 Hello, my name is Charmilla Beesmerhan and I'm part of Speaking Volumes Live Literature Productions along with Sarah Sanders and Nick Chapman. We're delighted to be celebrating 10 years of Speaking Volumes this year and as part of that we've got a brand new anthology called Not Quite Right For Us which is published by Flip Die Publishing. Tonight we're going to be talking on the theme of childhood with some of the authors from the book and you'll also hear readings on childhood from Jay Bernard, Afshanda Sousa Lodi, John Higley, Catherine Johnson and Xiaolu Goh. We really hope you enjoy this film. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for everyone joining us today to talk about childhood which is in the Not Quite Right For Us anthology. I'd like to start by asking all of you a little to tell us a little bit about where you grew up, when you grew up, just to kick off. I grew up in 1970s London, a couple of years in Guyana and a couple of years in Calgary and Canada and yes that was a time of massive change in terms of my accent change every time I moved and the one thing that didn't really change was racism that I experienced everywhere but there are also many good times. So why don't we start with you, John, why don't you tell us where you grew up and what you experienced? I was born in London, in North London, where I'm back now and I moved to Luton when my sister was born because we couldn't afford a three bedroom place in London and I was schooled in Luton and the school I'm going to talk about was my secondary school which I wasn't as happy in my secondary school as I was in my primary school. I had sisters of the Holy Ghost taught me in my first school and I really liked them and I liked the holiness and I fitted in but when I went to the other school basically the others grew up fast and I was growing up slowly so I didn't really, I wasn't really keeping up with them and I was just thinking about the amount of books that I've got now. I mean we only had a tiny amount of those books and I think I had a smaller knowledge of the world in those days and maybe than some of the other children in my school. What about you Catherine, where did you grow up and what was it like for you? I grew up in North London and I was born in 1962 so 60s and 70s and we were always in the same house. I mean until my parents left London and by which time I'd left but I did spend a lot of time because my mum was a teacher. We spent a lot of the holidays with her family in North Wales. My dad's family is from Jamaica but obviously it's so expensive for a family of four to go there. I think we went there once in my childhood but we did have relatives. We had people coming through the house. We had lodgers from everywhere from East Africa, West Africa, Eastern Europe and so we had, it was like having, you know, we were a bit of the world in the house except in North Wales. My grandparents were monoglot Welsh and a lot of my family were complete Welsh speakers but everybody knew who I was which was sort of good in a way and there was, I don't know, I think my childhood up to primary school seems pretty golden now. Again I'd like John, I hated secondary school. It was like the beginning of the end. I peaked too early but yeah I think on the whole even though there were a lot of bad things I look upon it as lovely now. I know what you mean though Catherine because my mum was a nurse and loads of people recognised her and because of that my sister and I were always being asked, oh are you sister bees, my own daughters and we wouldn't have a clue who these people were but it was quite disconcerting. You couldn't do anything a bit, you know, naughty or be swearing or something without somebody knowing so I totally get it. Jay, tell us a bit about where you grew up and what that was like. I was born in London as well, I was born in St Thomas's Hospital, an area I still frequent and I'm kind of grateful for that actually. I grew up initially on Brixton Hill and then when I was six we moved to Croydon. I was part of what I would describe as a sort of shift of a lot of sort of Black and Asian families out of the inner city to the suburbs to have bigger houses, better schools, gardens, that kind of thing and I would say that I had a very typical sort of Caribbean family, lots and lots of cousins and relatives and aunts and uncles and all of this. One time my family was more rustiferian, much more kind of like politically engaged and then the other side of my family were kind of down the line Anglican Church of England Christians. So I sort of grew up with these kind of two perspectives but I myself was of course a weirdo queer kid in giant grandeur trousers listening to Radiohead at my comprehensive school and I lived there until I was 18 when I left. Afshan, tell us a bit about your upbringing. Yeah, so I was born in the early 90s in Dubai and until I was about four or five years old we were moving around a lot between India, Pakistan and Dubai, my mum's Catholic Indian dad's Muslim Pakistani and then moved straight into Manchester and I guess I sort of resonate with what you were saying Sharmila about the languages and accents because I think even now that I've lived in Manchester most of my life I pride myself in not sounding Mancunian, I don't know, but I pick up accents really well and they shift quite quickly and easily without me realising it. In terms of like schooling I guess it was really hard because I switched schools quite a lot as a kid until I got to I think it was like nine and I got to primary school and I stayed there until the end. So making friends was quite difficult and I spent a lot of my time arguing for my existence in a space whether it's