Nikila, she went and helped me, and now I'm teaching you the ways. Nikila, what was your first impression? Wild card. Mini me. Saw so much of me in Shanique. She's athletic, she does sports. She's very much like how I was when I was 15, 16. I had a lot of balls.

I had a bit of grit within me. And I see so much of that in Shanique. But it can go in the wrong way if she hasn't got the right support or the right people around her to say, you know what, maybe you might need to reflect on that because that's going to have a bad impact on you in the future. And just be that person to throw that question in their mind so it gives them the chance to think about it and think,

ooh, is that right, is that wrong? Is that the right choice, the right decision? I really want to take this young girl under my wing. Yeah. Is it hard to avoid trouble sometimes, though? I didn't get myself in trouble on purpose, but it's like the trouble would just come to me. Is Nikila different from other adults in

your life does she talk to you differently yeah if it's my mom and i tell my mom about a situation you get yourself involved in it you better get yourself out oh but let me say no no don't hear it no no no no no no no no that's what you'll do just cut them do you sometimes feel that adults don't listen to you then? Yeah, all the time It's like having a family dinner And you're trying to say something And you want to say, you'll be like, yeah but And then everyone's talking over you

And you say, yeah but And then they're still talking over you And you just want to get something out But you just can't say it I'm never heard So Nakeela told me that when she was in prison It was a phone call with her mum Telling her to put her chin up

that helped her. What would help you? Having that. That's like my dad. When my dad was in prison, it was when I was younger, so it was like he was telling me, make sure you're a good girl. I was young, but I still remember,

so it was like, make sure you're a good girl for mum, don't give no trouble, make sure you're being nice to the teachers at school because in primary school I was I wouldn't care about anything I would just fight, I would get on to teachers I was basically like I was just reckless I was just a reckless little one

Were you angry? Yeah I was, I don't know what I was angry at though I think everything that someone was to do to me was just wrong. That's how I would feel. And especially because at the time my mum was young and then my dad was in prison, so it was like, who do I really have? I don't feel like I have anyone to be like, yeah, I could say this or I could do that. So I think more time I just took it upon myself to be like,

well, if you're if you're cussing me I will beat you up and that's how it was now I remember the first day of year seven some boy um said to me oh go go suck your dad whatever and because I had the breakdown in a relationship with my dad I got so angry and I had a fight with him and I was like I don't I don't I don't respect that don't talk about my dad and I just beat him up and then I think because I've calmed down now about like I've calmed down but people say I just be like okay I don't mind I just be like cool that's my mum I don't mind cool what would you like to say to adults about what you need I think I would say I need more of the support and loving

because it will be there, but it's not shown all the time. Do you find it hard to trust people? Yeah, I do. Because I've been through a lot in the past and I've put my trust into a lot of people and the people who I've put my trust into has basically just dashed my trust to the side, just stepped on me, really.

Do you trust Nikila? Yeah, of course. The mentality has shifted, and that's what I can say has been the change. The mentality and the amount of risk Shanique's willing to put herself into has changed dramatically. Before the summer holidays, it was mad. You're always in problems. Are you ever scared for your own safety, Nikila?

Nah, I'm not, you know. I'm not, I'm not. This sounds so big-headed, but I've got a lot of respect in the area. I'm well-known. Like the young people say now, I'm baked. Everybody knows me. I'm everywhere. I'm common. How much do you know about her past life? She's told me quite a lot. She's told you?

About her being in prison, about her basically being a wild card. What I've done, she's done. I've learned that it's not only me that's gone through the things I've gone through. Nikita's gone through it as well, so that's why when I tell her about it, she understands. If you hadn't met Nikita and you didn't come to this youth club? I would probably be sitting down in the police station saying, oh, why did you have a fight? Why did you attempt to stab someone?

Really? That's how it would be if I didn't really meet Nix. So, yeah. You'd go that far to say that? Yeah, because I think... Because Nix has taught me, don't let people get to you. But sometimes it gets the better of me. There's been times I just want to fight my mum,

but I've always said I would never want to put my hand on her, but the anger just overtakes me. I just don't care what I'm doing anymore. So I feel like if I didn't meet Nix, something bad, like really bad, would have happened. So my hand's always going to be here. So if you feel like at the minute, oh, Nick, I'm all right, getting on with life by myself,

thank you for getting me to this stage. See you later, I want to do the rest on my own. That's no problem. If you need to come back and say, oh, my gosh, I need support here in this area, the hand's still here. It's sort of, bye, see you later, you're in the world on your own. The continuous help and support is there.

