 Good evening and welcome to our Hawthorndon event in celebration celebration of Zora Neil Hurston and the influence of American writers on British literature with the Black Girls Book Club, Jackie K and Selena Godden. I'm Molly Rosenberg I'm director of the Royal Society of Literature and it's my pleasure to kick off this evening's discussion of Zora Neil Hurston's life and enduring influence. Over a career that spanned more than 30 years, Zora Neil Hurston published four novels, two books of folklore and autobiography and numerous short stories, as well as essays, articles and plays. Today, this leading light of the Harlem Renaissance continues to unite readers across the world, including our panelists this evening. I'm very pleased to be sharing tonight with our co-host the British Library, particularly as this evening's event forms part of the library's newly launched exhibition, Unfinished Business, The Fight for Women's Rights, exploring how feminist activism today has its roots in the complex history of women's rights. Welcome to to everyone watching through the Living Knowledge Network broadcasting tonight by a public libraries. It's lovely to have you with us. While we aren't able to be together at one public library we love, British Library, everyone watching can send questions as we go through the event online. You can do this at the bottom of the screen, you'll see a box that you can write into and we'll get through as many questions as possible at the end of the discussion. The event is also being supported by live speech to text captioning and thank you Heather for doing that. You can click on the button below the video to turn these on and have them throughout the event. At the top of the screen as I'm navigating you around everything. At the top of the screen you can also find a tab for the BLs online bookshop where you can buy books by Jackie K and Selina Godden as well as Zora Neale Hurston so please do do that at the beginning during and at the end. Before I introduce our wonderful chairs for this evening I'd like to thank the Hawthornden Charitable Trust for making tonight possible. We are hugely grateful. For leading us through Zora Neale Hurston's work I am thrilled to introduce the co-founders of the Black Girls Book Club particularly as they are celebrating a birthday today so I hope we have lots of birthday celebrations. Melissa Cummings Quarry and Natalie A Carter met at secondary school in northeast London and bonded over their shared love of books. Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God and Alice Walker's The Color Purple remain firm favourites. Years later Melissa now a business development manager and Natalie a real estate lawyer decided to channel that passion for reading and formed the Black Girls Book Club a literature and social events platform that celebrates literature by black female writers. Now touted as one of the UK's top live literature events, Black Girls Book Club have hosted Bernardine Everisto, Roxanne Gay, Mallory Blackman, Afwa Hirsch, Tiari Jones, Angie Thomas and most recently the RSA was delighted to co-host a book club with them last night. Melissa and Natalie were named as two of the booksellers rising stars of 2019 and their debut book Grown will be published by Bloomsbury in 2021. Over to you Natalie and Melissa. Good evening everybody I just want to say what an honour and a privilege it is to be here tonight. Imagine like I think meeting Natalie at like what 11 and a half, 12 and a half years old. We were so in love with reading. Okay, so loving with reading and with books and if you told me that tonight I would be chairing an event for the Royal Society of Literature with the British Library, having Jackie Kay, the Grand Dame herself and the phenomenal Selena Gooden. I would have called you a bloody liar. I would not have believed it and have the honour to celebrate our favourite writer Zora Neale Hurston is just unbelievable. Zora for me is it when it comes to writing, when it comes to just the idea of black womanhood she is everything and to be able to discuss this tonight with all of you. It's just going to be such a joy. I think we've been waiting for a moment like this and to do it is such phenomenal writers, phenomenal voices. It's just going to be absolutely incredible. Definitely. Am I supposed to speak now? Yeah. Pause like a little pause for you babes. This is definitely going to be a traditional black girls book club event and as Molly mentioned it is actually our fourth birthday today. And we have some really amazing plans until COVID-19 just tried to mash up 2020 but we're still here and really, really, really excited. So, yeah, so how should we start guys? I have a little question I think I wanted to start with really our kind of journey to Zora. For myself, I found Zora, I was 14 years old. I distinctly remember it because there was a bookshop which is like RIP suddenly to pass it now called Camden Lock Books in, is it Old Street? Old Street and Station. Old Street, yeah. One thing about my mum is she would never let me have anything I wanted. If I wanted kickers, no. Like Air Max Trainers, no. But books, she would just let me have any book I wanted. So we went into this bookshop and this is when I have like a section which is for black books. And I was so blown away and I thought, she said, look, just get whatever book you want. And I picked up this book. Their eyes are watching God. I thought, what the hell is this? What does this mean? And I'm like, I'm quite naughty because I always like pick books based on their cover and like in the title. So I thought, let me just read this. What is this about? And being 14 and reading this book, which was Black Womanhood, it introduced me to feminism. It introduced me to kind of just the idea of authenticity and exploring yourself and just kind of being yourself. And I just, I keep going back to this book. I think without finding this book, I don't know if I would have found myself. So my question to you both, and I think I'll start with Jackie, but how did you come to find Zora? What was your journey to Zora? Oh, it's lovely. It's actually remember what my journey to Zora was because I also met Zora when I was young. Do you think I would call you the Grand Dumb? Not as young as 14, but I was 20. So I first, I first came across her in 1981. So yeah, I was 20 years old. I was living in Brixton at the time. I was a student, but I was living in London for the summer. I was a hospital porter. And I went into Sisterite Bookshop and that title just jumped out at me. And I got their eyes were watching God. And then I was hooked. And I was thinking today, just what an extraordinary thing it is to have loved somebody for 40 years, basically. And yet to not feel like it's 40 years every time that I return to her work, which is like all the time. And she just feels fresh again and new to me and surprising. So I'm always finding new things in Zora and these endless things to discover in her. And I was really shocked today when I realized that it was actually 40 years because I thought it was much less than that. It was 40 years that I've been loving Zora Neil Hurston's work. 1981 Brixton was burning. There was lots of racism around the rock against racism movement was formed. I remember working in Westminster Hospital. Initially I had green hair. And then I had to get it changed because I was a hospital porter. And there's lots of kind of strange racism in the air at that time. I remember when I went back to Stirling University, I was put up on the wall of these fascists that put up these posters with my name on it and razor blades behind the posters. And I was offered police