Pakistani space you know not being Pakistani enough or not being Muslim enough or not being British enough so I kind of was struggling with that so much so I never really had a chance to fully explore my identity I think until I got to university. I should actually add to all of this that I was born a cockney as you can all tell by my cockney rhyming slang that I'm using all this time. My mother had got sent to the old Charing Cross Hospital when I was when she was expecting me so I have that dubious honour as well which you know I keep trying to get the pearly suit but it's not quite happened for me yet but moving on to look at your pieces in the book I noticed that Jay and John both have a sort of focus on schooling and John you mentioned the school that you were maybe talking about in your poem tell us a little bit about why you wanted to write that particular story and include it in Not Quite Right For Us. The story came out of I was thinking of my lute and bungalow that was brought up in and I'd done a drawing of it and I'd written a lot of things about the drawings in the drawing of the living room but then I thought well I'm going to go and open some of the cupboards and drawers and find things and I found in the wardrobe in the bedroom I shared with my brother my brother's suits and I remembered that I wore one of them to the school discotheque and I thought well that's an interesting thing see what comes of writing about that and it's just almost a symbol of not measuring up because I was too small for that suit and probably a stupid idea of wearing it in and then I saw that there was a boy wearing a t-shirt and I thought oh dear this is wrong and then I danced and it didn't work out but it was good to write this as a sort of kind of lay into rest of that really of sort of making a success out of it in a way by writing a song about it out of mine not fitting in not measuring up making something good out of it um and then also seeing what good there was there anyway like the the fact that my sister even though I thought I hadn't done very well but when I saw my sister she thought she thought I had I was I was big to her you know I was little in that environment but at home I was big stuff and so it was good to look for that and then for the little pockets of humor that are there to find those it's a kind of sublimating of it it's a kind of of that experience that was a negative experience I wanted to make it positive and so I submit how come this is in the collection Charmilla you'll remember I sent you three poems and one of them I wrote especially one of them I'd half written before you rejected both of those and it was you that chose this I think as I felt with both the school poems yours and jays is that there's not a time when every single person has felt that we you know didn't fit in at school at some stage whether that was not being chosen for the netball team or you know um having the wrong colour shoes we had a really strict school rules policy at our school and I got hauled up once having grey shoes which are like the most dull shoes you could ever imagine but um so I think that's why it really resonated with me John um I felt that it we all had that experience my brother suits too big for me it smells of cigarette smoke so but I decide to step inside and risk my first school disco you'll be there and I will share with you my disco fever on my arrival Thompson's in a t-shirt and looking round I clearly see oversized formality is not the way to be tonight there's not another brother's suit inside I can't recall exactly just how awkward is my asking you to dance I remember how reluctantly you joined me on the dance floor it's more of a scuffle than a dance so I go and blow my disco charts then there is the raffle the announcement of the winner of the two bob lucky voucher to spend at the tuck shop counter I call out hey that winning numbers mine there isn't any cheering when I do I fear I will hear Thompson going I wanted to assign you a swig of my pop and the option of a winning crunchy bar at least I have the sense to see eyes that are not there for me that do not drink complicity my brother suits too big for me and upstairs on the bus on my way home I eat up all those sweeties feeling bitter to the bone I consume those crunchies on my own the bus when I get back before the suit is on the rack my little sister wants to know how did it go I slacken in an armchair I give it a few moments and I say you see this raffle ticket she sees the raffle ticket and I say you're looking at Jay what about you your poems are more about how school has impacted even on adult life so tell us a bit more about the series of poems that you wrote yeah whenever I get this sort of theme of not fitting in I'm always really torn because my experience has always been kind of double and particularly at school I was always very academically able and therefore in many ways respected um funnily enough I think a lot of kids who are academically able often find themselves not respected but actually I was in both my schools um but socially a bit weird a bit off but I was also really good at fighting and a fast runner and I also held horrible beliefs ideas opinions that I'm partly ashamed to admit now so when I think about the title and the brief I also can't help but think about the ways in which I alienated others and the ways in which I did that to deal with my own sense of alienation as well and school was obviously a hotbed for that kind of alienation because you've got a thousand teenagers in this horrible sweaty hormonal soup and there's no I mean I don't know about school now but when I was at school which was from the sort of late 90s I went to study