FACE TO FACE
Home is `here'
T.A. HAFEEZ
The beautiful black Sudanese immigrant Zuleika roams free with her friend Alba in the streets of London . Fortune smiles on her father, a small trader, when the senator Lucuius Aurelius Felix covets his nubile daughter and he soon joins the ranks of the nouveau riche. This is Londinium of 211 A.D... We follow Zuleika in her rise to luxury and her exploitation by her old, obese, yet often absent, husband. The emperor Septimius Severus visits this farflung outpost of the Roman empire and a torrid affair ensues for the young bored Zuleika who has to finally pay the price.
The originality of the setting and plot are arresting enough. But the form of BERNADINE EVARISTO'S second novel The Emperor's Babe is even more unusual. Like her previous work Lara, published in 1997, it is a novel in verse.
Of mixed Nigerian-English parentage, Evaristo uses her background to create works that speak of the insider-outsider and explore her identity as Black and British.
She is in the league of writers such as Jackie Kay, Andrea Levy and Hanif Kureishi to whom Britain means home but whose origins are in cultures so diverse and different that they weave a complex mosaic of the diaspora .
Evaristo is one of the five happening U.K. writers the British Council is hosting this year as part of its Vibrant Viewpoints programme. The award-winning writer, who was the Poetry Society's Poet in Residence at the Museum of London in 1999 and has been writer-in-residence in universities in various countries skilfully meshes the genres of poetry, drama and prose in her work. She was one of two British writers who took part in the Literatureexpress Europa 2000 tour which took 105 European writers through 11 European cities over six weeks by train.
Evaristo, who is on her 46th worldwide tour since 1997, spoke to KAUSALYA SANTHANAM. Excerpts:
ARE writers like you now working in a more congenial environment when people seek out the "other" and a plurality of voices is welcome?
Absolutely. Britain has changed in the last few years and it is a changing literary scene. We are in a more multicultural society and it is possible for writers like me to be heard. We have to write about ourselves. Otherwise we won't exist in literature or history. I wouldn't be read in universities if I were not a writer of colour. Race is no longer an issue especially at the level of a writer like Rushdie. I mention him and not Arundhathi Roy because he lives in England.
Is there a feeling however of being ghettoised — as woman, Black and a post-colonial writer? And is there a feeling of belonging in Britain or is one always an outsider?
I'm just a writer. To be labelled a post-colonial or Black writer is just a process of categorisation by the academics. I have strong women characters in my novels though I don't deal with specific feminist issues. I'm both Black and White. My mother is English and my father Nigerian. I grew up very British. As for the sense of belonging, the U.K. is not one homogenous place. In the cities there is intermarriage but in the countryside it is different. There are various levels. Earlier Nigerians felt they did not belong but this has changed in the last 10-15 years. If you are always dreaming of going home, you will never invest in where you are living.
How do the Whites and the Blacks respond to your novels and are you read in Nigeria?
The response has been good from both. The reviews are generally written by the Whites and they have been very favourable; most of the audiences who come to the readings are White. It's hard to import books to Nigeria. Even the works of Nigerian writers who left the country 20 years ago are not read and that is really sad.
Has the response to your work in India been as good as you anticipated?
It is fantastic being here. I thought people would be able to relate and they did. The audience laughed at all the right places in Lara — especially Taiwo's impressions of England when he first comes there. At some readings in England, there was not a titter.
Is Lara mostly autobiographical?
Yes, I did a lot of research — interviewing my parents, visiting museums, looking up family photographs, listening to music and travelling to Brazil (where parts of the novel are set) and Nigeria. You start writing a story and then the story starts to write you. Lara spans seven generations and three continents. I see my work as radical since it challenges the common perception that Britain became multicultural after World War II when people from the colonies came to settle here. In the 16th Century there were Blacks owing to the sthnsjlave trade and there were other Indian traders too.
Does poetry come easier to you than prose? Why did you choose to write your two novels in verse?
My first publication in 1994 was an anthology of verse. I wrote Lara in prose — 200 pages of it and then threw it all away and then took a couple of years to tranform it into poetry. You don't choose the form, the form chooses you. I find verse more punchy.
Have you always wanted to be a writer?
I wanted to be an actress and trained at a School for drama. I wrote plays and set up a Black theatre company with a friend. All the main characters were Black women. We staged a few plays before I moved to full time writing.
Did your background influence your choice?
I'm the only writer in my family. My father was a welder and my mother was a schoolteacher. I come from a Catholic background, one of eight children. Money was scarce. We lived adjoining a convent and my father haggled with the school authorities for his children to study there.
What is your new novel Soul Tourists about?
I don't want to say much (as it is a work in progress). It is a novel with verse — parts of it are in prose and parts in verse and is about the adventures of a couple across Europe. Ghosts from European history come into the life of the young man. It has to do with the couple's relationship with each other and the man's relationship with Europe...
She signs off on that intriguing note.
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