protection. And it was it was a very, very strange time for me. I remember a parcel being sent to my house then and thinking it was a parcel bomb. There was a lot of threat in the air and Zora Neil Hurston was just like such an extraordinary comfort. And although I grew up in suburban Glasgow, I'd never met characters like the characters that are in the port at the beginning of their eyes were watching God. They felt completely and utterly familiar to me. They felt like people I needed to know. And they felt like people that I already knew. And that's the thing about Zora. She begins before she begins and she ends after she ends. She just is on a continuum with you. And Selena, how did you come to go into Zora? Okay, well, first, I just want to say thank you for inviting me and also happy birthday and congratulations on four years of doing a black girls book club. I'm a massive fan of all you're doing. Okay, so how did I get into Zora? I have always been really in love with the way that books lead you to books and great authors lead you to great authors. I like to follow a paper trail of how people discovered writers. So it was Alice Walker actually that got me into Zora. And it was listening to her talks and reading her essays and her passion for Zora that made me want to find out who Zora was. So I blame Alice Walker for my, yeah, for getting into it. I think we can all go from the last one to the table because I only discovered her when Melissa said we need to read this book for black girls book club. I didn't, I was completely I didn't know anything about obviously I loved Alice Walker so completely missed that memo. And I remember when we were getting ready for our book club and I'm reading this book and I'm like message Melissa like how could you have been my friend since I was 12 years old. And it's only like 18 years later only now you're telling me about this book. I still I'll never forgive Melissa for that. I'm just saying that. The book means so much to me. So you think I would have shared it but it was such a personal book for me. Exploration that it felt kind of even saying to people let's read this book. I think it was the second book we did the book club. And it's like a secret. I was like Natalie, there's a book and I really think we should do it. But I was kind of embarrassed to tell her because I felt like I was opening myself up. So it's kind of that kind of feeling I'm sharing something so personal with me and I'm so glad that I did. Because it was a book that not many people read I think at that point and when we kind of sit and look you need to read this book. But everyone fell in love with Zora and I did and I think discovering her kind of later on in my reading journey. I just every as I was reading the story I was just thinking I don't know if people have had that with books you just like you just wish you read this book like 10 years earlier. We just wish you read this book as a much younger woman because it was so empowering. And it just went against so many of the stories that I had read because my kind of reading history was slightly different because I would like still books for my aunties like Eric Jerome Dickie Terry Macmillan kind of really salacious very kind of romantic R&B type you know love is difficult but love is worth it type really kind of grown up books that I shouldn't have been reading at my age. And I always kind of felt they followed this trail of like women just chasing after men relentlessly and kind of being these continuous heartbroken kind of powerless helpless characters. So to read kind of their eyes watching God and see something from the very beginning like have relationships and make decisions to follow their heart and each and every time and go against the grain was it was it was kind of. I don't want to stop the come across as dramatic but it was very life changing for me even in my own personal approach and romantic relationships as well. So for me I'm still very much on that discovering Zora Neil Hurston journey and reading and relishing her work and being excited about her work and still having that tinge of regret feeling like why couldn't Melissa tell me about this 10 years ago 12 years ago but it is what it is now but I'm on a nice journey because it's everything is new and fresh and really exciting to me about her and I feel. I really do appreciate her more maybe if I would have read it when I was younger, maybe I wouldn't have got it. Yeah, I kind of think we've come across books when we need to. Yeah, exactly the right time so I wouldn't worry about the 10 years because I think you yeah we're ready for books at different times it's almost like somebody's in the air, somebody's in the air before you find them and. Whatever routes sometimes we don't even remember the exact routes that took us to that person I remember in my case it was actually Mary Helen Washington who wrote about Zora Neil Hurston even before Alice Walker and she wrote this great book that had different kind of chapters on different African American women writers and I was quite obsessed at that time with finding. Mary Helen. I'll do a mental note as well for me. Let's say again, Mary. Mary Helen Washington so she was also instrumental and her and Alice Walker kind of did this thing together I think Alice Walker gets credited with it because she's the more well known of the two, but Mary Helen Washington was there first and there was a kind of growing, there was a growing kind of consciousness amongst black scholars and academics around about that time in the 70s. And to think you know what's happened to this woman she disappeared from view. And you know she was very well known really in the 40s and then she just disappeared from view and and died in the 60s. And then there was a whole, you know there's a whole really 20 to 25 years where she was in the shadow completely in the shadow and there's a number of people that were studying and writing and thinking this was the first writer that ever wrote a kind of lyrical symbolism. She was the first writer that rejected that kind of earthy realism and I think she got knocked out of knocked out of place when Richard writing writers like that came along with a different kind of realism, because she had to kind of a magical she was a kind of magical realist long before Gabrielle Garcia Marquez. And I think what's really striking about her her work is that extraordinary combination of realism and symbolism that coming to consciousness like none of us had ever read a book like that before of this young black woman's consciousness, her awakening, and it's extraordinary and it starts right from from page one, but in Zora's own time there as we're watching God was was a complete flop, nobody got her. She was a way way ahead of her time. So it's kind of it's a salutary tale, really to think that she died poor in an old people's home, which had an unmarked grave and it took Alice Walker going to find that grave in 1973 for her to be brought back really to the attention of people with her groundbreaking essay and search from her mother's gardens but before Alice there was there was Mary Helen Washington and a whole load of other other people and I find that really, really really fascinating to think that if somebody is a genius, and somebody cares about their ancestors then other people will find their bones and it's kind of fitting for Zora, who was so fascinated with the return of people with zombies and folklorists that she herself should have made this comeback literally risen back from the dead. I loved it because it was quiet for her. Now, I know some of you are kind of watching listening in, may not have read their lives watching God, and we've got something very special because the Jackie K. A little reading for us. I'm just like in awe like I can't wait for this. I hope I do justice and I should have said too it's a real great pleasure to be here and I really admire your work I think it's fantastic because I really love the idea that you get out to a whole bunch of new readers out there. And that's just just so exciting. And it's exciting to think to think of kicker's shoes and mums and what you're allowed and what you're not allowed and to think of the context for all of us how we come to how we come to books. So this this very first sentence of this their eyes are watching God which is still probably her most famous book and will always be her most famous book this particular edition I've got of it at the moment has an introduction by Zady Smith and it's also the kind of people that are that are drawn to her and to Zora Neil Hurston from Gary Young Dallas Walker to Zady Smith there's a whole lot of people banging at the door saying so so so so here she is. Page one. Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board for some they come in with the tide for others they sail forever on the horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by time. That is a life of men. Now women forget all those things they don't want to remember and remember everything they don't want to forget the dream is the truth. Then they act and do things accordingly. So the beginning of this was a woman and she had come back from burying the dead, not the dead of sick and ailing with friends at pillow and defeat. She came back from the sudden and the bloated, the sudden dead, their eyes flung wide open in judgment. The people all saw her come because it was sundown, the sun was gone, but he had left his fingerprints in the sky. It was a time for sitting on the porches beside the road. It was a time to hear things and talk. Sitters had been tongueless, earless, eyeless, conveniences all day long. Mules and other brooks had occupied their skins, but now the sun and the boss man were gone. So the skins felt powerful and human. They became lords of sounds and lesser things. They passed nations through their mouths. They sat in judgment. Seeing the woman as she was made them remember the envy they had stored up from other times. So they chewed up the back part of their minds and swallowed with relish. They made their burning statements with questions and killing tools out of laughs. It was mass cruelty and moods come alive. Words walking without masters walking altogether like harmony in a song. So that seems to me to be the most kind of arresting beginning because you already get the sun's already got a character. You get the idea that Mules have a character that this person has returned from seeing something really shocking, bloated death. So you know that there's been some drama happening and that these people watching in the porch, the community, and she establishes all that on that page and a half and you already want to know what's going to happen next. And the porch in their eyes are watching God becomes kind of a consciousness itself. It becomes a community and I never grew up around porches like that with people sitting out chewing the fat and talking about each other in porches. But when I read that book I longed for that kind of community on porches that would watch each other go by and try and wonder what was going to happen next. And you already also get the sense that she's not fazed by surreal happenings and a sense of symbolism. So just in that page and a half you've already got that kind of emotional, lyrical realism, a real porch, real people, but the idea that the sun leaves its marks across the sky. So I wanted to ask actually, this is direction you've seen and I think just as Jackie's mentioned it, there's an idea of lyrical realism. So I'm currently reading your new book, which is incredible. Really reading what? Your new book. Your book? Yes. Where is it? Where is it? Oh, he's got it. Read more if you can. I love a cheeky plug. Don't worry, Jackie. I'm going to plug all of yours next. Oh, thank you. And what grabbed me about it? Because we've been reading for the book that we did yesterday, this one, which is Zora's, hitting a straight. And what I loved about that is kind of like the poetry and then kind of storytelling. And I found that you do that as well in this. And I just wanted to know kind of where that influence comes from. Is it a bit kind of from Zora or is it just your, is it just the way that you write just naturally? I think with that, with that, but Mrs. Death, Mrs. Death, because we're, we're putting, we're imagining death as a woman, as a black woman, as a skin angry black woman. So just as soon as you do that, I think she would, I pictured her just speaking, coming from different voices. So in one scene, she's a homeless woman pushing a trolley of plastic bottles in another scene. A woman, a woman cleaning the floor in the hospital. And so all these different voices and different characters would sort of speak in different ways. So some of it is snips of diary, some of it pieces of in a, in a sort of dialogue and some of it comes out as poetry, because it's coming from different places, like not just different people, different times and different eras and different centuries. So I wanted to sort of show sort of that, that, you know, that, that how I wasn't expected to talk about my book. I'm all shy now. Yeah, so that's We're here to imply the word black women. And we'll just Yeah, so that, that was, that's kind of how, how the book came to me in dreams and visions and nightmares, nightmares, lots of nightmares, is when you write about death as as a woman or imagine that death is female. It's not about the way men kill women or the way women are murdered or the way women disappear or, you know, very much say my name way black women on given justice and we go with down a very different road to imagine in death as a man. That's, that's where that's coming from. Okay, I'm going to direct similar question now to Jackie because when I was reading your phenomenal memoir so this one guys read dust road. That amazing. It reminded me that Zora has a memoir does track the road and I'm like, Was that intentional I'm just thinking as black women we've all come to find Zora, we all love her and it's in every kind of bit of our work and what we do we find a way to kind of slip things in that kind of a testament to us I'm just wondering. Yeah, yeah that's lovely that you should you should have noticed that and dust tracks on the road is absolutely, you know, another one of my favorite books of hers because in that book she, she blends autobiography and fiction because a lot of her life she made up she was a she was a famous artist about her, her own life, but she blends in effort to effortlessly well and I think that's, I find that fascinating about the forum. Red Dust Road, I called Red Dust Road for lots, lots of different reasons, one mainly because of the road in Nigeria, and also because of yellow brick roads and, and also because of red road flats and Glasgow but also yes dust tracks on the road I was just thinking about the ways that roads lead you to places and the ways that you find yourself unexpectedly. And when I found this village in Nigeria it was as if that my birth father is from it was as if my own footsteps were on the road and all I had to do was walk into my waiting footsteps. And when I read Zora and her travels around the country, I mean because she was an anthropologist and a folklorist and she collected stories. In fact I went to the library in Washington and looked at some