secretary school in 1999 through to the early 2000s there was never any mention whatsoever of emotional literacy of class of why people were different so I really wanted to address that I wanted to not only focus on the ways in which I was alienated but to focus on the ways in which I um had this struggle with this this girl in my school who I can't really describe as you know a genuine outcast like if she was going to write you know for this brief I think her purpose would speak to a very very specific experience of outsideness and alienation that mine was I think different to you and in contrast to you um and how that haunts me now um I believe that that experience and that reconciling of like my own ideas and my own kind of like behaviour towards that girl makes me understand difference and isolation and outsideness yeah in a much more kind of complex and nuanced way now if you're a person of colour at school in Britain even today I think that unless you're at one of those schools where there's a majority of kids who are you know from different places or different heritages I think that practically all of us have experienced that kind of um alienation but like I was actually academically bright but that was a reason to hide because kids were picked on all the time if they were bright so um I tried to make myself as invisible as possible which isn't that easy when you're one of five kids of colour in a you know 125 kids in your year but somehow I managed it and it's yeah it's a really interesting thing how it's still haunts you as an adult that kind of aspect of what you went through history what causes me to type your name it's late and I am three beers in when you appear a genie of the search terms you plus London your last name plus dead you plus our old school now I know of time as tin opener cuts in circles leaves a hinge the grey waters that we pour away had someone thought to teach a class on love I might know you geography we sometimes walk the back way home past my house so I could shake you off right now I want to make this the story of two working class kids but there are degrees to work in class and I am pissed off with or ashamed by the two up to down fantasy when the truth is that after pokemon I'd kick you out because if my mother met you like the time when we got to your door and your mother dragged you in by the neck where in the curriculum does it say what a child should do next drama no longer hungry I stand up in the dining hall and offer my meal to the poorest student in my class music between googles I watch compilation videos of top 10 worst auditions for x-factor I don't find it funny just compelling like folk art almost all of them are mentally ill in one way or another and all of almost all of them confess this right away in their teeth their shitty style their choice of song and most of them are poor the interesting bit is when they're done and Simon asks what was that and they say they might not be the best singer now but they've got potential I don't think many of them are looking for fame really but want to be taken on fed trained blow dried like a pomeranian but they bit their nails to porridge their feet sweat through their shoes and Simon says you can't sing just as I once told a girl in my class that she would amount to nothing and in the heat that ensues their argument is less whether they can reach the crescendo of I will always love you but if someone treated them nicely they could PSHE I was sent an email once by someone explaining that they would not help me because I was flaky inconsistent rude non-collegiate unworthy of anything I had he too was from current in my old ancestral land and for a second I feared the Old Testament God who still reigns there had reversed my salvation I was extremely surprised amazed and even unfounded to be very honest against my own will I found myself wondering how you could be working there more astonishingly keeping the position but so far you seem to be doing well there so my warmest congratulations the world tells you everything that will happen I knew then what I know now the heart has a tendency to plump in advance of elation dance walking home through spittle fields a man shakes his bucket for mental health I have no cash so I refuse he doesn't care about the change he seems to know what I have done you people are unbearable you know that you people around here are unbearable Afshan what you talk about in your piece is about how music marked you out your love of certain types of music marked you out as odd in some way and tell us about why you're you're confessing all of this to your parents and the world at large now I guess when I when I think about music actually and school just just going off of what you said Jay my earliest memory is being really bright and not being pop culture bright so I had no idea who any of the musicians or bands were and obviously when you know you're growing up in the 90s and you don't know s love seven and all the members of the bus like busted you're you're kind of like shunned or I was anyway and I remember somebody giving me a busted magazine that had like and was ripped out and page of all like urban slang words that I was supposed to like memorize to fit into like the kids so when I think about like trying to fit in and you know that's a really vivid memory and and I guess my entire life music has been a solitary experience and I kind of was thinking about why that is a couple years back I moved I didn't move into my own place into a house and finally started to love playing music out loud but that means that when somebody's around they hear the music that you're playing and they're curious as to like why you have kvali music next to