Reaction Essay: Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo
I stumbled upon the novel, Girl, Woman, Other in the most organic way. Not scrolling through Amazon while looking at ‘frequently bought together’ packages and reading reviews. Not by a friend’s glowing recommendation. I was walking through the ‘books and movies’ aisles in a store when the bold title cover and the patchwork quilt of colors caught my attention. I picked it up and judged its weight. Turned its back and read its summary. Peered down and read about the author. ‘Oh, she’s Nigerian’ I thought, realizing this peaked my interest. Then I found myself in that space where one is deciding, “should I? shouldn't I?” There’s always a perceived risk to seeing a book nowadays, blind, not having been vouched for, because the praise printed on it can be taken with a grain of salt. But I felt a pull. My gut told me “yes, buy it.” And it did not disappoint.
I began this book excitedly, then set it aside for a time. Evaristo wrote the stories in a style I was unfamiliar with. What would otherwise be paragraphs and new sentences on a page had no periods, few commas, and only capitalized letters in the case of a name, or an I, or when beginning a new story or chapter. There was an awkward phase of getting accustomed to her rhythm, but soon it felt familiar. I began to read the words with a mental cadence that lent to the impact the novel had on me personally. If it was written any other way, it wouldn’t have been the same.
The first half of the womens’ stories felt generally separate. Evaristo introduces you to each character, their world and the people living in it. Worlds that feel siloed, until you continue on, and with each new story, a new connection is discovered among the women in the novel. It often felt like finding a new clue to the mystery of how the lives of these women intersect.
I appreciated what I thought to be Evaristo’s intentions with how she wrote the stories. Poignantly and explicitly implicit with what she wanted the reader to take away. She drew you into their innermost thoughts and forced you to hold space for multiple truths at once. That yes, readers might judge Winsome for having an affair with Shirley’s husband, but Winsome, despite older in age, still loved men, and loved sex, and was not to be dismissed as no longer having the desire for passion or pleasure. Bummi, an older Nigerian widow, and the mother of Carole, is written to have had a very cultural view of her life and how she wanted Carole to live. Later on however, she begins an initially platonic relationship with her employee Omofe, that soon turns sexual. A woman like Bummi, traditionally, would never be encouraged to seek companionship again, let alone a romantic one, and with a woman no less. This takes nothing away from who Bummi was a person, still: a mother, who wasted no time in reminding Carole she was “Nigerian and not one of these tarty English girls”,who wanted her daughter to marry a “respectable Nigerian husband in order to give her grandchildren”. Personally speaking, one lesson I’ve learned in the last few years, through growth and reflection, is that two truths, no matter how seemingly polarizing or contradictory, can be valid at the same time.
Penelope, who we are introduced to later in the novel, saw people of color as small, and less than. With her job as an educator, she thought of the school as transforming into a “multicultural zoo” and would often give white students milder punishments. Her views of her world and the people in it were colored with a clearly racist lens. She is not to be excused from her beliefs and actions, but in processing her story I couldn’t help but consider that her grip on her belief of superiority and seeing herself as better than, is rooted in a need to feel worthiness in any way, even if it means through her whiteness. Learning of her adoption meant reckoning with feeling unwanted or unloved by the people one expects love from the most. For her to feel rejection as a girl, and have it manifest in her adult life through the failures of her relationships, is it unreasonable to think that in her desperate need to feel acceptance, she would welcome it in this form at the risk of harm to others? Was there ever hope for Penelope to change? In the epilogue, Penelope, now in her 80’s discovers through ancestral tracing that she is 13% African, and the lost daughter of Hattie, who was forced to give her up at a very early age in the novel. It’s hard not to wonder what the trajectory of Penelope’s life could have been if this was never the case.
Penelope’s relationship with oppression, whether she felt afflicted as a woman, or perpetrated it as a white person, was one instance of a theme I noticed throughout the novel. Many of the characters were very sensitive to offenses of their lived experiences, but whether intentionally or not, were contributors to the marginalization of other groups, through how they perceived others who were different from them. Shirley, who had a heightened awareness of the discrimination of black students in her school, was found to have a bias against her long time friend Amma, who has had many same sex relationships.
she once caught Shirley watching Amma kiss a girlfriend at a party, the expression on Shirley’s face when she thought she wasn’t being observed
the woman is a closet homophobe, although Amma won’t have it, says Shirley wouldn’t be her friend if she was
Earlier on in the novel, Evaristo’s description of Shirley’s relationship with Amma as a lesbian many can argue, paralells the impressions often held by White people for Black people, and any priviledged group of people towards those less so. They may tolerate them if there are few degrees of separation (family, workspace, extended friend circle), and may even reach the point of liking the ones in their daily interactions. But their overall impressions of the group of people, deep down, is negative and discriminatory.