of the films that she made, had to make a special appointment. And I've got to see all of these films that she made of these of children's games and children playing they're totally kind of fascinating but she was endlessly fascinated by people's lowers habits and ways, and, and by making journeys and she made several journeys and it's I guess it's through making journeys that we get to find out about ourselves and other people. So yes Red Dust Road was a journey for me of discovery too it was a bit like being a detective in your own life, and, and going off and so yeah I'm glad that you, you, you find the wee echoes there. I love that book Jackie, I've got that book, that book somewhere. You're up there next to Kit DeWall, yeah. Oh that's nice that's good company to keep. That's nice thank you. Yeah well I find it really interesting what you were saying about death and Mrs, Mrs death and, and having to think about death in that way and characterise death because death comes in so many different ways. Death comes in so many different guises, and different deaths come to so many different people, and yet we are as a society, and particularly in this, in this country, quite strange, we don't really talk about death. And yet, and yet Zora has an extraordinary way of talking not just about death but about zombies and about returns and she's she's fascinated with the idea that people have these other, other lives and other selves. So yeah I find, I find the whole subject of death fascinating because I feel as if the conversation, my dad, my dear dad died a year ago tomorrow, and my adoptive dad so he died the day after my mum's 89th birthday. And because it's her 90th birthday today, and, and but I like to think of the conversation continuing, if you like, that the conversation with our dad doesn't necessarily just stop. I don't think it, I don't think it does. And I think, I think when, when someone dies we can kind of write about them and talk about them in a different way than when they were here and when they're alive. I'm very sorry and send condolences to your dad. Okay. My mum, my mum who manages to be kind of witty about everything said to me last year, Jackie did I get this right? Your dad died the day after my 89th birthday. And I said yes, that's right mum and she said well he was always lousy at birthday presents, but he surpassed himself this time. Yeah. Anyway, he's he's very much with us with us today for this because he didn't, he didn't live to see my mum be 90 but he was 94. And I think about, you know, Zora is that she, she only lived into her 60s. And, and she died unknown in this home. And yet as Alice Walker said, she didn't have a tragic life in the sense that she lived her life beautifully flamboyantly, brilliantly, and very, very much of it. And she was really, really an independent woman, a feminist way, way, way before the feminist movement really was properly formed. And so, so I think that when we're thinking about Zora, we kind of, we have to think of her in, in lots of different ways. I agree. I feel like when it comes to Zora, I think I was like, didn't meet her but when I think of her, I think of her like, she's a friend that you just gossiped with over a cup of tea or, you know, a glass of wine or something. She just seems so familiar. And it's from the way that she writes. She talks about, she talks about things that are very normal, very mundane, but it's everyday life. I think that's what I quite like about reading the work, your work, both you and Selina, Selina and you and Jackie, because it's real life. And you can really, you realise yourself kind of within the text. And we were speaking about this yesterday in the book club that we did for Zora. It's like you're reading these phenomenal books that you can recommend to friends, you know, best sellers, and they're amazing, but you read that book and you just, you know, you put it in the bookshelf. And I think for me, Zora is that one book that there was watching Bob Godd is the book that you go back to anything that she kind of does. I'm just, I'm just, I just gobble it up. Like, I'm just, just I just blown away by her and always, if I'm being honest with you. And one thing I don't keep asking all these questions, I know Nathalie's got a few, but the last thing I'm going to ask why I kind of let Nathalie do her thing. Say again, babe. Okay, I've been, I've been giving you pauses and I'm just saying you're just sitting there loving, looking beautiful and doing everything. But if I hear a pause and I'm going to speak, I can't help it. The question that I want to know is if I think for me, you know, you come to Zora and you adore Zora, but if you're going to introduce somebody to another author, another black woman writer, who would that be kind of in keeping with Zora? Who else would you kind of introduce to people who've kind of read Zora, but might may want to read somebody else in a kind of a similar mind? I would recommend that you read Audrey Lord. Yes. Because I think she's a really good inheritor of Zora. But also, obviously, Toni Morrison, because Toni Morrison wouldn't really exist if Zora and Neal Hurston didn't exist. Because Zora Neal Hurston had effortlessly the black gaze, as Toni Morrison later referred to it, the black gaze. She wasn't interested in the white gaze, and we don't even necessarily notice that, but when she creates these black characters, they're not written thinking about how white people are going to receive them. And that's a very interesting thing. So Toni Morrison is probably the obvious inheritor, and I would read absolutely everything by her. She only died just last year. I'd start with the bluest eye, and I think it's no coincidence that her title of her first book, The Bluest Eye, also has eyes in it, and your eyes are watching God, and has a character of Picola Bredlove who thinks that she's ugly and is seeing herself through this kind of prism. So I'd recommend her, but I'd also point them in the direction of Xami, a new spelling of their name by Audre Lorde, because in that book she mixes what she called it a biomethography, but she mixes fiction, biography, myth, and story, really, to create this queer narrative of this, what she called herself, a black lesbian mother warrior. She had all these different names after her name, and she was really believed in naming herself. So yeah, I would go for Audre. I was lucky enough to meet her and become her friend. So just to make everybody jealous. Where did you meet her? Well, I met her because I used to work for Sheeva Feminist Publishers, and we published Xami in the 80s, in 1983, and I met her when she came over for the first international feminist book fair. When she stayed with me for two weeks in Stoke Newington in London, and then we just became sort of lifelong friends really up until she died. My son's bank account was opened by Audre Lorde because she'd done an interview for Spare Rib, and they paid her a check of £60, and they said they'd be happy if she donated that check back, and she said, I can't get away with those women asking for their money back. I'm going to give this to your baby, whatever you're going to have. She gave this £60 to me, and I opened a bank account for my boy who's now 32. So yes, but Audre is one of these writers who's only just now actually getting her day in the sun, and she's a bit like Xora as well in the sense that when she was alive, lots of people knew about her, but not nearly enough, and now her work is being reprinted by Penguin, and people are all about Audre, so yeah, I think they're perfect companions. Yeah, yeah, I agree. Who would you pick, Salina? Well, you beat me to it. I