like metal next to like Bollywood next to rap next to Afrabi so like what's going on what what sort of music do you listen to and I'm like I don't know I just listen to what I listen to and and I've got family that live with me at the moment so part of this essay I think is for them to kind of see the journey that I've come through and understand why you know six o'clock in the morning when I'm making breakfast I need to listen to Marala Manson um or maybe not any more Marala Manson is not a bit terrible maybe maybe not even this is the thing there's so many problematic musicians at the moment um it's a sort of explanation for them I think to sort of piece together my complex identity because even I'm still piecing it together and trying to work out who I like and who I don't like music wise and um yeah I think there's so much of our identities that's linked to our memories with music um I know that you know when people hear music they're triggered with particular people with particular memories and that for me is really um I think that's something that I really use a lot in my writing in terms of how I write and how I process things um so yeah this is mainly for my auntie and uncle that are living with me at the moment um to pick up the book and read the essay yeah this year is the second year in my life that I'm sporting an undercut a type of hairstyle that features shaving a large portion of your head because the shaved part of the head is usually the underlayer near the nape of the neck or to one side it's pretty easy to hide with long hair and that's exactly what I've done hidden it from my mum from the nosy aunties who stalked my instagram and the uncles who hang about the meat shop it's really silly to think that I meticulously shaved or rather strong armed my friend into meticulously shaving the underside of my head only for me to spend most of my time with my hair down hiding the shave pop I just know that in Manchester in 2020 we this has haven't reached a point where we can sport a shaved or even partially shaved hairstyle I wasn't always like this uh wannabe rocker there was a moment when I could have been identified as an uncool freshie I was 13 when my dad gave me an mp3 player he told me it was like an iPod but better this one had speakers attached to it so that when you took the headphones out you could blast your music who needed headphones players now here I could go into detail about a set incident but honestly it still makes me nauseous all I'll say is that it involved my high school crush a public bus some cringe bollywood music and that not an iPod mp3 player that was the last time I used it but it was also the first time I used line wire to download the most recent edition of now that's what I call music never again would I be caught listening to high pitched tones over double our beats in public I wasn't old enough or politically aware enough to understand the term assimilation but in hindsight that's what it was I did not want to be singled out for being different I was already one of only two hijabies in the school and the other one was much cooler than me I remember the first time I listened to rock music my friend Charlotte burnt me a mixtape of some CDs titled songs to get angry to featuring rock and heavy metal this is how I was introduced to nirvana linkin park red jute some red jumpsuit apparatus blink 182 paparoche in blue october from there it was a short jump to five finger death punch in ramstein this music made me angry made me want to scream but in a cathartic way I felt safe and protected even while listening to it eventually my ringtones will be replaced with heavy guitar strumming and I'd wake up to I choose death before dishonor and start my day I used to wonder if people could hear the screaming through my headphones luckily for me my hijab style back then consisted of wrapping thick material round and round my head pretty tightly creating a sound proofing effect I don't think I'd ever thought too deeply about the lyrics I just really liked how I could zone out to the noise this is a complete contrast to the Bollywood music I'd grown up listening to pretty soon my wardrobe began to change to leather jackets new rocks on my feet I even invested in some chains for my hijab I was determined to look the part and fit in the first concert I went to was ramstein I got all kitted out in a faux leather skirt some ripped tights and a choker I turned up with my friend at the o2 but it was only when we were walking up the stairs to our seats that I realized that everybody around me was white the whole venue was full of industrial metal fans and I struggled to find one person of color a few months later I went to see Marilyn Manson and exactly the same thing happened a full arena and not a single person of color in sight as we left that concert someone spilled a glass of beer on me it was most probably an accident but that small act suddenly made the space unsafe I didn't go to a mosh pit again after that something didn't quite feel right I started questioning the politics and the race of the musicians suddenly I became hyper aware of the alt-right and neo-nazis and their chosen anthems all metal my love for the music eventually died down yet the aesthetic stayed I tried hard to find punk and rock bands that had people of color in them particularly thisies but it seemed like punk wasn't something thisies did and then I came across the gamenas the gamenas did for me what those first CDs from Charlotte had done they provided me with a safe space to be thisie and muslim and punk to be able to swear and scream and head bang the gamenas allowed me back into the punk and rock spheres without feeling like I was sympathizing