The Jhalak Prize 2017

AND THE WINNER IS: 

JACOB ROSS FOR THE BONE READERS

by Catriona Troth

On Friday 17th March, the winner of the inaugural Jhalak Prize for books written by British BAME authors was announced from a shortlist of six. Fiction and non-fiction, books for adults and books for children: all have been represented on the shortlist and I can’t begin to imagine how the judges are going to pick the final winner.

I’ve spent the last couple of months reading all the books on the Jhalak short and long lists and reviewing them for Book Muse UK. It has been an absolute joy - every one of the books a voyage of discovery. You can read extracts from my reviews below but first, here are some comments from four of the panel of judges: chair of the judging panel, Sunny Singh and her colleagues Musa Okwanga, Yvvette Edwards and Catherine Johnson.

Why were you keen to support the inaugural Jhalak Prize?

Sunny Singh: I founded the Jhalak Prize because I was tired of seeing brilliant writing not receive the attention it deserves, from the press, bookstores, prizes and therefore never getting to readers. And of course I was seeing great writing either not being published or not being published properly. I have been thinking about the prize for about four years now but after the Writing the Future report and various other attempts at raising the issues, we decided go ahead with it. I was at the Polari Prize and got talking to the judges and supporters and realised that a prize may push the issue into consciousness for the various players in the industry. Of course, I am also being selfish: I want to read the writing I love from writers I love. And hopefully Jhalak can help bring them into the market.

Catherine Johnson: The prize came out of BareLit, an incredible crowdfunded festival - I have been a published writer for over twenty years, and it has always been said, if not openly then tacitly that there is not the big audience for books written by BAME authors. This was the first time it was made blatantly clear that there really was a readership and an audience hungry for those stories.

Also, sadly, the 'big' awards in my field - eg The Carnegie, consistently ignore BAME writers - only two have ever been shortlisted in its 80 year history. Here is a chance to give those books air and space and the accolades they deserve. If the mainstream ignore us, why not do it ourselves?

Musa Okwanga: I feel that it is vital that writing of the highest quality gets its due recognition, whoever makes it; and that, so far, too many people of colour do not have the platform that their talents deserve. The Jhalak Prize, in my view, is a wonderfully proactive and progressive way to address that concern.


Just as the Baileys Prize (formerly the Orange Prize) did initially, any literary prize that restricts it potential entrants to a given category of writers tends to attract criticism that entrants are being judged not for their writing but by their gender/colour of skin etc. How do you answer that criticism in the case of the Jhalak Prize?


Sunny Singh: I don't and I won't answer this question! We know the playing field is not level. We have the statistics, the reports, the endless reams of paper but when we flag up the iniquities we are told to 'quit whining and do something.' Well, the Jhalak Prize is us DOING something. You don't like the Jhalak Prize? Then start with working to make that playing field level and actually based on meritocracy!

Catherine Johnson: I think the Bailey's Prize is a good parallel, it may have been contentious at the start but readers understand and accept it as a useful award which draws attention to the best of women's writing. Of course it would be brilliant if we didn't need a prize like this and there was that level playing field we've heard so much about. But there isn't. Society has its flaws. We could either lie down and accept that books by BAME authors are going to be overlooked or do something to draw attention to the fantastic breadth and depth of writing out there.

Musa Okwanga: I would say that this form of criticism of the Jhalak Prize is a little like criticising a doctor for diagnosing and providing medicine for an ailment, rather than criticising the causes of the ailment itself. Because I think that the lack of diversity in publishing at the moment is an ailment, and one which is depriving us all of some of the most exciting writing out there. So let’s do what we can to cure that.

Yvvette Edwards: There are many literary prizes. There are prizes that restrict submissions to writers from a particular part of the country, ones that only judge debuts or second novels or crime or romance or science fiction, or writers of a particular age or religion or gender, or any of a hundred other criteria. It is not a matter of discrimination why this is so, but an effort to ensure that writers who are unlikely to be put forward to or nominated for the big literary prizes, yet are nonetheless producing great writing - sometimes very progressive, experimental and original writing that deserves a wider audience - that those writers are acknowledged and the quality of their work is recognised. In the case of the Jhalak Prize, there’s nothing ominous about it; it’s simply another literary prize with a submission criterion.


It must be particularly challenging to judge a prize that encompasses non-fiction, adult fiction and young adult fiction and fiction for children. How have you approached making those sorts of comparisons?

Sunny Singh: As chair of judging panel, my role has been mostly to hear out what the panel has says. I think we were clear that books were judged within the category they fell. So YA was seen as amazing within that particular category. Nonfiction the same. And the rest. We got particularly lucky as so many of the books also transcended their particular tag. The shortlist is utterly extraordinary.

Catherine Johnson: I think this is one of the strengths of the prize. Isn't it marvellous to say Children's and YA are just as important as non fiction and literary fiction? Our prize is about readers just as much as writers, about saying to readers how wonderful and rich and varied the work that BAME writers are producing.

Musa Okwanga: The only true challenges have been the creation of a longlist, and then a shortlist - to say nothing of selecting the eventual winner. When judging work, I think that we have all tried to look for originality, for creativity - it will sound like cliche, but we have looked for work which has a unique voice. It’s been very difficult to narrow the submissions down, but I am confident that we have managed that.

Yvvette Edwards: The task was made much easier by the fact that we were not required to longlist a specific number of books. The decision was made early on that every book that deserved to be on the longlist would be, which meant that we were able to put forward every book that the judging panel agreed deserved to be nominated, irrespective of whether it was non-fiction or adult, children or YA fiction. Once we were down to the longlist, we had lengthy discussions about the merits of each book, judging them on their own terms and within their genre.


Can you tell us what has particularly excited you about any of the six books on the shortlist?

Sunny Singh: Gosh all of them! Insightful, innovative. One of the judges commented at a meeting that the longlist was made up of great books and the shortlist is all phenomenal ones. It's been a pleasure to read and reread them during the judging process. And one can't say that about many books, forget about all on a shortlist!

Catherine Johnson: Definitely the breadth and depth. Look at those books, every one is a total gem. I have no idea which is the winner, they all deserve the prize.

Musa Okwanga: We all have our own favourites, I am sure, but I have loved the bravery of the work - the fearlessness and empathy shown in tackling the most taboo of subjects. That’s all I feel that I can say publicly, but I will have to drop that particular writer a private message of congratulation at some point.