would have said Tony, and I would have said Audre, but maybe contemporary writers like Claudia Rankin, or Irenison Okoji. She's writing some amazing short stories. Irenison, I'm really loving her work. Yeah, I don't know. They're the two, but I would, yeah, I think Tony and Alice or Walker are the two that seem to come straight away with Xora to me. And I guess if I was thinking of, because when we think of African-American writers, and then we try and think of writers that are based, say, in European, black European writers, then it's a whole different thing that we're starting to think about, and that's interesting too. So if I had to think of a writer from this country, I'd probably pick Bernadine Everisto, because she also writes across form and she's written novels that are poems. So I would probably pick her and start with her earliest work and go right through to her most recent girl, woman, other. Yeah, and I think it's just interesting doing that girl, woman, other, and then I like what you said initially about the kind of the porch being a community. And I think that's one thing that's already no person always got right was her way to kind of in a very, very short and very, very quick way give us the lay of the land for a community. And even through reading the short stories that we discussed yesterday, it seems in every story she manages to kind of very quickly build this picture of a black community very, very quickly. So here you have it and I was watching God, when you have the main character coming back and you have all I call them the church sisters, even though they're not the church sisters, but in my head of my growing up in a Pentecostal church to me they sound like the church sisters. Someone comes back and someone's like, you see so and so and she just looks like this and she just, and she does that very quickly. So I know that you said that you'd never grown up with that but when I read that that was like very much. I felt at home immediately and you see that in some of the short stories as well with a straight look with a crooked stick. But then I think like you also kind of see different versions of it like with girl women are the way that all the different characters end up being interdisposed and interconnected in ways that you would never, ever expect. And so just in terms of kind of now we're kind of moving into this phase where I feel like we're black British women writers are really kind of having their day. How does that kind of community building and kind of presenting black women as human and stories and not having to annotate the text to say she had dark skin or she her skin was like this or her nose was like this her lips was like you just kind of read from the mannerisms and from the kind of just our understanding of who we are as a people that characters are black. She doesn't have to announce it. So how does that kind of inform your writing in terms of getting across to your audiences who you're writing about without having to signpost that this is a tick box like black character. I never I wouldn't do that. I don't think I like when I write prose when I write characters. I want the character to be what the reader wants them to be. For example in the in this Mrs. Death Mrs. Death, although I've been very ambiguous about the the human character wolf. Wolf is clearly working class and black, but I really don't give much more away. I don't even say he or she are some people that are reading the book think wolf is a boy and some people that are reading the book that say cool wolf or she and we're kind of liking that that people have their own sort of picture of who that person is in their head. I want people to feel that I want people to do some work. I don't like to give them too much in that respect. Yeah, it's just yeah. Yeah, I like I like that. And I like that as a reader that experience of being able to because I think as readers we do we create our own characters that's why so many people get disappointed at films of books because it's the film of this book over it how many years later I'm still not over it. Yeah, sorry, let's go. Oh, that Halle Berry is a beautiful book. How? No, but Michael Ely was a very good addition to the book to the film because he looks nice not because he read it. I thought Halle Berry was really pretty. She was gorgeous, but how is Halle Berry playing a 16 year old and a 40 year old? I don't understand that. No, they should remake it. I think knowing what we know now and I think the kind of the idea that as black women want to see ourselves on screen. I think the things that we've seen kind of know with Ava DuVernay and all these beautiful fantastic directors, it'll be quite nice if they remade it. They're remaking or they're making passing by Nella Larson and that should be out next year. So I would love to see like a redo. I think we deserve a redo at this point. I think it's all deserved. I'd like to see a movie of her life, of Zora's life. I think that would be an incredible movie. I would love to see that too because I was thinking just yesterday that she must have met Bessie Smith, you know, because she became part of the Harlem, what was known as the Harlem Renaissance. And Bessie has her song, you know, up in Harlem every Saturday night and about the highbrows getting together, the kind of literary type, you know, the Langston. It would be an incredible film. Her fight with Langston. You'd have her sassy kind of May West vibe, you know, this kind of, you know, really, really liberated sexy sassy lady vibe going on. You know, rumours of her sexuality and oh, it'd be just a fantastic movie. Who would be Zora and who would play Langston Hughes? I feel like Terrence Howard would be Langston Hughes. But who would be Zora? It has to be someone phenomenal. Phenomenal. It has to be a phenomenal woman. Phenomenally. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I can never think of questions like that of who it would be because sometimes the best person is the surprise. To return to that question you asked about whether or not you create the brushstrokes of a character to actually signpost what colour they are. I find that quite a difficult thing as a writer to try and navigate because I grew up in Scotland and my main access really to language is mostly Scottish. I wanted to find another way to be black on the page if you like. And so because if I just wrote in Scottish dialect, I wouldn't necessarily be black on the page. And I would kind of envious for years of different Caribbean writers that I'd read or African writers or African American writers or London based black writers because they had access, you know, a writer like Zady Smith had access to a whole different kind of London than the Scotland that I had access to. So in order to be black on the page, I kind of use blues, refrains and rhythms and draw up on all sorts of other things to make myself a language, if you like, a language that is not necessarily one that I hear spoken sometimes. And so that's that's been that's been something but it's been quite an interesting thing to think about for years and then I remember when I wrote to trumpet. I was just really interested in creating this this character this kind of black Scottish character who, you know, is born a woman and then identifies as a man. And I use the male pronoun all the way through and that that book was published over 20 years ago and probably seen now as being kind of a gender fluid or gender bender book. And I was thinking then about the fluidity of identity, and how we're, we're always kind of say so and so, so and so black so and so women so and so working class. And actually, our identities