Название: Girl, Woman, Other
Автор: Bernardine Evaristo
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Серия: Booker Prize Winner
isbn: 9780802156990
isbn:
as for me, I get my fighting spirit from my dad, Kwabena, who was a journalist campaigning for Independence in Ghana
until he heard he was going to be arrested for sedition, legged it over here, ended up working on the railways where he met Mum at London Bridge station
he was a ticket collector, she worked in the offices above the concourse
he made sure to be the one to take her ticket, she made sure to be the last person to leave the train so she could exchange a few words with him
Mum, Helen, is half-caste, born in 1935 in Scotland
her father was a Nigerian student who vanished as soon as he finished his studies at the University of Aberdeen
he never said goodbye
years later her mother discovered he’d gone back to his wife and children in Nigeria
she didn’t even know he had a wife and children
Mum wasn’t the only half-caste in Aberdeen in the thirties and forties but she was rare enough to be made to feel it
she left school early, went to secretarial college, headed down to London, just as it was being populated by African men who’d come to study or work
Mum went to their dances and Soho clubs, they liked her lighter skin and looser hair
she says she felt ugly until African men told her she wasn’t
you should see what she looked like back then
a cross between Lena Horne and Dorothy Dandridge
so yeh, really ugly
Mum hoped to spend their first date going to see a film and then on to her favourite spot, Club Afrique, right here in Soho, she’d dropped enough hints and loved to dance to highlife and West African jazz
instead he took her to one of his socialist meetings in the backroom of a pub at the Elephant and Castle
where a group of men sat guzzling beers and talking independence politics
she sat there trying to act interested, impressed by his intellect
he was impressed with her silent acquiescence, if you ask me
they married and moved to Peckham
I was their last child and first girl, Amma explained, blowing smoke into the already thickening fug of the room
my three older brothers became lawyers and a doctor, their obedience to the expectations of our father meant I wasn’t pressurized to follow suit
his only concern for me is marriage and children
he thinks my acting career is a hobby until I have both
Dad’s a socialist who wants a revolution to improve the lot of all of mankind
literally
I tell Mum she married a patriarch
look at it this way, Amma, she says, your father was born male in Ghana in the 1920s whereas you were born female in London in the 1960s
and your point is?
you really can’t expect him to ‘get you’, as you put it
I let her know she’s an apologist for the patriarchy and complicit in a system that oppresses all women
she says human beings are complex
I tell her not to patronize me
Mum worked eight hours a day in paid employment, raised four children, maintained the home, made sure the patriarch’s dinner was on the table every night and his shirts were ironed every morning
meanwhile, he was off saving the world
his one domestic duty was to bring home the meat for Sunday lunch from the butcher’s – a suburban kind of hunter-gatherer thing
I can tell Mum’s unfulfilled now we’ve all left home because she spends her time either cleaning it or redecorating it
she’s never complained about her lot, or argued with him, a sure sign she’s oppressed
she told me she tried to hold his hand in the early days, but he shook her off, said affection was an English affectation, she never tried again
yet every year he gets her the soppiest Valentine card you can buy and he loves sentimental country music, sits in the kitchen on Sunday evenings listening to albums of Jim Reeves and Charley Pride
tumbler of whisky in one hand, wiping tears away with the other
Dad lives for campaigning meetings, demos, picketing Parliament and standing in Lewisham Market selling the Socialist Worker
I grew up listening to his sermons during our evening meal on the evils of capitalism and colonialism and the merits of socialism
it was his pulpit and we were his captive congregation
it was like we were literally being force-fed his politics
he’d probably be an important person in Ghana if he’d returned after Independence
instead he’s President for Life of our family
he doesn’t know I’m a dyke, are you kidding? Mum told me not to tell him, it was hard enough telling her, she said she suspected when pencil skirts and curly perms were all the rage and I started wearing men’s Levis
she’s sure it’s a phase, which I’ll throw back at her when I’m forty
Dad has no time for ‘the fairies’ and laughs at all the homophobic jokes comedians make on telly every Saturday night when they’re not insulting their mother-in-law or black people
Amma spoke about going to her first black women’s group in Brixton in her last year at school, she’d seen a flyer at her local library
the woman who opened the door, Elaine, sported a perfect halo of an afro and her smooth limbs were clad tightly in light blue denim jeans and tight denim shirt
Amma wanted her on sight, followed her into the main room where women sat on sofas, chairs, cushions, cross-legged on the floor, drinking cups of coffee and cider
she nervously accepted cigarettes as they were passed around, sat on the floor leaning against a cat-mauled tweedy armchair, feeling Elaine’s warm leg against her arm
she listened as they debated what it meant to be a black woman
what it meant to be a feminist when white feminist organizations made them feel unwelcome
how it felt when people called them nigger, or racist thugs beat them up
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