Yvvette Edwards: I have to say - and I am not attempting to be diplomatic or coy - that all the shortlisted books excite me. Every one of those books deserved its place on the Jhalak Prize shortlist and to be widely read. Although I had a couple of favourites in mind, I approached the final judging panel with an open mind, because any of those books would have been a worthy winner of the inaugural prize.


Finally, what are your hopes for the future of the Jhalak Prize?

Sunny Singh: I started the prize with the hopes of ending it! The prize succeeds when it is no longer needed. So that is all I hope for: that one day, in not too far future, a prize like the Jhalak Prize will not be necessary because it will truly be a 'level playing field.' I guess one can and must dream!

Catherine Johnson: I think the prize has hit the ground running, I hope it will grow and earn a reputation for flagging up brilliance across genres.

Musa Okwanga: That it will continue to flourish and to provide a platform for spectacular writing for as long as it is needed. It has been a pleasure, an honour and a privilege to have helped it on its way.

Yvvette Edwards: I hope it becomes an established fixture in the literary calendar, and that it goes from strength to strength.


Thank you! Look out for the announcement of the winner on the evening of Friday 17th March 2017.
Now here are my reviews of the six shortlisted books. 

Another Day in the Death of America by Gary Younge

A day chosen at random – unremarkable in any way, including for the number of young people to die of gunshot wounds in a 24 hour period. On this day, seven of those killed were black, two Hispanic and one white. The oldest was nineteen; the youngest nine. “The truth is it’s happening every day, only most do not see it.”

Each chapter is both a personal account of a young person whose life and death would otherwise have passed unremarked by anyone outside their immediate neighbourhood, and an essay on the factors that create this appalling death rate.

Segregation also creates a numbing distance across which empathy becomes all-but impossible. This book may be one strut in a bridge across that divide.

Genre: Non-Fiction

Read my full review here.

Speak Gigantular by Irenosen Okojie

Following on from her Betty Trask winning debut novel, Butterfly Fish, Speak Gigantular is Irenosen Okojie’s first collection of short stories. And it is almost certainly not like any other short story collection you have ever read. Okojie’s writing rarely stays long in the recognisable world of the five senses. In these stories, emotions take on physical form.

These are unsettling stories. Reading them is like walking through one of those trick rooms whose crooked walls make you think the floor is unstable. Okojie’s range is formidable and her imagination extraordinary.

Genre: Short Stories

Read my full review here.

The Bone Readers by Jacob Ross

Two cold cases twist and turn through the pages of The Bone Readers. Michael ‘Digger’ Digson needs to find the truth behind the death of his mother, killed when he was a young boy. And his boss, Detective Superintendent Chilman, is obsessed with the case of Nathan, a young man who disappeared and whose mother is convinced he was murdered.

Written by Granadan born Jacob Ross, The Bone Readers is set on a tiny, fictional Caribbean island. The multiple strands of the book all play on themes of sexual violence, sexual exploitation, gender power struggles and corruption. The women in the book are tough, shrewd, emotionally intelligent and sassy. Yet they are trapped by male prejudice, male violence and the male stranglehold on power. Many carry scars from the sexual violence they have experienced.

An unconventional crime novel, and one that exposes the dark underbelly of ‘paradise.’

Genre: Crime Fiction

Read my full review here.

The Girl of Ink and Stars by Kiran Millwood Hargrave

Ink and stars - the two most fundamental tools of the cartographer.

Isa is the daughter of a cartographer, and his unofficial apprentice. But Isa’s Da no longer roams the world to map its continents, but walks heavily supported by a stick. And the only guide to the Forbidden Forest is an ancient cloth map left behind by Isa’s mother. So when a girl is found dead in the Governor’s orchard, and his daughter, Isa’s friend Lupe, disappears into the forest, it is up to Isa to don the mantle of cartographer and guide the search party into the heart of the island, where no one has travelled for years.

Maps have a magic about them. They can say as much about the people who made them as they do about the lands they depict. Kiran Millwood Hargrave has spun that magic into a tale of adventure that is – as all good heroic journeys should be - about friendship and courage, self discovery and self sacrifice.

Genre: Fiction for 9-12 year olds.

Read my full review here.

Black and British: A Forgotten History by David Olusoga

Written as a companion to the BBC television series of the same name, David Olusoga’s book shows how the Black presence in Britain can be traced back to Roman times and has been a feature of life, particularly in London and other big cities, since Tudor times. It demonstrates how British economic interest, first in the slave trade itself and then in slave-produced cotton, warred for centuries with a mixture of the exalted believe that British air was ‘too pure for slaves to breathe’ and genuine courageous humanitarianism.

Britain may have been one of the first countries to outlaw the slave trade, but in the years before abolition, it was also its biggest player. As Olusoga shows, British involvement in the slave trade began in the early 17th C and gained the Royal seal of approval in 1672. In just the 20 years before the slave trade was outlawed by Act of Parliament in 1807, three quarters of a million slaves were transported from Africa to the Americas aboard British ships.

Britain has things to be proud of in the history of relations with its Black citizens, but much to be ashamed of too. A powerful, emotional and eye-opening read.

Genre: Non-Fiction

Read my full review here.

A Rising Man by Abir Mukherjee

Calcutta in 1919.The “Quit India” movement is beginning to gain momentum. Calls for violent uprising clash with Gandhi’s approach of non-violent noncooperation. And the British were doubling down on their control with an oppressive set of laws called the Rowlatt Acts. In the midst of this, a senior British civil servant is found murdered in the ‘wrong’ part of town, with piece of paper stuffed in his mouth inscribed with a subversive slogan.

Mukherjee takes you down into the streets of Calcutta, from the stinking gullees of Black Town and the opium dens of Tiretta Bazaar, to the poky guesthouses for the itinerant British, where “the mores of Bengal were exported to the heat of Bengal,” the maroon-painted colonial neo-classic buildings of the Imperial civil service and the exclusive clubs of the rich, mini Blenheim Palaces, sporting signs that declare ‘No dogs or Indians beyond this point.’

Genre: Crime Fiction, Historical Fiction

Read my full review here.

And my own personal favourite? One that only made it to the longlist, the haunting novel Augustown by Kei Miller.

Augustown by Kei Miller

Augustown is a poor suburb of Kingston, Jamaica, set up by the slaves set free by royal decree on 1st August 1838. It is also closely associated with Alexander Bedward, the preacher who inspired Bedwardism, the roots from which grew Rastafarianism.