with the alt-right the only problem was that they were based in the united states I couldn't find a community here in Manchester I moved back in with my parents and had to tone down my rock chick look massively none of my thisie friends were into it they didn't really get why I wanted to shave my head or understand the appeal of a scaffold piercing my ripped denim jeans were replaced with kurtas my leather chains and cuffs with gold bangles in the mainstream we started seeing thisie influences and models sorry inspired clothing and bindi has made their way through hipster clubs and festivals and inter-fashion weeks I didn't have time to mourn the loss of the leather I had a new obsession my mother was happier seeing me in culturally appropriate clothing I quickly got bored of the femmler can try to switch it up wearing short kurtas with jeans and baggy chalevres with normal t-shirts it didn't go down too well for some reason when white girls did it it was fashion but when I did it I looked like I'd forgotten half the out of their home I didn't understand how yoga pants and casually worn bindies had suddenly become a fashion statement for others but gave me high school freshy flashbacks when I wore them I yearned for the time when I could just wear leather skirts and chokers and instantly feel part of the community I also miss listening to metal I fell in and out of love with people who introduced me to other genres of music but I could never recreate the feeling I got when I listened to metal I had a brief moment of listening to pangra and then to afro beat but found that I was always looking for heavy beats and something to zone out to I started going to muslim matchmaking events but ultimately had to make a choice I could either embrace my half punk half desi self and try and explain all of that in a space of two minutes or I could drop one of them it was always easier to drop one I knew the cultured and desi version of myself would be more accepted in those spaces so I put the leather jacket back in the closet the matchmaking never amounted to anything the events were great for anecdote to tell the parties but nothing else even with my cultured desi self I still was not right for those events or those spaces I just didn't fit in it's a shame it took me a while to figure that one out a few months ago I found a suitcase containing my old leather skirts corsets and ripped tights I tried on my leather jacket to found that it didn't fit I'd outgrown it perhaps because the lockdown or perhaps it was known that the undies will always side-eye me I ordered a new jacket and a pair of chunky chunky duck martins called a friend to shave my head as a teen I used to dream of starting my own desi punk band maybe I'll call it the real freshies maybe I'll bump into a few desis who love headbanging and wearing bagucial bars as much as I do and maybe we'll start a band together in the meantime I'll keep listening to the gamenas and repeat and hiding my undercut from my mum it's really interesting um in talking about memory in general because Catherine your piece is more about holiday memories and sort of just being with your family but again those memories still resonate with how you feel today sometimes so tell us why that particular memory I think the thing with the donkeys so I lived in north London we lived in a terrorist house I'm not going to ride horses you know this was that but it was the donkeys that I fell in love with and then in in Wales I did have families who worked in you know in the countryside so I did get on horses more than any London normal you know well poor ordinary kid but it was the donkeys I and you know I would just spend all day with the donkeys the smell of them the touch of them and my life has sort of circled back I mean my day job is I do a lot of writing for children but also I I now live on my own and I have a pony on loan which means I go and look after it through lockdown I've been going shoveling shit I am 14 um and and actually the things that I'm writing about in this story have come full circle because I went to a very strange party two Saturdays ago strange in that it's out of my normal world because it was horse people and the day after the friend I didn't know anybody there there was all tangential because of pony I live outside Hastings is different having a pony here although I did have a pony in acne in the city farm it's a long story anyway so uh she said to me and I was the only woman of color there apart from the Tina Turner tribute act who was working and my friend said to me she said oh they all really liked you I said really you know yeah they really liked your tan really you know it's like that's the color I want it's like white not quite it's I am the acceptable I am the acceptable shade of brown I am the acceptable mixed raceness it's always been I'm never never black enough never it's all that and I know everybody's identity is and everybody has problems with identity and I'm lucky in one way I've got a peg to hang anything on but it is funny it's like if there was a shade chart I am the color a lot of white women would like to be even if it doesn't you know it's it's so all the things the horses the ponies the donkeys the the fact that I would have done anything I mean I did I knew there was something off in the way he was treating me but I didn't know what it was I couldn't articulate it at the time the donkey man um and the the sullen boy but I didn't care because I would have done anything done anything just to be near those animals I have a charmed life I was born not long after the midpoint of the 20th century where children went everywhere on their own I spent long days on the covered reservoir or