{"id":63110,"date":"2022-02-15T23:03:08","date_gmt":"2022-02-15T23:03:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=63110"},"modified":"2022-02-15T23:03:44","modified_gmt":"2022-02-15T23:03:44","slug":"how-bernardine-evaristo-conquered-british-literature","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=63110","title":{"rendered":"How Bernardine Evaristo Conquered British Literature"},"content":{"rendered":"

How Bernardine Evaristo Conquered British Literature<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The New Yorker<\/a>
\n2022-02-03<\/p>\n

Anna Russell<\/strong><\/a>
\nLondon, United Kingdom<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/a>
\u201cThere were people who thought my career was great as it was,\u201d Evaristo says. \u201cBut they didn\u2019t know what I really wanted for myself, you know?<\/em>\u201d
\nPhotograph by Ekua King \/ Evening Standard \/ eyevine \/ Redux<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In a new memoir<\/a>, the writer describes how she was long excluded from the halls of literary power, and how she finally broke in.<\/em><\/p>\n

hen the British author Bernardine Evaristo<\/a> was in her early twenties, she and her drama-school friends would go to London\u2019s<\/a> theatres and heckle the performances. \u201cIt wouldn\u2019t have been anything like \u2018Rubbish!\u2019 because it was a political heckling,\u201d Evaristo, now sixty-two, told me recently. They would have been more likely to yell \u201cSexist!\u201d or \u201cRacist!\u201d and then disappear, giddily, into the night. Recounting the habit this past December, Evaristo put on a mock posh accent and called it \u201cappalling, appalling<\/em> behavior.\u201d The week prior, she had been named president of the U.K.\u2019s<\/a> Royal Society of Literature<\/a>, becoming the first person of color to hold the position in the organization\u2019s two-hundred-year history. (She is also the first who did not attend at least one of the following: Oxford<\/a>, Cambridge<\/a>, Eton<\/a>.) Evaristo has some sympathy for her younger, angrier self. If social media<\/a> had been around in her youth, she thinks she might have been one of what she calls the \u201cRabid Wolves of the Twittersphere<\/a>.\u201d \u201cBut we do need these renegades out there, don\u2019t we?\u201d she said. \u201cWe do need these people who will just lob a verbal hand grenade.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since 2011, Evaristo and her husband, David Shannon<\/a>, have lived on the outskirts of West London<\/a>, where she has dubbed herself \u201cMz Evaristo of Suburbia.\u201d When I met her at her home recently, the doors to each room were painted a different bright color: blue, yellow, pink. Evaristo is tall, with a booming laugh. It\u2019s been a long time since she has heckled anyone. These days, she sees herself as a diplomatic, modernizing force at the top of the British literary establishment from which she was long excluded. \u201cThe person I am today no longer throws stones at the fortress,\u201d she writes in her new memoir, \u201cManifesto: On Never Giving Up<\/a>,\u201d which was published in the U.S.<\/a> by Grove Atlantic<\/a> last month. She used to laugh when people told her to think before she spoke. Now: \u201cI\u2019m so careful about everything I say.\u201d…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a new memoir, the writer describes how she was long excluded from the halls of literary power, and how she finally broke in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1245,8,10,25],"tags":[33039,1345,16367,3886],"class_list":["post-63110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-biography","category-media-archive","category-uk","category-women","tag-anna-russell","tag-bernardine-evaristo","tag-david-shannon","tag-the-new-yorker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=63110"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63110\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63113,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63110\/revisions\/63113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=63110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=63110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=63110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}