Kei Miller’s novel takes place largely in 1982, when most of those who remember Bedward are dead or dying and the events of his life have become tales told by grandmothers like Ma Taffy. And on the day that Ma Taffy sits up straight on her verandah and smells something high and ripe in the air, she knows an autoclapse is coming. ( Autoclapse: (Noun) Jamaican Dialect. An impending disaster; Calamity; Trouble on top of trouble.)

A stunning novel that takes modern Jamaican history (and the history of Rastafarianism in particular) and spins from it a fable the might stand for any people suffering from ingrained economic disadvantage and religious intolerance.

Genre: Literary Fiction

Read my full review here.



Finally, a couple of 'special mentions' from Yvvette Edwards of books that did not make the longlist:

"One of the books that excited me was Hibo Wardere’s incredibly brave memoir, Cut: One Woman’s fight against FGM in Britain Today, which was a harrowing yet life-affirming read. Another personal favourite of mine was a children’s book, The No1 Car Spotter Fights the Factory, by Atinuke. Aimed at 6 to 9 year olds, it was a social commentary on the positive power of social media and the capacity of the community to affect change, whilst exploring the reality of the lives of the poor in third world countries and the ways in which they are exploited by large corporations. At the same time, it was a genuinely enjoyable and accessible read."

Split/Mixed: Coming of Age amidst a Genocide

by Catriona Troth

Last month, I attended a performance of an extraordinary one-man play by the young actor and playwright Ery Nzaramba.

Split/Mixed is a coming-of-age tale – except that the coming-of-age happens in the middle of the Rwandan genocide, precipitated by the shooting down in 1994 of a plane carrying airplane carrying Rwandan president Juvénal Habyarimana and Burundian president Cyprien Ntaryamira.

Like Nzaramba himself, Edy, the central character in the play was born in Belgium and returned to Rwanda with his family as a young child. He has a normal, middle class childhood, attending a good school, listening to music, playing football – until his family is ripped apart, along with the country, and he, his parents and siblings have to flee for their lives.

The play revolves around the answer to the question – innocently asked one night in a club – “where are you from?” Should he answer, “Rwanda,” knowing that will lead to a whole string of more difficult questions? (“Where you there when...?” “Which ‘side’ did you belong to?” and, always hanging over every conversation, “Are you a victim or a killer?”) Or should he dodge the issue by answering “Belgium” and thus deny his past?

Nzaramba talking about his play on Africa Vox

Working on a completely bare stage, Nzaramba brings to life all the different members of his family, his friends at school, and the people he encounters on his flight from the country, even the girl he falls in love with. Working with director Jude Christian, he found body language and turns of phrase to encapsulate each one.

“But then,” as he says,” you have to stop thinking about it and trust your body.”

And somehow the magic works, even when he is holding conversations with himself.

Asked about his writing process after the performance of Split/Mixed at the May Fair theatre, Nzaramba explained that he originally wrote perhaps five times what we now see.

“After that we cut and cut and cut to form the play, put in rhythm and rhyme in places. It was both painful and fantastic. I was building up barriers and taking them down. Even I don’t know any more what’s true and what’s not.”

Split/Mixed is deeply moving, even harrowing at times. But it is also extremely funny. It has been produced in conjunction with Tamasha Theatre, who are now trying to raise the money to take the play to the Edinburgh Fringe. There is a Crowdfunder appeal running until 12th April, and I urge you to support it if you can. This play deserves as wide an audience as possible!

Et In Arcadia Ego

By Catriona Troth

credit: Walter White

The young Sunny Singh had a practical approach when she found no representation of herself in books. She rewrote them! So perhaps it is no surprise to learn that the adult Sunny Singh wrote her third novel, Hotel Arcadia, in part in ‘answer’ to Dante’s Inferno.

Last December, I spent an afternoon in conversation with Sunny Singh, author of Hotel Arcadia. In the course of two hours, we managed to take in Dante’s Inferno, Judeo-Christian theology, the teaching of creative writing, diversity politics, gender politics, and the highs and lows of social media. This is my attempt to distil that conversation down into a few thousand words!

ON THE INSPIRATIONS FOR HOTEL ARCADIA

Hotel Arcadia is the story of a terrorist attack on a luxury hotel. The premise could be the outline for another Die Hard film, but Singh transforms it into something quite different. Instead of focusing on the battle between the terrorists and the soldiers, she homes in on two people who would be bit players in any Hollywood movie. Abhi, the hotel manager, trapped in the operations room, watching events unfold on the closed circuit television screens. And high up in the tower, Sam, a photojournalist spending the last night of her assignment in the hotel.

In my review, I described the book as a duet. But Singh herself has gone further and described it as a love story.

“Back in university I discovered Dante’s Inferno, and I always go back to it. I am fascinated by the story of Paolo and Francesca, the doomed lovers, condemned to circle eternally but never to reach each other. I always told my professor that I wanted to rewrite the story – because I wasn’t so sure that the idea of eternal longing without consummation was such a bad thing.

“Even the architecture of the hotel is based on the nine circles of hell. Abhi’s lover is in the second circle, with Paolo and Francesca, and below Limbo, the preserve of unbaptised children and the virtuous pagans. The lowest level –where the great betrayers are (Judas / Brutus-Cassius / Lucifer) –is where Abhi is found.

“It’s a strange choice, to place him there. I do realise that. For me, Abhi is the moral core of the book, and yet every choice he makes in his life is a betrayal, often of himself. After all, it is possible to argue [as the Gnostics did] that Judas’s act was not a betrayal, but an act of love, the ultimate sacrifice, knowing he will be condemned to hell for what he has done, but that it is necessary to enable everything that follows.”

The name of the hotel, and thus the title of the book, is deliberately chosen. There are many hotels called Paradiso. But Arcadia represents an earlier, pre-Christian idea of an earthly paradise – “Claiming space,” as Singh says, “for two people who wouldn’t be allowed into Paradise.”

But there are echoes, too, of the expression, “Et In Arcadio Ego”: even in Arcadia I am there – ‘I’ being Death. The earthly paradise of this luxury hotel is under attack. More than that, Singh adds:

“Genocides are planned in very nice places like that luxury hotel. These places are not safe.”