are much more fluid than that the kind of fluid in the way that jazz is fluid. So I'm kind of interested in trying to do that with with characters and in making my making my characters fluid. I bit like Selena was saying I like the reader to kind of come along with me and make them up and for me I'd like a reader to be outraged if Josh Moody was referred to as a sheen to be outraged on Josh's behalf. So it's, yes, kind of the battle of the pronouns was with that book. You just had like a question from the audience and I was I was actually going to ask this. I see it as well on exactly which one you're going to ask. Do you think Zora will ever be respected as a writer rather than a black writer. Was that the questions you expect to meet her. Of course, of course, I have my I have my views on that but I don't. For me, it's for me she is a writer. She just writes for me. Yeah. So as far as I as far as I am concerned, she is respected as a writer but I understand that we always refer to as a black woman writer we always refer to her blackness. And then I don't know if that is because it's not to say that being a black writer is like and recognize respect as a black writer is not the same as being recognized as a writer. I don't know what the question means but I'll always refer to her as a black woman because of the stories she told and the way that she spoke to me and the way that this kind of small nuances and the small points that she puts in a story really touched me. But I mean, to me as far as I'm concerned she's just a writer she's just writing for me. I don't know what else there is to say about that. What do you guys think. She's just a black woman writer and that is it and I think I find it interesting that we can suggest I don't know what to be respected as a writer I think she is. We're here discussing her for two nights in a row, because she's so phenomenal. And we've got Jackie cave but Selena good and we've got you know, to Ari Jones break the forward say Smith right forward. She is respected as a writer but I am going to sign for that she is a black woman and she is phenomenally so so for me. She's a phenomenal writer respected and a black woman I think sometimes there's this idea, and it's actually the reason why we founded black girls book club, because there's this idea that black people don't read. There's this idea that we don't have phenomenal writers amongst us and we do. So I think it's really important to say actually this is what black people have been doing we've been writing the years. So it's something new, you know, it's not Bernadine of a resource just got the book of prize and it's, you know, a diversity tip. No, this isn't new. This is, you've had Jackie Kay, but I grew up reading Jackie Kay, you know, when I said to my mom, oh I'm doing an event and you she said oh yeah that's cool. And she said, oh, you know, what's kind of you and that's it. Oh, Jackie, she was like, you've made it. Say hi to your mom for me. Say hi to my mom. So for us as black women, I think that, and I think black people that as black women, there are black women writers that have changed our lives. So when I say that this person's a black woman writer, that's with the utmost respect, and that's just my thought, but I would love to hear what you guys think too. I think the question kind of implies that if you say that somebody is a black woman writer and categorize them that that somehow makes them less. And the behind the question is a kind of is a kind of unsaid implication. And I don't agree with that. I understand what the question means. And I understand the kind of weirdness. And I understand that people feel protective of black writers because they want black writers to be taken as seriously as white writers without having to define. But we still live in a world where definitions and namings are necessary. And I'm with Audrey Lord on that one. I'm kind of proudly black Scottish writer. And I kind of get annoyed that Martin Amos doesn't have to describe himself as a white English heterosexual writer and I get tired of people always, you know, saying black lesbian Scottish writer in the way that they wouldn't necessarily with with with white male heterosexual writers and and that that can be tiring. But I think this is a I think the question slightly dated in a way I think hopefully hopefully we've moved some place someplace else I mean I remember this question happening sort of 30 years ago. I remember saying to this woman that was interviewing me for a Scottish newspaper. And she asked me about being black lesbian and Scottish. And so I said that I was kind of tired of people always having that as the headline. And, and then the very next day, the article came out this is like yeah 30 years ago, and the headline was black lesbian Scottish. I remember my gran at the time. She's dead a long time now, but she was very shocked she she didn't seem to realise that I was a lesbian even though I'd taken success with girlfriends to her house for gingerbread. And she phoned up my mum and said does a fairy can about this, which means does her father know about this. And then she said well there's one thing no money people read that big paper. Because it was a broad sheet and not a tabloid. But anyway, but yeah, it kind of it kind of amuses me because it sort of it. Yeah, I feel slightly impatient. I feel like we, we have to say we have to say that lives matter. We have to be living in a time where we have to we have to state that and I think the people to say oh all lives matter. Miss the point really. I don't know what you think Selena. I just agree with you wholeheartedly. I think as well can I just speak how I feel that Zora very much was someone that you can't really put in a box or label. She was very complicated and and a very, very not just a one one trick pony she really had, you know, her own she really did her own thing. When her work came out. It was because of the way she wrote it she wrote it with the vernacular and the slang of country folk of black country folk. And because of that she was actually looked down on, perhaps much in the same way we might look down on rappers or, you know, you know, someone drug talking not air, you know, because they're not speaking the Queens English. And so educated black people kind of looked down on her and thought that she was doing like a kind of a black tap dance for white readership, very much in the same, you know, kind of like the watermelon smile that in some way she was selling out. But actually she was authentically describing the people that she grew up with the town that she loved that she didn't even change the name of Eatonville she even used the real name of the town where she grew up. And she was being authentic and an observer and a narrator and that's that's powerful that's that's a performance in itself it's going I'm going to be vulnerable and I'm going to show you the truth and I know this might not make me look good in some lights. But this is how it looks and this is where I come from. And that's an incredible incredibly brave thing to do in writing nothing. I think that I think that's absolutely true but I don't see why she she can't do all of that and acknowledge that she's black and she did. I mean she said, she said, I'm not tragically coloured. There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul nor looking behind my eyes. I do not mind at all. I do not belong to that sobbing school of Negro hood who hold that nature somehow has given them a low down dirty deal. Even in the helter skelter skirmish that is my life I have seen that the world is to the strong regardless of a little pigmentation more or less no. I do