Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Booker Prize-winning author of Girl, Woman, Other; first black British writer to win the award.
On the island
Eight records
classic Swahili song … it's so full of love and yearning. It's just the most beautiful song.
my father … would have parties … they would play … Fela Kuti. … Now, listening to Fela Kuti, I love his long tracks, because you just enjoy it.
a beautifully spiritual song and it's kind of about the ancestors. … when I'm on an island, it's just going to remind me of the people I've known.
I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free
a song that still touches my heart today. … Patricia and I would be miming the song and dancing and then we'd go on stage.
it means we keep going … it became my kind of Booker anthem … I was singing it and I was dancing around the room and it means so much to me because I've reached this place after so long.
Köln Concert, Part IFavourite
it just takes me on an emotional journey every time I listen to it. … 40 years later, I still find that I am emotionally touched by it and I think that is great art.
I chose it because of my husband. … this is his favourite Bob Dylan song and I enjoy it too. So it's for David.
It's about activism, it's about protest, it's stirring, it's energizing, it's celebratory. I think it's a kind of activist's anthem.
In conversation
Presenter asks
2:21Your book hit the top of the charts in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protest this summer. How did it feel to see your writing connect not just with readers but with our times in that way?
It's astonishing, to be honest, to think that this book has become a bestseller because in my mind it's a book that I wrote when very few people knew my work … and so for it to then make the bestseller lists and then to reach number one and stay there for quite a while was surreal … these characters who most of them readers won't really have met before in fiction, it feels like they're going out there into the world and they're becoming known. And so black British women are becoming known. And I think that's a really positive thing.
Presenter asks
5:31You've said there was nothing in my childhood that said I could be a writer. So what did it say?
Well, my mother was a school teacher, and I did go to a grammar school. So I guess that would have been an option for me. … But there were no role models for me in terms of being a black British girl in the society around me, really. I went to the youth theatre when I was twelve and that changed my life. And I kind of wonder what would have happened if I hadn't have done that, because I might have been a bit directionless.
Presenter asks
The keepsakes
The book
The Norton Anthology of Poetry
(ed. various)
The Norton Anthology of Poetry, which covers a thousand years of verse and has nearly two thousand poems in it. So it'll keep me mentally agile. And it will also be very good for my writing, because I don't read enough poetry these days.
The luxury
Hologram of my husband. And I can just talk to him. Don't say no. You can talk at him. You won't be able to communicate with. I can imagine, though. Okay. I think that's okay.
What were your aspirations as a little girl?
Oh, I wanted to be a nun.
Presenter asks
16:37You've described yourself raging against the machine in your twenties. So you were a force to be reckoned with by men?
Well, not really. I mean, I like to think I was, but I was a kid. … we formed Theatre Black Women … We started the company literally the day we left drama school. We had no experience, and we just said we're not going to get any work because there is no work for us. … it was very much for us to create the story and control the story and to put it out there into the kinds of venues that would attract people who would be interested in our work.
Presenter asks
24:22How did it feel the moment you heard the news that you'd won The Booker?
I released a stream of expletives. I literally swore the house down. It was so astonishing and exhilarating. … the chair of the judges announced Margaret Atwood. And he said, and there's going to be two. And I was like, oh my God, who's going to be the second person? … I wanted it so much because I knew it was going to change everything. And so when he said my name, the room exploded … Margaret got up and she kind of gave me a hug. … she also gave me the podium. … my feet haven't really touched the ground ever since.
“It's astonishing, to be honest, to think that this book has become a bestseller because in my mind it's a book that I wrote when very few people knew my work and it's very much the kind of book I would write which is, I think, radical and experimental.”
“I remember when I was about maybe about 11, seeing him walking down the street towards me, and I crossed the road because I didn't want to say hello to him, because I didn't want to be associated with him. I mean, that feels terrible now, but that's what it was like because growing up in the sixties and seventies in a very white area, there was nothing around us to tell us that being a person of color was a good thing.”
“I do continue to promote other writers. … I feel very much right now in the centre of things, but I'm hopefully changing it from within. And I think we have to be inside the establishment, as well as doing what we do outside of it.”
“I will make the best of it. I will use the time to reflect and to become very spiritual and extremely healthy. Lots of exercise, lots of yoga, and lots of time to contemplate.”