playing over the allotments or in the gardens of derelict houses in places where the grass was so long you could make dens and no one would know you were there my parents were warned not to have children we would be at the very least mad it was unfair we'd not be one thing or the other no one would want us not white people not black people we'd be confused but mum said isn't everyone my mum loved showing me off she dressed me in white and yellow she cut my hair short so she didn't have to brush it and both my parents made me feel I was more than good enough at home the world was at my feet and I'm definitely the glass half full sort of woman the universe has been kind I've been blessed so far with health symmetrical features and a dollop of good luck I may no longer be a marriageable woman but I'm happy in my skin I'm like a skin brown the sort of brown that screams citizens of everywhere or nowhere a high yellow woman with good hair the sort of hair the sort of curls the elderly women who like perms admire an acceptable shade of tan people white people stop me in the street lean over in the train all they did in the before times and tell me what a lovely color I am just the shade they like once the year before last summer I was driving at a tea junction arm along the sill the window sill went to him and staggered off a bus vodka bottles in hand they lurched towards me in a drunken run I wish for a gap in a traffic none to chance to pull away none came the first woman to reach me leaned down her arm on my arm grinning like she discovered cold fusion or perpetual motion this color see she looked from me to our arms brown skin against white to her mate hurrying to catch up that's the color I want I did not flinch I knew not to I kept a sort smile on my face and drove away as soon as I could half funny half odd half in that moment when I clocked the two of them drunken and closing in scary and that sums it up really every reaction every interaction I think it's about keeping your face straight making sure your cast iron heart is mostly impervious and hoping that glass half full doesn't get smashed in your face of course I'm so much more of what people want than my parents were no one has refused me a flat or a home no one has told me not to marry whoever or not allowed me access to contraception I have one of those faces there could be anything whatever you project Israeli Moroccan Tahitian Java and everything or nothing and now at my age in these times it's easier I present as nice middle-class grey-haired divorcee likes ponies swimming knitting cinema good food wine sometimes I know who I am now and I've taken to calling myself English both parents would be very upset at this but surely that's what I am I'm not a Londoner anymore I live in Hastings I'm thoroughly entirely to the tips of my fingers one of the angle folk a sister through time to beachy head woman across the bay in Eastbourne here to stay even if I'm not quite what anyone wants and then this morning well when I wrote this last when the pools were open it happened again I've spoken to this man before a fellow swimmer about not putting on the it ain't half hot mum Indian accent when he speaks to me but clearly enjoys it wants a reaction perhaps my face is blank but inside it's 1969 all over again I must be seven or eight I'm on the beach at Pensane North Wales and my mum and her sister are somewhere further down he talking and talking fast in English and Welsh eating lion's jersey cream slices ersatz cream flaky pastry faint gritty dusting of sand out on the mauve sea big boats on the horizon plough up and down between Liverpool and everywhere else I am up away from the sea away from my mum we're up where the road runs into the pebbly sandy nothingy beach from town to where the donkeys are there is a donkey man flat capped screw face from lack of teeth and a lifetime of squinting and a donkey boy brown by the sun not genetics and wearing I think I'm sure a kind of ink blue brine nylon turtleneck whatever the weather I am wrapped it is love those big eyes those long years the velvety velvety noses the hooves the fur the smell even the saddles and bridles ancient leather brow bands with their names painted on in old enamel painted seaside colours flash smoky rosy I'm there all the time every time every visit how much is a ride sixpence I think but I could be wrong and when the sixpences are done I hang around I hang around so much that sometimes if there are a lot of punters I get to leave the little ones across the top of the beach and it makes me feel I think the way a king might the donkey man calls me coffee he shouts it down the beach hey coffee it's not my name but I don't correct him I am not stupid I am not rocking this four legged boat we're doing a very short but sweet conversation today and I just wanted to ask given you've all reflected on aspects of your childhood if there is one thing that you could tell your childhood self and you know to reassure or to make happy or whatever what would that one thing be that you know now that you could share with your childhood self and Afshan let's start with you um that soundproofing headphones get better as you get older and nobody can hear what you're listening to anyway so it doesn't matter go ahead and rock away to some old school hollywood why not what about you jay what would you tell your your younger self I would say that you've already kind of got it worked out fully on instincts nothing external will ever make you happy Catherine what about you what would you tell you I would tell my younger self not to be so grateful for the crumbs not to put up with so much just to sniff the donkey which again I think has been the bane of my