Bernadine Evaristo

[OhamIreally]

Just saw this woman on Question Time and thought she was fabulous. Eloquent yet precise, passionate and logical.
Her response about the pulling down of the Bristol statue was spot on.

She's ultra woke IRL but there are a range of views represented in the novel, including the best friend Dominique who is decidedly not TWAW. I also enjoyed the representation of Yazz and her Gen Z uni friends, I found it almost affectionately mocking. It's a brilliant novel.

This is just the kind of book I would normally read, but I'm not going to. It's not that I refuse to buy books by people I disagree with - on the contrary. It's just that I refuse to give money to someone who is complicit in destroying women's hard-won sex-based rights. I cannot forgive that degree of betrayal from someone who ought to know better. When intelligent, educated women who know about the history of oppression of women and black people go round claiming that men can be women (or "womxn", to use the term she prefers) purely for woke points, then I'm sorry, but they deserve nothing but our contempt.

Could someone explain "womxn"?

I really don’t get it. I understand why trans women like say India Willoughby or Munro Bergdorf say that they are women. On the other hand trans women like Blaire White or Rose of Dawn are happy to be called trans women (indeed the trans part is necessary for who they are) whilst acknowledging male biology. Neither faction presumably needs or welcomes "womxn"

I'm not wasting time nor money on a writer who uses the silly neologism "womxn"

You cut yourself off from an awful lot if you put the choices of an artist in their personal life as your factor for choosing culture. Identity politics will imprisonments us all in the end.

Lots of Black women use womxn. Lots of black feminists have for generations identified race as much as both sex and gender as a bigger influence, hence much black feminism being more deeply rooted in intersectionality.

I am GC, I don’t describe myself as womxn but am not prepared to tell Black women what to do.

Is BE a woman FFS.

The first black woman to win Booker, but chip, chip, chip away.

She is allowed her own opinions in things. They may differ from yours. Feminism adopts Cancel Culture at our peril.

Feminism adopts Cancel Culture at our peril

This my gut feeling, too.

I read Girl Woman Other and thought it was ok. Nothing more. Book group felt the same.

As for BE - she guest edited the Sunday Times Style supplement this week. It’s virtually unreadable (to be fair it’s always pretty bad). Every page has some tedious person complaining about how there’s never been a space for black queer perspectives. We ended up playing black queer perspectives bingo. Even the poor multimedia collective (what?) had been marginalised for their black queer perspectives. Of course Travis Alabanza was there telling us how they feel when their chest hair pokes out of their cocktail dress.

No one actually said what their thoughts were or made any sense - only that they fell into the black queer perspectives gang.

Exhausting. Interestingly there was next to no advertising in it. One double page spread of Ecco shoes - I wouldn’t have thought the audience for Ecco and those eagerly lapping up black queer perspectives intersect very much. I don’t know how advertising gets sold and on what time frame but on the basis of advertising sales it looked a bit of a disaster but maybe the two aren’t connected and it’s more to do with budget cuts.

I did actually think when Inread GWO that she might be sceptical of the TRA agenda. There’s a transwoman character who is not very sympathetic and who appears to be trying on personalities.

But I think since then BE has picked a side. Which is fine but I don’t agree. Most people don’t. But if you live in a world where everyone has made a career out of this agenda you won’t necessarily know that or care.

@InTheWings

I'm not wasting time nor money on a writer who uses the silly neologism "womxn"

You cut yourself off from an awful lot if you put the choices of an artist in their personal life as your factor for choosing culture. Identity politics will imprisonments us all in the end.

Lots of Black women use womxn. Lots of black feminists have for generations identified race as much as both sex and gender as a bigger influence, hence much black feminism being more deeply rooted in intersectionality.

I am GC, I don’t describe myself as womxn but am not prepared to tell Black women what to do.

Is BE a woman FFS.

The first black woman to win Booker, but chip, chip, chip away.

She is allowed her own opinions in things. They may differ from yours. Feminism adopts Cancel Culture at our peril.

Your lecture gives no information on why "womxn"

At no point have I said she is not allowed to have her own opinions. Equally I'm entitled to find her and her opinions of no interest. At no point have I told her what to do. Equally I'm not interested in either she or you telling me what to do.

I'm not a feminist but it's not feminism which is adopting Cancel Culture- that is coming from the wokier than woke crowd of which BE is almost certainly a member.

inthewings

Absolutely. But this is the wrong forum for any nuanced debate. Don’t bother. MN is a hive mind with only one opinion allowed.

I can see that a black woman might identify more strongly with race or with sex. That’s understandable. And race is more powerful at the moment I think. But that doesn’t make it not worth a discussion.

Well Dido, not all the comments in the post were specifically directed at you.

If course people have their own opinions, and if they are aired others have a right to comment and offer a different opinion.

Refusing to read the work of a Black woman because she sometimes uses the word womxn seems like a step towards cancel culture to me.

