Book review: 'Girl, Woman, Other'

Lucy is a member of our Workforce Race Equality Network (WREN) and had been finding out more about diversity and inclusivity.

I first saw Bernadine Evaristo being interviewed on BBC breakfast and immediately went online to purchase her novel “Girl, Woman, Other”.

The novel won the Booker Prize in 2019 and propelled to the top of the UK paperback fiction chart, making Evaristo the first black British woman to reach number one. In the interview, she linked the Black Lives Matter movement and the novel’s spike in popularity with people suddenly ‘curating lists of books that other people should read, primarily white people’.

I had seen lists-a-plenty springing up with book recommendations, mainly aimed at white people, encouraging a better understanding and education of topics like white privilege and systematic racism.

The fictional tale follows 12 black British women moving through their own lives but intertwined as relatives, friends, co-workers or simply just by arguing on Twitter.

The story opens with Amma, a feminist playwright grappling with a moral dilemma as her most recent play is picked up by the National theatre but she can’t escape the incessant feeling that she is selling out on her previously radical, progressive work by writing and directing a play at the far more traditional theatre.

As more characters are introduced, the women span generations, sexualities, faiths and political beliefs, each with her own unique story to tell as she experiences the world around her differently.

Drawing on enormous topics like race, feminism, class systems and love, Evaristo narrates in such a way that these issues become incredibly personal to the women she is writing about. I found it incredibly funny at times, heart-breaking at others and overall a fantastic read.

As a woman, the character’s experiences of living in a patriarchal society rang true but enlightened me further to the privilege I experience as a white woman in that patriarchal society, compared to the different experiences that women of colour face.

Lucy Heffron,
Engagement and Organisational Development Practitioner

Our workforce is diverse, as are the communities we serve.  However this alone does not make us an inclusive organisation. We know BAME colleagues are not equally represented at more senior levels of our Trust and that racism both direct and indirect and bullying and harassment continues to take place here.  We must do more to tackle racism and inequality and create a culture where this can be called out.

Visit the ‘Tackling racism and inequality’ section on our Staff CoronaWeb for ways you can find out more about diversity and inclusivity.