entire life and my relationship with my work is I've been too grateful and John what about you what would you tell your younger self well I didn't think I could dance in that disco but I could if I let myself I saw it come on dance mate I hope you carry on you just dancing now John you know every day just to show that that's the case it's really been um it's when I sent the brief out to all of you about not quite right for us in you know whatever way you wanted to depict that it was so lovely to get such a range of different types of remembrance but which also kind of meet each other and I wondered just as a sort of ad hoc question if there was another piece that you might have read in the book that kind of you felt really resonated with you um was there anything in particular that kind of reminded you of you know something else that you'd experienced or that you just really enjoyed I'm really it's really up it's not upset sad that's ours who's not here because I love her writing and I loved her piece and in fact you know that was one of the pieces I went to um I think it's so it's so it's like you know what what's great about writing anybody's writing is getting a window it's like what sorry I'm pointing you can't see me pointing John but you know you're saying about the bungalow with the windows writing is like you know you walk past someone's house and you get a look in through the windows at another life and I think that's what I like about her piece and about a lot of what about any good writing is is just looking through the windows and seeing a moment in their lives as you walk past and I think hers was very effective for that so even so she's not here I'm fangirling her in this discussion it's been really really lovely to have this and Jay when what was the phrase you used was it emotional you said was it you used the phrase emotional something emotional learning what was the phrase you used emotional literacy that's so brilliant I'd never heard that phrase before I've heard the phrase emotional intelligence but that's a really it's a it's important I mean I suppose it was something that I didn't really realize at school as I say I've got these books now and obviously that's an emotional literacy but it's the same sort of thing and we didn't have access to that and I think it's really good to have this discussion because it makes me realize it's an important thing and it's we are writers and we do take our we take our words and our books in but hopefully we also take in a wider literacy I mean I would just say that actually you know I used to be really ashamed of coming from Cordon or living in Cordon I used to always sort of and John I remember you doing your poem about your lute in bungalow it's like a funny one it's like a song we're not lute in bungalow when I was at Battersea Arts Center many years ago and I do think about that as like a wave I know that you're kind of being tugging cheeky about it but I do see it as a kind of point at which I kind of started to think oh actually you can come from rake's places and have some pride even if it's you and maybe or whatever you know to be like it you can you can act there's actually a lot to be found and to be gleaned from really looking at your your your own material circumstances first you know before you kind of envy other people's yeah thank you for that I was singing my song about Croydon the Croydon Library sometime I've got one um Raphshan just to ask you if there was any piece that you wanted to talk about or that resonated yeah um just to say when I got the brief I really struggled because I thought I've not fit in every point of my life what do I write about and and when I got the book and I went straight to Jay's poems sorry to embarrass you Jay because I love your poetry and I've seen them before and I was like okay this is really great and as I was flicking through I realized oh my god I could write about this oh my god I could have written about this oh my god I could every single point I was like I resonated with something in everybody's piece and I think it's so weird because it's a range of experiences throughout the entire entire anthology but there's that shared experience of not fitting in that we all resonate with um so yeah I just wanted to share that that um actually there were a lot of pieces within it and I was jealous that I didn't kind of explore that side I was like oh my god I've got a great story about that um and I just wanted to respond to each and every one of them but yeah thank you so much finally let's listen to some of Xiaolugu's essay I lived the most of my life in rural China then I left for the west I was certain when I first opened the pages of Alice's adventure in wonderland growing up in a small village my early childhood was about scavenging for food in a hush environment if there was a wonderland in my dream then there was a food wonderland with pork dumpling filled pounds to swim in and beef noodle best to sleep on we didn't have the luxury of children's literature or television to occupy our minds in the 1970s and 80s the legacy of the cultural revolution still permeated the Chinese society that bitter ideological wind has swept away all fairies and of fury toys snow white never appeared in any theater nor the singing mermaids of neverland there were the opium of western bourgeois society instruments to narcotize children's minds now I realize that from a western point of view I barely had a childhood known in 1960s and 70s China did there was only propaganda for kids forging an anti-western and anti-futile spirit and it got worse too teenage years came with burden of school studies outside the class we had to absorb the lessons of the october