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Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo




Published: 2019, Penguin Random House

Genre: Fiction

Themes: Gender, relationships, race, sexual identity, social attitudes

My rating (out of 5): ❤❤❤❤❤


The dedication in this book is:

'For the sisters & the sistas & the sistahs & the sistren & the women & the womxn & the wimmin & the womyn & our bretheren & our bredrin & our brothers & our bruvs & our men & our mandem & the LGBTQI+ members of our human family.'

Those last five words are the essence of it.  Whoever we love, whatever we look like, dress like, act like.  We are members of our human family.  We should be able to be who we want to be without judgement.  Except we're not there yet and there is still a long way to go.  This book helps to give context to some of the different ways people find love, and how that does not necessarily remain the same for a lifetime.  

Bernadine Evaristo introduces us to a great many vibrant people, and you need to keep up with all of the names while reading because there are twelve main characters, and they all have a lifetime's worth of family and friends.  Amma is central to everything and many of her aforementioned friends and family are coming to The National Theatre in London for the opening night of her play 'The Last Amazon of Dahomey'.  It's taken Amma decades to break into the mainstream of theatre and have her radical ideas accepted, but now there is a cultural shift towards multiculturalism and acceptance of gender fluidity and she has her opportunity.

During the build-up to the opening night performance, Bernadine Evaristo takes 450 pages to delve into the back stories of the twelve main characters, and between them they have dealt with many of the great injustices done to women of whatever race or colour.  These big issues include: sexual assault, unplanned pregnancy and a lifetime of dealing with the consequences; all of which are still too common and often unreported because many women believe they bear some of the blame for the harm that was done to them.  Why go through a judiciary system that is not on your side?

Despite the complex map of relationships, this book is easy to read and the characters are diverse yet familiar.  Their stories bring a normality to lives that are still largely misunderstood.  How often do we overhear someone discussing the newly raised profiles of the LGBTQI+ community, and hear the comment 'I think it's all gone too far these days'?  In answer to this question Bernadine Evaristo cleverly uses the views of older family members to voice negative views on sexuality and gender and that allows the reader to see the hurt that offhand remarks can cause.  In this way the book gently educates without preaching and we all need to understand before we can help put things right.

Well worth reading.


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