Bernardine Evaristo: “You define yourself for yourself, everyone else can go hang”
Bernardine Evaristo: “You define yourself for yourself, everyone else can go hang”
The author on not being raised with Nigerian culture, finding her space in Black communities and why we’ll never finish telling the biracial story
Hi, welcome back to Mixed Messages! This week, I’m speaking to author Bernardine Evaristo, who is of mixed-Nigerian and British heritage. The first Black woman to win the Booker Prize, Bernardine took the title in 2019 with her novel Girl, Woman, Other. Adding to her phenomenal backlist, Bernardine has since released Manifesto, her story of never giving up, with an adaptation of 2013’s Mr Loverman now showing on BBC. Bernardine shared her story with heart and humour, and I can’t wait for you to read it below.
How do you define your identity?
My mum is English, but her great grandfather was German. Her mother’s mother was Irish. My dad was Nigerian, descended from Brazilians. They would have been slaves and then returned.
I identify as Black. I acknowledge my mixedness, but my essential identity is Black. When I was raised, we were seen as half-caste. That was not a disparaging term or seen as racist. In my late teens and early 20s, it became ‘mixed,’ then ‘mixed-race…’ As I say in Manifesto, the previous term is seen as racist. I just go with the flow.
What was your childhood like?
I grew up in Woolwich, a very white area which is now a very Black area. The racism we suffered as a family was really bad. That feeling of not quite fitting in was normal.
I did not feel Black as a child because I wasn’t raised with a sense of my father's Nigerian culture or in a Black community. Our family was one of the only Black families in the area. Some of my early writings for theatre were about wanting to be white. My father was a very dark skinned Nigerian man, and at that time that was the worst thing you could be. I was embarrassed about having him as a father.
He didn’t introduce us to the beauty of his culture. Even then, you wouldn’t necessarily have seen it as beautiful because everybody was brainwashed by the colonial project. If he’d done that, my sense of myself might have been different as a person of African heritage. Because I didn’t have that, I saw white society around me and at that age, that’s what I aspired to be.
Do you think your dad did that out of protection, to stop you facing the same racism as he did? Or was it a case of there being a lot of kids in the family and not enough time?
It was a mixture of things. For a start, my dad was not an educated man, so the idea of him teaching us his language, for example, was never going to happen. He was a political person and a thinker, but he couldn’t teach a classroom of eight kids. One of the main things a parent can pass on is language, then culture, but he was born in the 1920s and grew up under colonialism.
I think there was a sense of shame about that when he came to the UK. My dad could be defensive about what Nigerian culture was like, telling us he lived in a big house. Maybe it was in his mind, but it wasn’t – it was a bungalow. Maybe he wanted to elevate it, coming as a foreigner to a country where Africans were seen as the lowest of the low.
In those days, you also didn’t realise that one of the ways you can help your children to assimilate, especially if they're seen as outsiders, is to let them know about the greatness of the culture they come from.
When did you start wanting to learn more about your heritage?
I didn't have any yearnings as a teenager. When I went to Rose Bruford College of Speech and Drama (as it was called then) there were five Black women in my year. That was where I got my real awakening. Suddenly I had Black allies. It was a very politicised course, questioning and challenging everything, and that was the beginning of me starting to understand Blackness and Black cultures. I suddenly realised that there was a place for me in those communities.
During that time, you worked on a short play called The N Word, in which the character spoke about not being Black or white enough. Is that something you related to?
That embodied the dilemma I went through when I did start to enter Black spaces. I didn't feel authentically Black, which is a terrible notion because there is no authentic Blackness. The people I was with, a lot of them had Black mothers, were eating Caribbean food, listening to reggae, raised in Hackney or Brixton… it felt like they were really solid in their culture.