Book Trailer for Hotel Arcadia

My immediate association with Hotel Arcadia was the terrorist attack on the Taj Mahal in Bombay. But in fact, the inciting incident for Singh goes back much further.

“I was travelling in Peru in 1994 or 95, when the Shining Path planted a bomb in the small hotel where I was staying. The only people killed were the receptionist and bellboy – the very people the Shining Path were supposedly fighting to protect. I was outraged by that. But it was something I needed to park and process. I didn’t have the ability to write about it until at least 2002.

“You know, as members of any society we hand over a monopoly on violence to the state – whether it’s to go to war, or to carry out judicial killings. So it shakes us when an individual takes that power, even if we know that the state is unjust. It seems better for the state to kill than some random person to do so.

“I would never qualify myself as a pacifist. But I have huge concerns about how we perceive violence and the extent to which our reactions are conditioned by who practises it and who is victimised, rather than the act of violence itself. This is why we can accept narratives of ‘the good war,’ ‘the just war’. Our boys are noble. Theirs are evil.

“We have a hierarchy, too, of victims that we sympathise with. Women are valued as victims if they are young and pretty, or if they are mothers of young children. We rarely see women as the ‘great brain’ or the ‘heroic fighter.’ Male heroes are always good husbands and fathers. There is little space for queer heroes.”

ON THEOLOGY AND WESTERN THOUGHT

Singh often challenges – subtly in the book but head-on in conversation - elements of Christian theology that someone from the West might take for granted, or would not even realise are underpinning our ideas.

“It may seem a strange thing for an Indian, non Christian woman. But I grew up attending Catholic schools – so I have a deeply embedded Christian education. There are so many things I can intellectually understand but don’t culturally get. The idea of not being able to be saved – or that the intention of the act is not taken into account - is alien.

“Europe has this idea that its intellectual class is now completely secular. ‘Those crazy people over there follow religion and we don’t.’ So we don’t question the extent to which that long Christian tradition impacts us. As John Gray pointed out [Heresies: Against Progress and Other Illusions 2004], even the idea of progress as linear is essentially a religious concept! American exceptionalism has grown out of the Calvinist idea of predestination, of a favoured people. Success becomes a sign of your virtue.

“Just because the language has been secularised, it does not mean those ideas are not still there. They impact the way we deal with the world, the way we deal with politics. And we ignore that at our peril.”

ON LOSING A NOTEBOOK AND GAINING A NOVEL

Hotel Arcadia is a story that might never have been written. Before she even began writing it, Singh lost a crucial notebook.

“That was hilarious,” she says (with the gloss of hindsight.) “I started working on the novel as I was trying to finish my PhD. I was taking copious notes and I had gotten so lost in them that I couldn’t write. I had everything. I had philosophy. I had architectural plans. It was comforting but also overwhelming.

“Then one night I lost it on the Tube at Earl’s Court. The bottom of my stomach fell away. I was hyperventilating, completely devastated for about two hours. Then I went to sleep. And when I woke up, the book just took off in a mad rush. I wrote the first draft of the novel in about four and a half weeks, while I was still teaching. I had to tell my class, ‘If I’m not making sense, stop me'.

“I think a lot of it had to do with getting locked into a conceptual space. I bring a lot of philosophical, theoretical ideas to my work, and at some point I have to put all that on the back burner and just tell the story. I think because of the way it happened, I managed to bring in all my key ideas, but they were delivered with a light hand, instead of being hammered home. It was a very strange process and I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. But it worked.

“There is always a morning. And things look different in the morning.”

ON TRANSLATORS AS EDITORS

Another unusual aspect to the development of Hotel Arcadia was the role of Singh’s Dutch translator in the editing process.

“So many publishing houses don’t have the same editing role as they did thirty years ago. Most books don’t receive that close look from someone with authority.

“In the case of Hotel Arcadia, the Dutch decided to bring out a translation at the same time as the English edition. Dutch is a more restrictive language than English (Most languages, I find, are more restrictive than English, which is why I write in English.)

“I had a very diligent translator, who was sending me long lists of notes, picking up issues like ‘if it’s three hours later, is it still dark?’. She came from a different story-telling tradition, and she needed clear answers on time and place. An English editor, I think, would have let it pass. Willing suspension of disbelief would have carried us through.

“That whole process changed the book quite drastically, made it far clearer and tighter.”

ON TEACHING CREATIVE WRITING

As well as being a novelist, Sunny Singh teaches creative writing at the London Metropolitan University, to a very diverse student group – and she has strong ideas about how appropriate the classic creative writing curriculum is for such students.

“Creative writing courses are based on the idea of ‘finding your voice’. But if you have been told over and over again, by books and by media, that your stories aren’t important, your history isn’t important, and ‘hey, the Empire was great, what are you complaining about?’ – how do you even begin to find your voice?

“I’ve had a global mix of students in my class sometimes realising, ‘we always write stories with white people in them (and not ourselves).’ So we spend a lot of time working on gender and race.

“In that situation, there is an automatic tendency to look towards American authors, which ignores Black British writers and Commonwealth writers. But that’s where most of my students have their roots. They have certain overlaps with the Americans, but also different backgrounds and histories and senses of self.

“Focusing on American writers allows white British people to wash their hands of their own history. Remove Caribbean writing, say, and you are wiping out a legacy of slavery and imperialism and the Windrush generation.

“Lloyd Shepherd [author of The English Monster], is the only explicitly post-colonial white British writer I know, who writes a critique of the self-glorified narrative that ‘Britain abolished slavery.’”

ON PRIVILEGE

I ask Singh about the strong pressure, coming especially out of the US, to examine ‘white privilege.’

“There are layers and layers of privilege. Race is only one axis. There are multiple others: gender, sexuality, geopolitical. If you are a northern, white working class man, you have a larger set of possible texts to relate to, but not by much. We need to understand both own privilege and our lack of it.

“We do an exercise in my class based on Peggy Macintosh’s ‘Invisible Knapsack’. What that reveals is, yes, we’re all British, we’re all in this classroom, but we are not all equal. Unless you can see that, you are not going to be able to write it. But the moment you break it down, you create a space where it’s okay to tell the story.

“Funny how it’s often the straight white male who mocks the idea of safe spaces – because they’ve never needed one.

“In the American debate, the biggest elephant in the room is how much geopolitical power they have. How much their views are being exported and how much they are shutting down others, like African and Caribbean voices, when they are talking about race. That’s also privilege talking.”