not weep at the world. I'm too busy sharpening my oyster knife. So I mean that's the perfect quote really to do what you're saying but I don't think these things are mutually exclusive. I think that you can be complexly, complexly consciously black and I think that's actually in her in her time. I didn't mean it like that I didn't I didn't mean it like that I meant, you know, in the way she voted and the way that she actually wrote about middle class black people as well. I mean, educated black people, she wrote about a whole range of range of people. I think I think that initial question was whether or not somebody should be described as a black writer whether they should just be described as a writer and that's that that was a question and and yeah. Well anyway, I think there's there's loads and there's a different ways to see it but interested what she would say herself where should we bring her back to the year 2020 she go watch you're still talking about. Yeah, but but but she was kind of disliked by certain people that came after her because they like the Richard writes for instance, or the Aunt Petrie's of the street because they didn't they went for a kind of a realism and a naturalism. And they didn't, they felt that that Zora's writing wasn't black enough. There's just so many different ways I mean I think that's why she's such an interesting figure and why she'll be discussed endlessly and there'll be so many disagreements about what it was that she was trying to say and that's wonderful because she's just she's she's so complex. I think Toni Morrison, you know, it saddened me that when she got the Nobel Prize for Literature, she actually said that she was hoping that they gave it to her for the right reason. And I thought that that was really sad that you get to be a writer of that stature of that magnitude of that kind of genius, and you still have to be asking yourself when you get a prize if you've been given the prize for the right reason. So yeah, it's, it's a hard world for for black writers of all different kinds still I think. Yeah, here here Jackie to write. I think it's just it goes to kind of that point about, and I think that's why we love Zora because well, I think she was battling against the trend of what I call that respectability politics the idea that you have the Renaissance memory kind of like this is how we want to portray black people. You know, we have conscious measures that we want to give and her stories about Eatonville and kind of these kind of not country bumpkins but country people who seem to be quite simple and seem to be quite vulnerable. Didn't fit in that that kind of story that they were trying to portray and trying to show that kind of respectability of the kind of new black middle class. But when I read, especially at the eyes of watching God, and specifically the short story collection, I feel like she's done us. She's done us an amazing service by preserving history. Yes, how those people actually lived and what their vices were what their struggles were and showing them to us as they actually were. And I feel like if she hadn't have been that authentic with those stories, we wouldn't have had that piece of that genuine history about how those communities live so. Yeah, but Eatonville itself was the first town, the first black lead town and it's the first time that had a black mayor, and her own father was a mayor of the town. Her son's father and the church that, you know, I did this program about her that's actually still available on the radio called the women half in shadow but they found for this radio program a woman that had met Zora she 99 now. And she actually appears in one of her stories. And she's talking about Zora and the church and how she makes with everybody and how she didn't have any highfalutin ideas about herself that she was very clever everybody knew that she was very clever. She could mix with absolutely everybody. And she loved that that town because the town was consciously led by black people. And, and was kind of remarkable in that way, and the women on that program at 99 was describing how Zora talked about there being two croquet lawns and she goes well they don't have croquet anymore because nobody plays croquet anymore. Yeah, I think we've got another question as well. And read it by. Yeah. Do you want to read it. So this question, I kind of feel like Melissa and I can answer this one as well as that. How do you think your early writing or reading lives would have been different if black women writers had been part of your school curriculum. Selena do you want to answer that first. Because I've got a lot to say so I let everyone. How would my reading and writing have been different. If I hadn't just been told to read stale pale males all through school. Yeah. How much time do we need. Okay, well, I don't know where do I even begin with this one. It's like a whole talk within itself isn't it. Yeah. How would it have been different. Would it have been different. I don't I absolutely cannot answer that I'm pleased can someone else take this question I've really. I can answer then for a little minute. I think my life would have been very, very different. If I'd come across right these writers earlier. Because because you see yourself and what you read. And if you're always having to imagine yourself into what you read, you know, like Anna Green Gables was okay. And she was she was fostered. She had red curly hair. But but but yes I didn't really the only the only black writer that I ever got at school was woolly say Inka in the poem telephone conversation. And I remember I remember that that poem very vividly and being in the class and being the only one that understood it because it's a poem about racism and someone going for a house and and this is the kind of ironic line and it says that madam my bottom peroxide blonde and I remember being the one in the class that understood that because people always asked me in my school if my bottom was the same color as the rest of me, which was really kind of offensive. And but I understood I understood that but it was one of those examples early examples really of literature being 1415 and something really resonating with you with that kind of ping of recognition. And yeah reading keeps you enormous company so when I did come across writers like Audre Lorde and Zora Neil Hurston and Sonia Sanchez and Nicky Giovanni and the most African American writers in the beginning in the in the late 70s early 80s I just kind of fell upon them. Gladly, and kind of wolfed them down. I think I think my childhood would have been different if I'd had, yeah, if I'd had Mallory Blackman for instance. I feel I was quite lucky and my mum, she loves to read and I think she made a distinctive choice before we even kind of knew how to read to actually ship books from America and the Caribbean with black characters so she made that distinction she ensured we kind of has that for us to read so if I'm being honest with you. I'm thinking about it I do believe we need to have black books in the curriculum, especially now, but back there and that's my own school, and we did have a fantastic English literature teacher. And I just don't think they have the range. Could you imagine, like a book like like their eyes are watching God, and then having to read that out loud and then them saying, Natalie you read it because you're black you'll understand what it would be very very difficult actually having the books by Zora Neale Hurston, and all these phenomenal writers and people who don't get it who don't understand our stories because one thing about the book club which I've learned is that because we have