Oh, yeah. All right, S right shaneet and walking through all right i'll message you later have a nice one yeah yeah that's actually nikina and shanique spoke to joe morris 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 the 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. Bex Hill!

Shall I drop another beat? 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 there's a couple that are really important to me. 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? So ever since I've been young, my mum's always said that when music's come on, I've always been bopping, 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 and 70s in there. And that's what my mum listens to at home. So that was like, 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 favourite then from those earlier times? My favourite probably have to be the 80s. I love that bit. Yeah. Which music? Go on, give me some examples of what you love. So like the break beat yeah i mean porsche's a really strong um all-round dancer but i'd say poppin is one of her styles as well so basically in the 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 dive into the style and train in it because I feel like it looks good on women and it just shows how women can be very strong in the dance community. You've got a T-shirt on at the moment and 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. When you come to see the show, you definitely see a lot of locking.

I know. I was supposed to come and see it yesterday afternoon at 2 o'clock and got caught in the worst traffic you've ever seen in London in your life gridlock and didn't make it so I shall come at a later date but I have heard a great deal about it I know it's a really good show you started though didn't you with jazz and and ballet yeah so did you move on to this so basically when I started my mum thought okay let's do ballet and jazz because I already like 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 and I was 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 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 to do. Because I just prefer hip hop more. I don't know, ballet and jazz is just not my thing. What did Zoonation 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. Hence the second part of Zoo Nation. 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 um I wasn't living here at the time so I can't you know speak from the gospel about that

but it's certainly a style that has surged and I think because it's so uh 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 flavours and styles of it, and like Portia said, even if you take it back to the funk sounds of the 70s, 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 not on the beach no um so again I'm 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 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 you said, you have the blocking, the popping, the breaking. You have every... Crump house. Crump house, yeah, you have everything. So you can always find your niche somewhere. As I said, mine's popping. In Zoo Nation, like, everyone's special at everything, and we can all do everything.

So we're all versatile, but then there's a few people in the group that are special at doing everything as well. So I'd just say go for it. I was talking to Portia Otey and Carrie-Anne Ennui from Zoo Nation. Now, I asked you to send us your memories of reading Edna O'Brien's Country Girls for the first time and lots of you

shared your stories. Emma emailed, I'm really thrilled that you're dramatising the Country Girls. I grew up in India and remember reading her books in the heat of an Indian summer and yearning for the countryside she depicted. Years later, in Ireland, her books came flooding back to me and the countryside she wrote to me

was as real as the one a 14-year-old girl had imagined in a hot and dusty India. Thank you, Edna O'Brien, for the magic of the countryside Hilary emailed, I first read the Country Girl trilogy in the mid-1980s when I was in my 20s. She inspired my love of female writers, Irish writers and of Ireland itself. I quoted from her in my university interview to study English literature and I'm now the proud owner of a cocker spaniel named Edna after her. And Louise 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. With hindsight, O'Brien was an influence, just as my mother feared. But when I became a mother, I tried to give them more freedom and the tools to deal with it. O'Brien's honesty was what marked her out back then. She didn't gloss over real life. I'm so glad she's getting the focus she deserves. Now do join me for Weekend Woman's Hour

tomorrow afternoon at four o'clock when you can hear Somaliland's first midwife, first foreign minister and former First Lady Edna Adan Ismail talking about what galvanised her campaign to end the practice of FGM. That's four o'clock tomorrow afternoon, weekend moments are. Be there if you can. Bye bye. Beyond Today is the daily podcast from Radio 4. It asks one big question about one big story in the news and beyond. I'm Tina Dehealy. I'm Matthew Price. And along with a team of curious producers,

we are searching for answers that change the way we see the world. Subscribe to us on BBC Sounds. And join in on the hashtag Beyond Today. I went down, you went up. I'm Sarah Treleaven, 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 was 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.