ON HEROIC WRITERS

On her blog recently, Singh quoted Tony Morrison: “We don't need any more writers as solitary heroes. We need a heroic writer's movement: assertive, militant, pugnacious.” I asked her what that meant to her.

She cites a series to graduates of her BA programme, including Matilda Ibini (playwright who won the 2015 Alfred Fagon Audience Award for her play Muscavado, set in a sugar plantation in Barbados in 1808); Warson Shire, whose refugee poem, 'Home' was quoted nightly by Benedict Cumberbatch at the end of his performance of Hamlet; Roxanna Donald who wrote a powerful play, Spike, on sexual consent; the children’s writer Lil Chase.

“We don’t have to agree with each other. We don’t have to be friends. But we are all writing consciously and ethically.”

ON ERASURE

Singh has written about her own feeling of ‘erasure’ when she went from India to the US – which put me in mind of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s well known TED talk, ‘The Danger of the Single Story,’ in which she talks of not realising, as a child, that stories didn’t have to be about white people.

“I grew up in India. I read books in Hindi. So unlike Adichie, the idea that women like me didn’t appear in stories never occurred to me. When I started reading books in English as a child, it would annoy me if there were no people like me in them. So I would rewrite them.

“When I was 11, we moved to Pakistan. That was my first exposure to being a ‘minority’. The idea that one part of your identity – your religion, or your nationality or your colour – could become the most important part was a real shock. But at least we shared a similar language. We watched the same Bollywood films. We looked similar. All those things helped negotiate being part of a non-visible minority.

“I think what the US did was to show me that there was a completely different point of identity, where a visible minority can be deliberately erased. Where we inhabit a liminal space. That sticks out to me as a real culture shock.

“At the same time, I am aware of certain literary tropes that diaspora writers have. That sense of ‘over there is bad; over here is good.’ Like the ending of Monica Ali’s Brick Lane – ‘you can be anything you want.’ Really? As a brown woman in Britain? Are you bullshitting me?

“I can’t write about India as Adichie does about Nigeria or Hosseini does about Afghanistan, because in some ways I feel as much a foreigner in India as I do here. But I can write about in between spaces very well!”

ON PROMOTING DIVERSITY

Before the backlash against the ‘lilywhite’ Oscars, came the backlash against the all-white list of authors for World Book Night 2016. How did Singh feel about the Twitter campaigns (first #diverseauthorday and #diversedecember, then #readdiverse2016) aimed at promoting more diverse authors? Was there a risk that these were just another case of ‘hashtag tokenism’?

“There seems to be no winning card. If you speak up, then it’s hashtag tokenism. If you don’t speak up, then you can be ignored.

“The BAME market is worth £3bn a year, and it’s a market that’s not being catered for. So of course BAME readers are going to go online. Of course they are going to buy self-published authors. Because you are not tapping that market at all. You are not even touching them.

“Prize committees say publishers aren’t putting writers of colour forward. Publishers blame the agents. Agents say authors aren’t submitting to them. I look at my agent, who has an extraordinary list, but works twice as hard as anyone else trying to place them. So don’t tell me that the authors aren’t there. In the end it comes down to ‘you are not telling the stories we want to hear.' The ones that will allow us to re-inscribe our stereotypes – Indian women who have arranged marriages; African women who end up raped or killed and so on.

“If I refuse to write those narratives, I’m in trouble. If I write those novels, I am still in trouble, because there is still only going to be one ‘Indian’ book per year, or one ‘Asian woman in Britain’ book per year per publisher. If I don’t critique, I’m in trouble, because I’m not speaking up and it’s my fault. If I critique, then I’m angry and I’m not playing ball, and it’s still my fault. So my logic is it’s too bad. I have readers. I am not in the self-publishing world, but I am doing most of the publicity for my book.

“My first two books were not published in Britain at all. They were either ‘too Indian’ or ‘not Indian enough,’ depending who you talked to. They were published in English in other countries. They were published in multiple other languages (French/Italian/Spanish). But they have never been published in Britain.

“Why can’t we talk about Hotel Arcadia as a terrorism book? Why does the fact that I am a woman change how it is received – not by the reader but by literary festivals. Why am I not being asked to talk about politics? Why must I talk about women’s issues, or diversity issues? Why can’t I talk about literature and terrorism and politics and all the things the book is about?

“It comes back to institutions making deliberate choices. I don’t think it is inappropriate to ask big companies to pay their staff a decent wage. I don’t think it is inappropriate to expect them to hire, deliberately, a wider range of people. But they choose not to do it.

“The publishing industry thinks they can have a little conference every now and again, and we’ll have the same people saying the same things, and then we’ll have done our job and we can park it and go back to doing what we always do. So at least #DiverseDecember, and so on, is getting people talking about the books and the writers. A bit of rattling the cage isn’t going to hurt.”

ON SOCIAL MEDIA

I first encountered Singh on Twitter, where she has a strong presence. Does that mean she sees social media as something positive, at least in part?

“I see it mostly as positive, especially Twitter. I have made so many friends there, both online and in real life. I have yet to meet anyone from Twitter who isn’t exactly how they seemed online. It’s so immediate; it lends itself to a sort of intimacy. You know someone’s politics – but you also know if they are a dog person or a cat person.

“For example, during the time in Tahrir Square, I followed one woman who was very vocal, very passionate, very political. Around two in the morning, I had insomnia. I was on Twitter. There was a lot going on, so they were constantly updating. She suddenly said, ‘I do realise this sounds frivolous, but I need to get my eyebrows done!’

“We have had every last breath of men over the centuries. But we haven’t heard the voice of women like this before. Women talking about themselves. The quotidian. It hasn’t been recorded before. The image is always filtered, and Twitter takes those filters off.

“On the other hand, as a writer, for the first time, I have the ability of the gatekeepers and reach out directly to the reader. And that is quite special. I had one Twitter follower who invited me to his book club – which meant Skype chatting between Seattle and London. The idea that you can do that is extraordinary!

“So yes, I’m a bit of a Twitter evangelist.”

She did, however, have an interesting experience once with changing her avatar on Twitter.

“One of the exercises I get my students to do is to have first a male character and then a female

character walk into a crowded pub, to describe their body language as they walk to the bar and order a drink.

