美国国家公共电台 NPR The Booker Prize Is Shared By The 12 Black Brits In 'Girl, Woman, Other'

 

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

Bernardine Evaristo's novel "Girl, Woman, Other" has just been published in the United States after sharing Britain's Booker Prize with Margaret Atwood's "The Testaments¹." It follows 12 characters whose lives touch each other or come close or sometimes nowhere near and gives flesh-and-blood portraits of people who are often introduced with hyphens, like Amma, a socialist², lesbian playwright³, and Megan/Morgan, who is nonbinary, and Winsome⁴, a Barbadian Anglo immigrant and unhappy wife.

Bernardine Evaristo, a great writer who's Anglo-Nigerian, joins us from London. Thanks so much for being with us.

BERNARDINE EVARISTO: You're welcome. It's good to be here.

SIMON: Help set the scene of these unfolding shared stories for us.

EVARISTO: Yes. So basically, it's a novel about 12 primarily black British women. They're aged⁵ 19 to 93. The youngest, Yazz, is a university student, and the oldest, Hattie, is a farmer in the North of England. And I have women of every generation in between. They have different occupations, different cultural backgrounds, which very much reflects black British presence and history. So some of them have roots in Africa. Some of them have roots in the Caribbean. They are different sexualities.

And then the book opens with Amma, who is a black lesbian theater director. And she has a show opening at the National Theatre in London. She has spent nearly 40 years working in theater as a director and writer and very much on the margins⁶ feeling overlooked, very radical⁷ in her politics. And suddenly, she's got this big break. And then the story kind of goes off into all these other stories. And at the end of the novel, we see the show opening and the sort of gathering⁸ together of lots of characters in the book.

SIMON: You've said in interviews, I want to put presence into absence.

EVARISTO: Oh, well, so there are very few black British novels getting published. That's the truth of it. So when I decided⁹ to write this novel, I wanted to put as many black British women into it as possible to show the sort of heterogeneity¹⁰ of who we are in this society and to explore us as fully¹¹ realized, complex, flawed individuals whose stories are as worthy¹² of telling as anyone else's.

SIMON: I want to get you to read a section. It centers on a young woman, Yazz, who is Amma's daughter. Her mother's play is about to open. Your style has been so justly lauded¹³. I know you call it fusion¹⁴ fiction. If you could read that section for us.

EVARISTO: Yes. (Reading) Yazz sits on the seats chosen by Mum in the middle of the stalls, one of the best in the house, although she'd rather be hidden away at the back in case the play is another embarrassment¹⁵. She's tied her amazingly wild, energetic, strong and voluminous Afro back because people sitting behind her in venues¹⁶ complain they can't see the stage. When her Afroed (ph) compatriots accuse people of racism¹⁷ or microaggressions for this very reason, Yazz asks them how they'd feel if an unruly topiary hedge blocked their view of the stage at a concert.

SIMON: (Laughter).

EVARISTO: There you go, taster of Yazz.

SIMON: I love that section. Also, I admire any British novelist using the phrase topiary. It just doesn't happen in this country so much.

EVARISTO: Oh, right. OK.

SIMON: Yazz's mother Amma is a revolutionary figure in British drama and culture, but Yazz considers her just a little antique (ph), doesn't she?

EVARISTO: One of the things that I do with the book is that there are four mother-daughter relationships, and that is always very fertile territory for fiction. So, yes, Yazz is 19. She comes from, you know, a very black middle-class family. She is actually quite an entitled young woman. She's very ambitious. You know, she says that she wants to be a journalist with her own column because it's about time the whole world heard what she has to say.

And I think when young people are coming into themselves and coming of age, often, they do disparage¹⁸ the person who gave birth to them or their parents. And her mother is a feminist¹⁹. And, you know, she raised Yazz to be a strong feminist daughter. She describes her as her countercultural experiment. But, of course, that backfires because her daughter is very articulate and takes aim at her mother all the time.

SIMON: Yeah.

EVARISTO: And for example, her daughter is very much engaged with issues of gender²⁰ and nonbinary issues and so on, and she says to her mother, look; Mum, being a woman is so passe. She says, I am - you know, I'm a humanist. That's who I am now.

SIMON: I loved her, and I found myself sometimes shouting, come on, Yazz. Give your mother a break, for goodness' sake.

EVARISTO: Yeah.