I can see that a black woman might identify more strongly with race or with sex. That’s understandable

And also be keenly aware if the violent racism men if their race are subjected to. Including black trans people.

Definitely not cancelling anyone but if you can make it through this week’s Sunday Times Style section without a slight sigh then you are doing well.

I found the book enjoyable and annoying in pretty much equal measure. But I'm glad I read it. I thought there were some good stories and great characters and, if Amma is based on the writer, then I'm intrigued as I thought she was one of the least interesting. I loved Shirley, the un-cool school teacher who drove on her clever, disaffected students.

At times I did think it fell into polemic but, even then, there were still different viewpoints and at least one character was gender sceptical, if not out-and-out critical.

I hope I wouldn't refuse to read a writer because I disagreed with her point of view. In any case I'm interested in how clever, woke women manage to negotiate this whole business.

@Binterested

I read Girl Woman Other and thought it was ok. Nothing more. Book group felt the same.

As for BE - she guest edited the Sunday Times Style supplement this week. It’s virtually unreadable (to be fair it’s always pretty bad). Every page has some tedious person complaining about how there’s never been a space for black queer perspectives. We ended up playing black queer perspectives bingo. Even the poor multimedia collective (what?) had been marginalised for their black queer perspectives. Of course Travis Alabanza was there telling us how they feel when their chest hair pokes out of their cocktail dress.

No one actually said what their thoughts were or made any sense - only that they fell into the black queer perspectives gang.

Exhausting. Interestingly there was next to no advertising in it. One double page spread of Ecco shoes - I wouldn’t have thought the audience for Ecco and those eagerly lapping up black queer perspectives intersect very much. I don’t know how advertising gets sold and on what time frame but on the basis of advertising sales it looked a bit of a disaster but maybe the two aren’t connected and it’s more to do with budget cuts.

Sheer brilliance :)

I'm glad I'm a Saturday Times girl now. If I'd been faced with Alonzo's cocktail gown over my morning repast I'd have thrown up on my incredibly comfortable shoes.

I found the Times supplement nauseating. But I felt a pang of loyalty, of wanting to support her and wanting to like it.

It's amazing that exasperation at Evaristo building her work around her unappetising political stances is said on this thread to be "cancel culture".

Can you imagine where we'd be if the intolerant woke stuck to "Do what you do but I find it off-putting so won't buy it" and went no further than that? It would be hugely constructive.

Vg point, nauticant. I try not to be cancelly. Someone can hold a ghastly view on one issue but be interesting or spot on about something else. See Scottish independence, brexit, mask wearing etc etc etc.

I do try to keep an open mind. I must admit the amazon reviews were all I needed to put me right off buying the current crop of 'white fragility' handbooks we're supposed to prescribe ourselves. But lots of people love these books and who am I to criticise them.

There's a world between cancel culture and 'thanks, but not my cup of tea'.

Refusing to read the work of a Black woman because she sometimes uses the word womxn seems like a step towards cancel culture to me

I'm another one won't be reading the work of a woke author who believes twaw and uses the word womxn, and uses quirky punctuation just because it's quirky.
Her being black has nothing to do with it. So am I. I'm not about to learn about being a black woman from her. There's no such thing as a black woman hive mind.

It's amazing that exasperation at Evaristo building her work around her unappetising political stances is said on this thread to be "cancel culture"

I suppose how I feel about it is that she isn’t shouting anyone down on Twitter or calling people TERFs. She’s written a novel, which is what she does. And I like to read widely, including novels by people who’s politics I don’t agree with. I’m not going to boycott her because her novels don’t exactly reflect what I think.

The Times supplement, however, annoyed me as it felt much more like pushing an agenda I disagree with...and I probably wouldn’t buy / read her ‘journalism’ again for this reason.

What I’m clumsily trying to say is that I’m reluctant to block out other women’s voices because I’m opposed to what they say. I don’t like cancelling/boycotting/no platform ing individual women. I find it really disturbing.

I’m reluctant to block out other women’s voices

It's the difference between me deciding not to let someone over my threshold and putting barricades up to prevent them walking past my house down my (public) street.

I really loved the book, for its nuanced portrayal of women.

I really disagree with her views on transgender issues, which I've heard her express in interviews.

I don't think expressing my dislike of her political views means that I'm cancelling her, she's just as entitled to hold her wrong and harmful to women views as I am to mine.

@GingerMcKenna
There are others who are resisting though like Lionel Shriver. I expect we will see walk outs by publishing staff as we've seen in the case of JKR.

Bernadine Evaristo attended Goldsmiths university which was founded on slave money

@InTheWings

Well Dido, not all the comments in the post were specifically directed at you.

If course people have their own opinions, and if they are aired others have a right to comment and offer a different opinion.

Refusing to read the work of a Black woman because she sometimes uses the word womxn seems like a step towards cancel culture to me.

I have yet to see any explanation of this term and what changing an "e" to an "x" does. Do mxn exist.

I would refuse to read a white female author or a white male author who used it.