“You always assume that Twitter and 'real life' will be different. But that is not the case. As a woman on Twitter, I get a certain amount of drive-by sniping – the equivalent of cat calls. Men who insult you or mansplain or tell you to shut up or say something quite sexual. No different to walking down the street. To me that is a structural issue. It’s about keeping women in their place, about saying public spaces are for men.

“Then I happened to change my avatar. I had been diving in Egypt, and there was a photo I really like that I decided to use. And because I had a mask on, you could no longer see whether I was a man or a woman. (Underwater is apparently not a female space – don’t ask me!) And the drive-by sniping stopped. No mansplaining. No ‘shut up you don’t know what you are talking about.’ Male journalists that I had followed for a long time started reaching out to me. Suddenly my opinions had weight, because I was underwater with a mask on!

“To me, that was quite telling. Gender still matters.”


Sunny Singh is an author and journalist. She also teaches creative writing at London Metropolitan University. She was born in India, and has lived in Pakistan, Spain, South Africa, Latin America and the US.

She Called Me Mother - a new play by Michelle Inniss

By Catriona Troth

Cathy Tyson and Chereen Buckley in She Called Me Mother. Photo: ©Richard Davenport

A few weeks ago, I caught a livestream of an extraordinary new play – She Called Me Mother. In it, actor Cathy Tyson plays Evangeline, a 70 year old Trinidadian immigrant selling the Big Issue on the streets of London. It was a remarkable performance by Tyson, who held the stage for well over an hour.

Evangeline has been homeless for a long time, searching for her daughter, who ran away when she was just sixteen. From time to time, the daughter slips on stage, speaking into the rift that has grown between them, giving her version of events. But for most of the play, Evangeline is alone with her memories.

“I try not to tink about she too much, ‘cause de pain dem thoughts bring it like a herd of buffalo runnin wild in a field, an I beneath dem foot.”

The play was put on by Pitch Lake Productions – a collaboration between the play’s author Michelle Inniss, actress Cathy Tyson and director Cara Nolan – under the auspices of Black Theatre Live. This trailer on YouTube will give you a taste of the rich Trinidadian vernacular in which the play is written. You can also explore both the language and themes through this Education Pack from Pitch Lake Productions.
Here I talk to Michelle Inniss, and learn more about how the play came to be written.

Hi, Michelle. I believe She Called Me Mother was inspired by a chance encounter at London Bridge station. Can you start by telling us more about that?

Several years ago, I was travelling regularly through London Bridge Station to visit my mother, who was very ill. I kept passing an elderly Afro-Caribbean woman selling the Big Issue. One day, I suppose because my head was full of my mum, when I stopped to speak to her, instead of calling her ‘auntie’ (which is a term of respect for an older woman in the Caribbean) I called her ‘mother.’ Her face lit up. After that, whenever I passed by, she wanted to give me something – some sweets, or a little bit of her food.

The last time I saw her was just after my mum passed away. She noticed I was upset and asked what the trouble was. When I told her, she reached into her trolley, grabbed some change – about £3 – pressed it into my hand and told me I must by flowers for my mother. I tried to say no, it’s okay. But she insisted. So I went to the flower stall and bought a single white rose that still had a drop of water on the petal. I tucked it inside my coat, because it was a cold day, and when I got to the chapel, the drop of water was still there.

After that, I couldn’t stop thinking about this woman, and why she was there. I’d never asked her about her story. We’d just talked about the weather, that sort of thing.

After mum died, I couldn’t write. My mentor, Jacob Ross, told me not to worry, just to read or listen to music. Do other things. After about a month, this character woke up and started speaking to me. And it was Evangeline.


What did you draw on to create that rich poetry in Evangeline’s voice?

I think the Trinidadian vernacular has its own musicality. Cathy Tyson has done such a brilliant job of capturing that voice.

Both my parents are from Trinidad. My father loves telling stories. My mother was much quieter, but she had certain sayings – like “I wouldn’t fart on cotton for him to smell,” which she would only say when she wasn’t happy with someone, but which we all thought was terribly funny.

So I was drawing on their voices, and memories of visiting Trinidad when I was younger. And also on the voices of Trinidadian writers - for example, Earl Lovelace’s The Dragon Can’t Dance [set in a poor neighbourhood of Port of Spain during Carnival]. I can read the prologue to that over and over again; the music of his prose just conjures up so much.


One of the things that attracted me to She Called Me Mother was that it gave voice of a homeless woman. Many years ago, I worked in a night shelter for the homeless, and I learnt then how many of them having fascinating and moving stories to tell. Why was it important for you to tell that story?

I thought a lot about how homeless people are invisible, how so many people passed her by and never really saw her, or think about their lives or how they came to be homeless. This woman was so much older than most homeless women too.

Out of this, my family started supporting St Mungo’s Broadway. I find the whole idea of not having a home to go back to such a scary thought. And we are not so far away from it, any of us. Things can happen in our lives, and we can find ourselves homeless.


She Called Me Mother is also about domestic abuse – something that straddles all strata of society. Why do you think that came out as part of Evangeline’s story?

It’s so commonplace; it’s a universal problem. But we don’t talk about nearly enough. Like homelessness, it is invisible.

I remember years ago, when we were visiting my husband's family in Spain, there was a couple who had separated and were living in different part of the same house. The husband set fire to the house and killed her. But even then, we didn’t take on board that this was something that women faced every day.

And now, because of the cuts, refuges and other services for women trying to escape violent relationships are being closed down, especially those for women from minorities.


In some ways, Evangeline’s daughter has fallen into the same trap as her mother. But she has also been stronger than her mother. How optimistic are you that her two little daughters will have a better future than either their mother or their grandmother?

From all the research I have done, there is a generational cycle, where women find themselves in abusive relationships very similar to the ones their parents have. But some women have broken that cycle. I wanted Shirley to be the one that broke that cycle. So yes, I’m optimistic.


Tell us about the development of the script. And how did Pitch Lake Production come about?

Cathy Tyson and I went to school together, and we’ve always kept in touch. When I first sent her the script, she was studying for a degree in Drama and English at Brunel University, and she put it aside until she had finished her studies.

When she came back to it, it happened to be when Black Theatre Live were putting out calls for expressions of interest. Everything came together really quickly. Cathy had just been working with a director called Cara Nolan at the Everyman Theatre, Liverpool and had been really impressed with her. Cara loved the play too. So we applied, got shortlisted, and travelled up to Derby to make our pitch. And we were chosen!

