I won’t stay in my lane, vows Booker winner
THE first black woman to win the Booker Prize has described the idea of cultural appropriation in literature as “total nonsense”.
Bernardine Evaristo, who jointly won this year’s prize for her novel Girl, Woman, Other, said that authors should not have to “stay in their lane”.
The 60-year-old, whose novel explores the lives of 12 black or mixedrace characters who have different backgrounds and genders, said that it was ridiculous to expect writers not to “write beyond your own culture”.
“This whole idea of cultural appropriation, which is where you are not supposed to write beyond your own culture and so on, is ridiculous. Because that would mean that I could never write white characters or white writers can never write black characters,” she told The Times at the Hay Festival Winter Weekend.
“Look, in television, that happens all the time. But there is this idea that when it comes to fiction that you are supposed to stay in your lane. It is a total nonsense.”
The accusation of cultural appropriation has been levelled at the likes of JK Rowling, who was criticised for writing about Navajo traditions. Evaristo is determined to be unshackled in her fiction and says she does not try to anticipate any outrage at her creations.
“That’s not my primary concern,” she said. “I refuse to construct some kind of character who is going to appease everybody.”
Following her Booker Prize win she said she hoped she would not be the last black woman to be feted by the judges.
She shared the £50,000 prize money with prolific writer Margaret Atwood, 80, for her novel The Testaments – a sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale which was adapted into a Channel 4 drama.
Following the ceremony in October she said: “It’s a bittersweet experience. In one sense it’s great to be the first – but I shouldn’t be the first.”