SIMON: It is irresistible²¹ to note your novel opens with a play for which Amma finally receives due recognition just as your novel wins the Booker.

EVARISTO: Oh, yeah (laughter). Who knew that this one would break through in the way that it has? And I - in a sense, I think it could've only have broken through at this time because I think we're living in a time in the U.K. where there are a couple of movements or moments which have slightly, I think, changed people's perceptions of who we are in this society. One of them is the #MeToo movement, and the other is Black Lives Matter. And they came about, I think, three or four years ago. And since then, there has been this shift in consciousness in terms of how black art and black women's art is being received in this country.

And, definitely, winning the Booker has opened my work up to the world at large, and that has been the most incredible thing. And I'm still pinching myself, really, because it's only been sort of just over three weeks. And every so often, I get into a bit of a mood, and I think - start feeling a bit snarly²². And then I think, Bernardine, you won the Booker. Shut up. You won the Booker. You have no reason to be disgruntled about anything anymore because your work is out there.

SIMON: So if that latte from Pret a Manger is a little flat, do you say, be quiet about it; you won the Booker?

EVARISTO: No, no, no. I will complain about my coffee. Coffee is extremely important, yeah. I've got my priorities right.

SIMON: You referred to the stuff surrounding identities as cladding (ph).

EVARISTO: Yes.

SIMON: I think in my introduction I said hyphenated. And I felt a little squeamish when writing that introduction because by the end of the novel, I had gotten to know people - characters as people. But, of course, to introduce them, I had to put all those hyphens in. Are you ever concerned that we're just checking off boxes in literature or judging people by hyphens?

EVARISTO: No, I don't think so. I think it's important to name us according to how we experience the world. So we black women, for example, black people are - we are experiencing the world as people who are racialized, right? We experience the world as people who are considered female or, you know, if our sexuality is homosexual - whatever. So I think it's important for us to name the thing that we do, so I'm not at all squeamish, actually, about identifying myself as a black British woman writer and identifying this book as about black British women primarily, because most of them are, because that's what I'm doing.

And just to say, you know, white male writers, for example, I would say most of them are writing from that perspective and often with white male protagonists²³. They don't need to label themselves as such because they are the accepted norm. They are the default, right? I'm not the default. You know, what I'm doing is different. What we're doing - women of color - is different. And I think it's very important to identify that for ourselves and for the reader.

SIMON: Bernardine Evaristo - her Booker Prize-winning novel "Girl, Woman, Other" has just been published in the United States - thank you so much for being with us.

EVARISTO: Thank you very much.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

1 testaments   

n.遗嘱( testament的名词复数 )；实际的证明

参考例句：

• The coastline is littered with testaments to the savageness of the waters. 海岸线上充满了海水肆虐过后的杂乱东西。 来自互联网
• A personification of wickedness and ungodliness alluded to in the Old and New Testaments. 彼勒《旧约》和《新约》中邪恶和罪孽的化身。 来自互联网

2 socialist   

n.社会主义者；adj.社会主义的

参考例句：

• China is a socialist country,and a developing country as well.中国是一个社会主义国家，也是一个发展中国家。
• His father was an ardent socialist.他父亲是一个热情的社会主义者。

3 playwright   

n.剧作家，编写剧本的人

参考例句：

• Gwyn Thomas was a famous playwright.格温·托马斯是著名的剧作家。
• The playwright was slaughtered by the press.这位剧作家受到新闻界的无情批判。

4 winsome   

n.迷人的，漂亮的

参考例句：

• She gave him her best winsome smile.她给了他一个最为迷人的微笑。
• She was a winsome creature.她十分可爱。

5 aged   

adj.年老的，陈年的

参考例句：

• He had put on weight and aged a little.他胖了，也老点了。
• He is aged,but his memory is still good.他已年老，然而记忆力还好。

6 margins   

边( margin的名词复数 )； 利润； 页边空白； 差数

参考例句：

• They have always had to make do with relatively small profit margins. 他们不得不经常设法应付较少的利润额。
• To create more space between the navigation items, add left and right margins to the links. 在每个项目间留更多的空隙，加左或者右的margins来定义链接。

7 radical   

n.激进份子，原子团，根号；adj.根本的，激进的，彻底的

参考例句：

• The patient got a radical cure in the hospital.病人在医院得到了根治。
• She is radical in her demands.她的要求十分偏激。