After that, we had to set up our company, Pitch Lake Productions – and we haven’t really looked back since.

At that stage the play was a monologue, with just Evangeline’s voice. Several people, including Adrian Jackson from Cardboard Citizens [a group practising 'theatre of the oppressed,' working with and for homeless people] suggested that it might be possible to draw out the story of the daughter, Shirley – why she left and what had happened to her.

We were lucky that the grant from Black Theatre Live included the opportunity to spend a week workshopping the play at Clean Break studios. That was really exciting. Another actress [Jen Daley] joined us and we had Trish Cooke working with us as a dramaturge. We focused on the parts of the script where Evangeline talks about her daughter, and played around with the script. Afterwards, I went away and wrote Shirley’s part.

What’s really made it for me has been the audience response – regardless of their background. It’s been amazing how many men have come up to me after performances and said, “I didn’t think you would make me cry.”

People have taken different things from the play – not just about homelessness or domestic abuse, but about the immigrant experience too. Universal stories everyone can relate to.


Do you think She Called Me Mother is attracting a different sort of audience to the theatre?

One of the amazing things about Black Theatre Live is that they are taking plays out into the regions, and doing outreach work to engage with different sorts of audiences.

Hardish Virk did huge amounts of work around audience development in Black Theatre Live's consortium of 8 theatres, speaking to local businesses and community groups about the play. A women's group facilitated by Mashi Theatre and Derby Theatre did some work looking at some of the themes in the play. And Theatre Royal Margate produced a video of some of the local people reading from the script.

Cathy also did a workshop with a group of women from St Mungo’s Broadway – some of whom then came to see the play, as did some of the people who work there.


In a recent interview about the Act for Change project, Meera Syal said "Autonomy is the first stage of revolution." Is that something you identify with? What else could and should be done to give BAME writers and actors better opportunities?

When it comes to the question of diversity in the theatre and the arts, part of me is thinking, why are we still having this conversation? In 2011 I went to a BFI event - British African and Caribbean Women Stars of the Screen. Corinne Skinner-Carter spoke about her career and in the afternoon Cathy, Ellen Thomas and Nikki Amuka-Bird spoke about their careers, roles, stereotypes and the need for more parts for black actors. It was interesting to hear echoes of this in Corinne's talk and the following generation of female actors of colour, so the conversation continues!

In that Act for Change interview, Meera Syal comments about first needing someone to write the parts. Cathy would definitely say there is the aspect of diversity, but there is also the aspect of being a woman and there is the aspect of age. The parts get less and less the older you get. And if that is true for women in general, it is even more true for women of colour. So if there are women playwrights writing parts for older women, that has to be a good thing.

Another aspect of the diversity question is that we found it really difficult to find stage managers and production managers of colour. There are not nearly enough BAME folk in that side of theatre.

So yes, autonomy. But we need each other too. We’ve had an awful lot of support from other people. We’ve had so much goodwill extended to us from all sort of people – Jatinder Verma and Jonathan Kennedy at Tara Arts, Milan Govedarika at Black Theatre Live – it’s just amazing.


Finally, tell us about any other projects you have in the pipeline.

I am working on another play this time on the theme of forgiveness and redemption. And, yes, that would be for Pitch Lake Productions. We are such a good team. We calm each other down. We have this way of saying, “bloody hell,” in a very ‘northern’ way. And then, “let’s have a cuppa.”

Cara and Cathy are such hard workers, real grafters and really passionate and creative. I hope that we work together for a really long time.

I’m also working a novel. And trying to keep away from social media – it’s become my little distraction. Even my children are saying, “What are you doing on that tablet, mum?”

The way I work is to write whatever comes, and then I backtrack and delve into research (which is another area where I can get carried away, reading and reading and NOT writing).

I also think it’s really important to keep that constructive critical facility alive. It feeds into your reflection on your own writing too. I am thinking of rejoining my old writers’ group.

This year has been so exciting. So unexpected. So next year I am looking forward to more of the same – I hope!


Thank you, Michelle. We hope so too!

By the time you read this, the final shows of She Called Me Mother in 2015 will already have passed. But look out for its return at the new Tara Arts Theatre in Spring 2016, when they will be raising money for St Mungo’s Broadway.

Michelle Inniss is a writer and Spanish teacher, and has just completed a Masters degree in Creative Writing at Brunel University. This autumn, her story ‘Whatever Lola wants,’ was published in Closure: a new anthology of Black British writers published by Peepal Tree. She was longlisted for the new playwrights’ scheme, Angle at The Bush Theatre, in 2011, shortlisted for The Fish Short Story Prize in 2010, and in 2006 was runner up for the Penguin Decibel Short Story Prize.

Black Theatre Live is a partnership of Tara Arts, Derby Theatre, Queen’s Hall Arts (Northumberland), Lighthouse (Poole), Theatre Royal Bury St. Edmunds, Theatre Royal Margate, Stratford Circus (London) and Key Theatre (Peterborough). Black Theatre Live expects to work with emerging and established BAME companies across England to commission and tour high quality productions to the consortia theatres over the coming 3 years.

Diversity Pt 2: If We Aren't Opening Up Discussion, We're Limiting Ourselves to a Tunnel Vision

By Catriona Troth

In Part 1 of my discussion this month of diversity, I talked to Debbie Reese, who runs the widely respected blog ‘American Indians in Children’s Literature’.

In this second part I talk to Farhana Shaikh, MD of Dahlia Publishing, based in Leicester, which champions diverse and regional writing in the UK.

 To recap, May this year saw the publication of a new report on diversity in publishing, commissioned by
Spread the Word, diversity in publishing is once again a hot topic. The report, Writing the Future: Black and Asian Writers and Publishers in the UK Market Place, paints a bleak and depressing picture. It shows that the profound changes the publishing industry has undergone in the past ten years has resulted in an industry that is less, not more, diverse.


Like Debbie Reese, Farhana Shaikh campaigns. passionately for greater diversity in literature and publishing

If We Aren't Opening Up Discussion, We're Limiting Ourselves to a Tunnel Vision

Interview with Farhana Shaikh

Farhana Shaikh is the founder of Dahlia Publishing, the Asian Writer and Leicester Writes.

Hi, Farhana. Can you tell us a bit about your journey in publishing, and the relationship between these three elements of your work?

