‘being / together’: Bernardine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other and the Black British women’s movement
Abram, N.
It is advisable to refer to the publisher's version if you intend to cite from this work. See Guidance on citing. Abstract/SummaryThis article locates Bernardine Evaristo’s Booker Prize-winning novel Girl, Woman, Other (2019) within the socio-political history and written lineage of the Black women’s movement in Britain. It identifies contextual resonances with the 1970s and 1980s praxis of collaboration and collectivity, and traces intertextual connections with Evaristo’s own early writing (including theatre, verse fiction, and the radio story from which the novel evolved) and the periodicals, anthologies and organization newsletters of the time. These references illuminate the novel’s structure, lineation, and narrative mode. I argue that Girl, Woman, Other reanimates the rallying call ‘we are here', affirming the presence and diversity of Black lives in Britain, while its distinctive ‘fusion fiction’ form actively engages readers, realising the Black feminist political principle of ‘speaking out’.
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