something in common you have a shared commonality that we don't have to explain ourselves we just say, did you see that bit in the book, and do you know how that made you feel. A lot of the times when I speak to my friends who don't have the same kind of background as myself, they just don't get it I don't know how I would have felt at say 1213 if my discovery of Zora would have been through my English teacher. I don't I don't know I'll be honest with you. Just as you said that I was remembering big being at school and our teacher reading Fitzgerald. And I'm also thinking of. And also sided with Rosie, both of which my teacher would do in the accent. And, and both of which are far away from us and both of which, you know this kind of the kind of as I lay dying Fitzgerald, you know and do this kind of deep Southern accent and do this kind of thing. So I remember just thinking, you know, it was always, it was always, yeah, met, most of our books were by, by men that we were taught at school. Yeah, sorry. As you were saying that I was remembering that the one book that we did get at school at a black character and it was the kind of racist little black sample, which was really dreadful, and lots of people called you sample because of because of the book. So there was these kind of caricatures, they were highly, highly offensive. And that that's all you saw you had really you had little black sample and then you had roots on television right back when I was 16 roots came on television by Alex Haley. And that book became available, but then people would call you couldn't take into walking through Bishop Briggs Park. So they shout the stop and go couldn't take into And I think, well, are you not even listening to this, you know, watching it, don't you even understand so there was that kind of strange thing of something, you know, understand what you're saying it's quite a complex thing that you're saying of when writers are so precious to you, who to trust. Because we were lucky in our and what was it the anthology and athlete Jackie K was in our anthology. But now when I think about at the time. It's not that there was any distinctive of this is a black Scottish, you know, poet, there was none of that and I think, I don't know I just don't I wouldn't have trusted now older, wiser. I don't think I would have trusted any teacher to introduce me to the work of black writers and I'm very glad it was my mom and my best friend and that I kind of was able to go on this journey with that's my Wow, I think that's really fascinating, really interesting. For me, I feel like I had a real yearning to read that book, which is probably why I ended up reading a lot of stuff that I shouldn't have read and reading like lots of these salacious, you know, sexy time scenes, and things like that are really, really adult books because I was really hungry to, to know know black stories to read black stories to to see black women to see black characters. And I kind of, we were both very good at English for both in the top set. And so while we were very good at English lit and it came to us and there was clearly appreciation and love of reading. It was like I was doing what I did at school because I had to and then I was going to Tottenham Green Library to kind of get my fix. Yeah, or go into that my, my dad's younger sister's bedroom at my grandma's house and kind of stealing her books that she's reading to try and get my, you know, kind of get my black writing fix and it's part of me kind of discovering my identity as well and so part of me does agree with me does agree with Melissa 110%. I couldn't imagine that some of our teachers doing their eyes were watching God, they were completely looked at it and then we would never appreciate for what it was. Part of me just wonders if there was just like a little bit more balance, maybe that would have kind of quenched at first to me in a better way, and introduced me to a better. I don't want to say better class or but maybe better books that would have quenched the first that I had to understand black characters and to see myself on the page, which is probably at first that really hasn't been quenched which was one of the reasons why we set up Black Girl Book Club because we just wanted to just just read about black women by black women and read our stories and that was when did we set that up, how old were we? Don't want to give away my age. That's all we have to say. We don't need to give away our age. We don't need to give away our age. About 15 years after I've left education anyway, so you know, why don't you want to give away your age? Because, you know, I'm timeless. I'm going grey so it's not like I can hide my age. I will give away my age. I will give away my age rather. Go on then. I'm 58. Well damn. I'm 48. 48. I'm 48. Please say you're 38 and then we can just do a thing. I'm just amazed. I'm in this like, you should have kept your age to yourself because you do not look that age. I don't think you guys should have said that. I'm 58. I find the older I get the better it gets. I really do. My mum is 90 today. She's 90. I'm just pointing down the room because they're all sitting very quiet down there. Hello. Hello. You have to come and say hello, Suzanne. Come and say hello this week. Yeah, and I've got this wonderful black Scottish jazz singer here, Suzanne Bonner, who's my sister. She's here for my mum's birthday and they're all sitting down the other side of the room being quiet. It's actually a good job because if it was me, I would have walked half by now. This is my sister. She's been singing to my mum and also singing to me. So yeah. Yeah, but my mum is 90 and she's just like, on your age, on your age, on everything about you. Totally, totally, on your age. I'm only my age, but I'm still not given away because I'm aged. Okay. We've actually gone past the time, as with every single book club event, we've actually gone past the time. This is only four minutes this time. It's not too bad. We actually have a really, really special treat for you guys just to honour Queen Zora. Molly, do you want to explain, let the people know all? I can do. Well, first of all, I just wanted to say a huge thank you to Melissa, Natalie, Jackie and Selina. That was amazing. And I think that everybody's going to hate me for drawing this to a close now. If you want to come to more events like these for free and let's face it, you do. Please join the Royal Society of Literature. Our membership starts at £40 and gives you free access to all the RSL's events, our publications and book groups. We only pray that we can do one with you guys again. Members will also have special access to the RSL's birthday announcements at the end of November when we turn 200. So please join us. We're already four. We're not shy of our age either. So please join us through rslicture.org. Our next event with the British Library is on the 19th of November when we will be joined by Lauren Elkin, Linda Grant and Shivani Ramlokhan to talk about what is so great about gene race. That celebration of Reese's work marks 10 years of the Caribbean Vocas Literary Festival, as well as 200 years of the RSL. Members can register by the RSL website or you can get public tickets through the British Library. A big thank you to everyone at the British Library and my colleagues at the RSL and to our producers unique media for making tonight possible and to the brilliant Heather for captioning throughout. Thank you to the Living Knowledge Network for broadcasting this and sharing it with public libraries across the UK. I think we all know how important those libraries are to us now as always. And thank you everyone for tuning in.