revolution by climbing boggles white guards or stories about the ukoslav leader titos boyholt or we were to learn facts about the french revolution and how the heads of the king louis 16th and marie entonette had been chopped off apart from studying there was always more studying no time to play so no adolescence either such were my early years my mind like those of my peers was flattened by communist dogma and then one morning like cattle on a day of slaughter we're all awakened to a fevered capitalist hell and burning alive in it down with english-american empiricism sunday appeared sarcastically as an opening line in a natively produced rock and roll song and one spring morning in 1994 i chanted those lines to myself while russian to a newly opened the computer store in beijing acute with thousands of young people in order to buy first generation pc and only to be told that all sold out i sang the rock and roll song again down with english-american empirics we are not afraid of paper tigers and the materialism with this political rage or simply my own frustration against the computer industry it failed to me that my generation was required to swallow one big contradiction the state wanted us to talk the talk of socialism but the walk the walk of capitalism decades later center stage of the old capitalist world england i give both to my child in the easterland and hospital even before the baby had managed to open her eyes we had already received an ample supply of toys and music boxes and coloring books so i am i realize a childhood less woman with a child in her arms how will i ever be able to explain my history to this little girl now i have begun learning what a western childhood might look like here in central london we have free music classes for babies not only in nurseries but also in libraries and parks we have play dates with kids dressed up as a better man tiny tumble sessions almost every weekend and every monday there's a baby yoga and every wednesday baby screening when the days get darker and colder children are promised the halloween parties christmas carol concerts and the presents from center class and in the summer a beach holiday if the family has a good income and so on it's a paradise no or near paradise compared with kids in some other countries baby hold here is like a never-ending summer camp for young folk with eternal sunny afternoons two weeks after my child's birth we were queuing at the town hall to register as a british citizen while waiting amongst many new bones and new parents i opened a random page of ellis adventures in wonderland and read curious and curious cried ellis she was so much surprised that for the moment she quite forgot how to speak good english now i'm opening out like the largest telescope that ever was goodbye feet i began to wonder if there was any chinese story vaguely resembling louis carol's i went online and discovered a 1928 novel called ellis adventures in china written by one of our most renowned writers shen zongwan i immediately began reading the online version shen's ellis takes trip to china with her white rabbit in a political satire of seawall ravaged country as i scanned the pages i found this text heavy the dialogue between the innards and ellis and the chinese peasants was totally rhetorical choked with hardship and misery every character cried for social justice another own avoidable revolution including the rabbit the book flopped according to historians i have to admit though that ellis's adventure in china are much more absurd than her journey down the rabbit hole if absurdity is unnecessary quality for children's literature it seems self-evident that childhood is manufactured both in the east and as a west childhood in the west today is like a children's television channel despite the phone and innocence it is still nevertheless embedded in the systematic production of a consumer society when i see in the field is commercial force permitting every corner of children's lives here i ask is it actually better to be without a soul called childhood when a voice is sought to an english friend she scoffed at such absurd notion okay but i felt stifled by my secret status being an adult without childhood thinking back one of the chinese children's idols i grew up grew up with was a young soldier named leifern of the people's liberation army he died when he was 21 always wearing an army uniform and a carrying a rifle for the last 50 years he has been the fourth from propaganda posters surrounded by slogans such as follow leifern's example love the party love socialism love the people and from our earliest school days we learned how selfless leifern had been and how he had dedicated every single minute of his life to the greater good well that was our primary education to learn to be entirely selfless without vanity and not to be daydreamers in the 1960s leifern's diary was first presented to the public by ling bill then vice chairman of the chinese communist party in the learn from leifern campaigns the diary was fourth accounts of laze ademirations for malzada and his self sacrificing deeds and his desire to foment revolutionary spirit the campaign last until the mid 1990s but times arrow has not brought us a new living leifern in any form the eternal fire of leifern's communist spirit has cooled somewhat in early 21st century china indeed it has become digital in 2006 a chinese organization released a video game titled learn from leifern online in which the player has to perform good deeds fight spies and amass objects from malzada's collection and if the player wins their character gets to meet mal it looks like a postmodern joke but not in china's self-transforming new spirit