Then there was me, the girl from Woolwich, whose diet, apart from a meal my father cooked every other Sunday, was completely English. I didn't have any Caribbean overtones or undertones. I couldn't slip into patois. The whole issue about being lighter skinned and of dual heritage did present a challenge to me, but as the years progressed, I got to know a lot of women who were also of dual heritage. There was that push and pull, wanting to be accepted in the Black world, but feeling that I didn't quite have the right.
One of your earlier novels, Lara, is semi-autobiographical. What was the driving force behind writing something based on your upbringing?
I wanted to explore what it meant to be mixed-race from a British-Nigerian female perspective. At the time, there wasn't much out there. I wanted to tell the experience of my father, my parents marrying in the ‘50s, coming up against the full force of British racism through my grandmother's family. That was the story that dominated my childhood.
When I interviewed my parents, they started talking about their parents and even further back. I wanted to put this family history in a book. In the second edition of Lara, I added my German and Irish heritage. I wanted to put that mixed-race experience on the map. I wanted people to know that it was personal to me, but is a wider story. I was aware that Black culture in Britain was very much explored through Caribbean stories then. I wanted to make a point and say ‘it’s not just that story.’
Do you ever get tired of including these themes in your work?
I don't tire of it. I’m really interested in the aspects of British history, society and culture that have been under-explored, like the dual heritage story. If you go back to the 19th century, there was a strong biracial presence. Black British history goes back at least 2000 years, if not more, but there has been a very strong biracial presence and that’s interesting. I don't think that's something we can ever tire of. There are new generations of biracial people coming through. This story will never be finished.
Have you noticed any stereotypes in the conversation around mixed identity?
I feel that people should have the right to self identify regardless of what their origins are. But as a mixed person, it makes sense that if you have a white parent you should be able to identify as white. We’re racialised, so people will never see you as that, but it is your choice.
There’s a quote at the end of Lara that reads something like ‘I become my parents, my ancestors, my gods.’ The character reflects on this family history and her personal journey, integrating everything into herself. She just accepts herself, and that was exactly how I felt when I finished that book. It was so cathartic, it made me feel complete.
I have one mixed-heritage friend who still has issues with their race and not feeling accepted – I just think, ‘get over it. You’re almost my age.’ You define yourself for yourself, and everyone else can go hang. It’s not up to them to tell you who you are and how you should be. When people say ‘you’re not Black enough,’ they're just being reductive about what it means to be Black.
What’s the best thing about being mixed for you?
It’s wonderful to be an example of a world where humans love each other in spite of the racist systemic structures around them that tell them they should not be together. I am a product of a great love that lasted 33 years between my parents, who got married in spite of all obstacles placed in front of them.
I acknowledge that I am inheritor of people, cultures and societies that go back to the beginning of time, who have made me who I am; people who come from different parts of the world and who have different physical appearances. I have integrated all of that into myself.
I can trace my family history in Britain back 300 years – I should be best friends with Farage. 300 years, can Tommy Robinson do that? On my father’s side, I have powerful Nigerian ancestry and people who survived slavery. I am the product of a lot of people who have struggled, migrated and wanted to make a better life for themselves and their children. That’s beautiful.
Can you sum up your mixed experience in one word?
Adventure. The adventure of the past, how we’ve reached this point as individuals but also as a demographic.
Next week, I’ll be speaking to Chin Chin Prints illustrator Emily Chin-Sillah. Subscribe to get Mixed Messages in your inbox on Monday. Shop Mixed Messages on Etsy now!
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Mixed Messages is a weekly exploration of the mixed-race experience, from me, Isabella Silvers. My mom is Punjabi (by way of East Africa) and my dad is white British, but finding my place between these two cultures hasn’t always been easy. That’s why I started Mixed Messages, where each week I’ll speak to a prominent mixed voice to delve into what it really feels like to be mixed.
Really resonated with Bernardine’s story! Especially the growing up mostly in white surroundings and family, so often not feeling “Black enough” to call myself Black or fitting in with other Black people. It has taken me a long time to get to the point of saying “everyone else can go hang”, and some days, I still can’t say it. It’s getting easier, though! ☺️