also
Shirley doesn’t meet many new people, her social circles are from university and fellow teachers, whereas Amma makes new friends from the artsy world practically every day, who also become Shirley’s friends, of sorts
mostly gay, and while she doesn’t get it or like it, she finds their unconventionality interesting enough to enjoy their company
so long as their nice to her, and most of them are
they’re a fascinating, artistic, and radical counterpoint to my more practical and responsible existence, she tells Lennox
who accuses her of being over-analytical
In Carole’s story, the theme of anti-blackness towards Black people in the UK as a Nigerian, is seen as she uses every opportunity to distance herself from her perceived negative impressions of blackness in British society: her ‘ghetto’ school friends, cheap hair extensions, wearing her hair straightened instead of its natural state, dating white men, and eventually marrying one. Evaristo writes:
she saw their futures and hers, as baby-mothers pushing prams, pushing fatherless timebombs
forever scrambling down the sides of sofas for change to feed the meter, like Mum
shopping in poundland, like Mum
scrambling around markets at closing time for scrag-ends, like Mum
not me, not me, not me, she told herself, I shall fly above and beyond
It is unfortunate that she felt, in order to achieve success, she must mute parts of herself to appear more mainstream and acceptable, as evidenced by her morning mantras, “I am highly presentable, likeable, clubbable, relatable, promotable, and successful.” This plight is not unfamiliar to Black women in the workplace, whether in Britain, or the United States, or anywhere in the world. We carry a burden that other groups of people do not. Carole also carries the burden of the rape she endured, and not feeling safe to tell anyone in her circle. One can imagine the trauma and lack of control that is felt, and goes largely unaddressed, and how it affected Carole in other parts of her life, such as needing to feel control of her public appearance and perception, as a defense perhaps, and believing such will prevent an incident like that from happening again.
Despite this, Carole has moments there she lets herself be, completely. She is described to have moments in her home listening to Fela Kuti and moving her body, dancing freely, with no shame or bashfulness. These moments I believe Carole allowed herself so she would not break from the weight of the expectations she put on herself, and that society puts on her.
Evaristo makes a point to shed light on the variation in generational experiences the women had in the novel, which ultimately dictated what issues were most important to them. Racism in the stories of Hattie and Grace are much more overt compared to the next generation of women, like Shirley, Carole, Penelope, Amma, Dominique. And while it was still very important, the book implies the focus of this group of women being more in the lane of addressing the role of patriarchy in their lives, and how they decided to navigate this reality, whether it was from a place of survival, like Carole, or from a place of rejection and abolition, and advancing the role of feminism like Amma and Dominique in their life’s work. We take it a step further with Yazz and Morgan, whose focus is centered on the lived experiences of non-binary and gender nonconforming folks, and advocating on behalf of them and the challenges they face.
In the case of Megan, who later changes to Morgan, while on the journey of learning what identity feels right, Evaristo, in her fantastic work of highlighting the layers and complexities of privilege in the LGBTQ community, chronicles her introduction and developing relationship with Bibi, a transgender female. They meet online and begin to engage in oftentimes tense conversation about what it means to be transgender and withstanding discrimination and marginalization within an already marginalized group. Simultaneously, Bibi helps Morgan better understand her as a transgender female, while providing support in what must be expected as one with a newly changed identity, and seeking its acknowledgement widely.
Girl, Woman, Other is unlike any novel I’ve read in a long time. I’m yet to point towards another author’s work where the third person narration of the novel serves as a character of its own, doing well to invoke in the reader such strong feelings about the lives of the women in this novel, some of whom I don't discuss in depth, keeping in mind the length of this reaction to the novel. LaTisha comes to mind in this regard. A Black woman with a less than perfect relationship with her father, and because of this, makes decisions with different men over time that determine the direction of her life. With no acknowledgement or resolution to the pain and chaos that her father caused, he returns home, after years, like nothing has transpired. LaTisha’s story, for me, was the saddest to read. With the sadness, I felt anger at the reality of LaTisha and her family receiving no apology or admission of the pain they endured in his absence.
then Daddy turned up unannounced a few weeks ago
LaTisha came home to find him sitting on his old armchair in the living room, as if he’d never left it
he was just as huge, his dreadlocks were more grey than black, and he had a big stomach
he looked at her admiringly, lovingly, when she walked into the room
it didn’t work out with Marva, he missed his real family
Mum didn’t look like she was going to kick him out anytime soon, it was as if her love for him was flowing back in uncontrollable waves
Jason and Jantelle sat there perched on the edge of the sofa unsure what to make of this giant who was their grandfather
Jordan had already decided, edge towards his grandfather who reached out and put an arm around him when he was close enough to be cuddled
Jordan beamed up at his grandfather, with such an angelic look on his face
she realized her youngest son needed her father in his life.
I was emotional about how her story ended, but was reminded that such does happen in real life. This was my most poignant takeaway: whether the stories make the reader feel affirmed or antagonized, they force the expansion and questioning of the dogma we may live by or subscribe to. Life can feel unfair at one moment and redemptive the next. What’s important is remembering that the stories of the women in this novel, unfamiliar or not, relatable or not, are worth telling as they are.
