Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo
Twelve incredibly diverse characters’ lives and challenges are followed in the book Girl, Woman, Other. They share the tales of their family, friends, and lovers from all over the nation and through the ages, with the majority of them being British women of colour.
This is a marvellously new type of history, a book of our times: joyous, ever-dynamic, and completely compelling. It is joyfully polyphonic and vibrantly modern. Teeming with vitality and brimming with energy, this song is a love letter to contemporary Britain, black women, and the dynamic centre of London.
Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo
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Without ever getting pedantic, it celebrates the voices of black women, both old and young, lesbian, straight, non-binary, bitter and hopeful, wealthy and impoverished. Additionally, this book does something else: it subverts traditional feminine stereotypes like the lover, maiden, mother, queen-bee, huntress, and sage to produce something wholly new.
Amma is a lesbian socialist playwright who is set to produce the climax of her life’s work. Her daughter Yazz and her group of university pals are attempting to make sense of it all. The author claims that Amma is loosely based on herself.
Dominique is a stunning black woman who is coerced into giving up her freedom and submitting entirely by a gorgeous, charismatic African-American woman.
Shirley is a teacher who only (or not so merely) wants to give youngsters a chance at success, and her sensually-starved mother may very well be one of the most toxic mothers in recent fiction. Megan/Morgan is non-binary and develops her identity online. Her great-grandmother Hattie (GG) is a resilient 93-year-old survivor who is hiding something. And then there’s Grace, HER mother, who “wins the lottery” when wed a rich farm owner and has battled infertility for a long time. And that is only the beginning.
This symphony of women’s voices, which represents a cross-section of black British women, covers a wide range of topics, including assimilation with white partners, mother-daughter relationships, incest of many kinds, power struggles, and much more. The women’s relationships and connections change as the story goes on in unforeseen ways. The plot is always built on Bernardine Evaristo’s lush prose, which is truly a combination of prose and poetry.