8 gathering   

n.集会，聚会，聚集

参考例句：

• He called on Mr. White to speak at the gathering.他请怀特先生在集会上讲话。
• He is on the wing gathering material for his novels.他正忙于为他的小说收集资料。

9 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。

10 heterogeneity   

n.异质性；多相性

参考例句：

• The heterogeneity and uneven development of China's economy are rather advantageous in the war of resistance.中国经济的不统一、不平衡，对于抗日战争反为有利。
• In heterogeneity is creation of the world.世界产生自异质性。

11 fully   

adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地

参考例句：

• The doctor asked me to breathe in,then to breathe out fully.医生让我先吸气，然后全部呼出。
• They soon became fully integrated into the local community.他们很快就完全融入了当地人的圈子。

12 worthy   

adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的

参考例句：

• I did not esteem him to be worthy of trust.我认为他不值得信赖。
• There occurred nothing that was worthy to be mentioned.没有值得一提的事发生。

13 lauded   

v.称赞，赞美( laud的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• They lauded the former president as a hero. 他们颂扬前总统为英雄。 来自辞典例句
• The nervy feats of the mountaineers were lauded. 登山者有勇气的壮举受到赞美。 来自辞典例句

14 fusion   

n.溶化；熔解；熔化状态，熔和；熔接

参考例句：

• Brass is formed by the fusion of copper and zinc. 黄铜是通过铜和锌的熔合而成的。
• This alloy is formed by the fusion of two types of metal.这种合金是用两种金属熔合而成的。

15 embarrassment   

n.尴尬；使人为难的人(事物)；障碍；窘迫

参考例句：

• She could have died away with embarrassment.她窘迫得要死。
• Coughing at a concert can be a real embarrassment.在音乐会上咳嗽真会使人难堪。

16 venues   

n.聚集地点( venue的名词复数 )；会场；（尤指）体育比赛场所；犯罪地点

参考例句：

• The band will be playing at 20 different venues on their UK tour. 这个乐队在英国巡回演出期间将在20个不同的地点演出。
• Farmers market corner, 800 meters long, 60 meters wide livestock trading venues. 农牧市场东北角，有长800米，宽60米的牲畜交易场地。 来自互联网

17 racism   

n.民族主义；种族歧视(意识)

参考例句：

• He said that racism is endemic in this country.他说种族主义在该国很普遍。
• Racism causes political instability and violence.种族主义道致政治动荡和暴力事件。

18 disparage   

v.贬抑，轻蔑

参考例句：

• Your behaviour will disparage the whole family.你的行为将使全家丢脸。
• Never disparage yourself or minimize your strength or power.不要贬低你自己或降低你的力量或能力。

19 feminist   

adj.主张男女平等的，女权主义的

参考例句：

• She followed the feminist movement.她支持女权运动。
• From then on,feminist studies on literature boomed.从那时起，男女平等受教育的现象开始迅速兴起。

20 gender   

n.（生理上的）性，（名词、代词等的）性

参考例句：

• French differs from English in having gender for all nouns.法语不同于英语，所有的名词都有性。
• Women are sometimes denied opportunities solely because of their gender.妇女有时仅仅因为性别而无法获得种种机会。

21 irresistible   

adj.非常诱人的，无法拒绝的，无法抗拒的

参考例句：

• The wheel of history rolls forward with an irresistible force.历史车轮滚滚向前，势不可挡。
• She saw an irresistible skirt in the store window.她看见商店的橱窗里有一条叫人着迷的裙子。

22 snarly   

adj.善于嚣叫的；脾气坏的；爱谩骂的；纠缠在一起的

参考例句：

• It was fought in East Main Street in Columbus with a large, snarly nondescript. 这一架是在哥伦布东大街打的，对手是个大膘肥，呲牙咧嘴，是个不伦不类的杂种。 来自辞典例句

23 protagonists   

n.（戏剧的）主角( protagonist的名词复数 )；（故事的）主人公；现实事件（尤指冲突和争端的）主要参与者；领导者

参考例句：

• Mrs Pankhurst was one of the chief protagonists of women's rights. 潘克赫斯特太太是女权的主要倡导者之一。 来自辞典例句
• This reflects that Feng Menglong heartily sympathized with these protagonists. 这反映出冯梦龙由衷地同情书中的这些主要人物。 来自互联网