My love for books started from a young age, and I always knew I wanted to be a writer. Publishing was my chance to work with books and earn a living (or so I thought at the time!) and so I went off to study Publishing with English at university. I wrote while starting a family, and later decided to start a blog about raising the profile of Asian writers. Most of my work has been an organic process, and I didn't have a set plan when I started out. 

After three years of growing The Asian Writer, I set myself a new challenge to publish regional and diverse writing. I had the publishing background and confidence to dip my toe in the water - and never looked back. This year, I really wanted to focus on local writers and celebrate Leicester writers in particular and that's how I came round to organising an entire festival around new writing. There's definitely a relationship between all my respective work and it's building writing communities and developing new writing.

Writing the Future has highlighted the lack of diversity in the publishing industry in Britain today. How does that impact on opportunities for BME writers?

I think the report was damning in that it highlighted just how terrible the situation - in fact it stated that in terms of a diverse workforce it's worse than it was a decade ago - which is a real eye-opener. The opportunities for BME writers are scarce and we need to do more to build a more diverse workforce to ensure that BME writers aren't outsiders, that is, they aren't seen as different to any other writer and that their work isn't judged by levels of 'authenticity' but on the writing alone.


What role do you feel that Dahlia Publishing (etc) can play in countering this?

Dahlia Publishing counters this in its own small way. We have an open submissions policy and focus on publishing regional and diverse writing - so diversity isn't something we think about or talk about, it's just something we do. We're inclusive and want to attract the best writers and publish the best books. Through Dahlia Publishing and The Asian Writer we've encouraged submissions from new writers and set up competitions to find the best emerging talents. These often give new writers trying to break through a huge confidence boost and set them off on greater paths. We also ran a 12 month-long development scheme for British Asian women to develop their writing last year.

On an industry level, we're signed up to the Equalities Charter and since our inception have helped undergraduates develop publishing skills. For many years I mentored students from Loughborough University - 2nd year BME students - and that presented them with a fantastic opportunity to gain an insight in to the workplace and gain employability skills. More recently, we've had the chance to work with University of Leicester to offer e-placements to their final year students to give them an insight into the small press, and gain valuable hands on experience. 

Our WWJ colleague, Dan Holloway, was recently quoted in the Bookseller as saying, "What are [publishers] doing to get in touch with street artists and aspiring rappers, and out into the poorest schools and after school clubs to ensure that those kids whose parent(s) don't have a room of their own, let alone a space for their kid to do homework in, will be inspired, encouraged and enabled to convert the angers and passions and hopes of their experience into the great literature of 10 years' time? Because unless they are actively doing that, any pretence to be really interested in what's new and exciting is like dangling a bit of string over the side of a rowing boat in the Med and saying 'Hey, I'd love to catch a deep sea Humboldt squid." 

Do you agree with that, and what other places would you encourage publishers to be venturing into to find new talent?

Absolutely, I think the way we've been hearing about discussions around diversity in publishing tend to show how publishers aren't getting it and Dan illustrates this perfectly. 

If we aren't opening up discussions with the right people we're limiting ourselves to a tunnel vision of what publishing should look like and what literature is all about. It's strange because people read books because they want to explore new worlds - we need to start looking at ways to opening up doors for those who might not otherwise be represented - auditing the workforce is just the start. 

As for other places - it's not difficult. Diversity is all around us and I don't buy into this notion that diverse communities are 'hard to reach'.

 
Do you think BME writers get trapped into writing about certain subjects, because that is what publishers expect?

I don't know if that's entirely true. I think BME writers have varying experiences of publishers and it's important to recognise that. But, I think what happens is that the early career writer especially might feel swayed to write about a certain subject if they feel that is what sells, or is told to by their agent to write a certain thing. I've heard from writers who have asked me whether they should write about something (even if they don't want to) simply because their agent believes they can sell it. Writers want to be read - and that means some are willing to write what their told or what they believe is expected of them.

You have written about the issue of self-censorship. Can you tell me more about that?

Again - I think this happens when the writers themselves have fixed ideas of what publishing is about
and also in that early career when writers are still trying to find their voice - so they start off avoiding certain subjects, and sticking to a safe few. We need to give writers the right support so they know that they want to write about is important and meaningful. If everyone is always chasing to write something that's 'commercially viable' purely for that benefit then that's a depressing state of affairs. I would hope we can instill the sort of confidence in our writers to write something they truly believe in, that also happens to be commercially viable!


The question of whether writers can - or should ever attempt to - create characters from an ethnic minority they don't belong to is one that raises strong feelings and widely different opinions. Do you believe it is ever possible for white writers to write authentically (or at least well) from the point of view BME characters?

I don't see why not. And yes, it can be done well the other way around too. That's more of a question of the writer's ability to do it well enough so it's believable, than anything else.

Is there a danger that, even when they do it well, writers from the dominant culture writing about BME characters will drown out authentic voices, simply because they have easier access to agents, publishers etc?

When I read Beauty by Raphael Selbourne, I absolutely loved it - and as long as the experiences of BME communities is represented in literature I think that's more important than the question of who is writing it. Also I'm not sure how we qualify the authenticity - if we live in multicultural cities than surely our experiences are shared and therefore overlapping?


What changes would you most like to see in the world of publishing that would enable more diverse voices to be heard?

•  more peer to peer mentoring perhaps between the 'diverse' small presses and the big six.

•  editorial opening specifically for BME candidates

•  diversity training for publishers

•  commitment to publish BME writers 

To end on a positive note – can you point to any highlights in terms of recent good practice, strong BME voices etc?

There's been plenty of debate around diversity which in itself is a good thing. There's more awareness than say last year, with more articles, tweets, reports and events on the subject. This is all a step in the right direction.

Thank you, Farhana.

If this has whetted your appetite, here’s small sample of books from Dahlia Publishing. To find more, why not explore their website?

When Ali Met Honour  by Ruth Ahmed

Bombay Baby by Leela Soma

Finding Takri by Palo Stickland


You could also check these books by great BME authors you may not know. (Links are to my reviews on BookMuse. )

Londonstani by Gautam Malkani

Brenton Brown by Alex Wheatle

Psychoraag by Suhayl Saadi

Finding Arun by Marisha Pink

Dear Infidel by Tamim Sadikali.

And if you are interested in creating characters from backgrounds different to your own, then you can read my article on Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward's excellent book Writing the Other in the Triskele Toolbox.