Why I *am* my hair….
08 Nov 2011 1 Comment
in hair, life, politics, press, random thoughts Tags: afros, black hair, dreadlocks, i am not my hair, india arie, natural hair, precious williams, relaxers, weaves
India Arie says ‘I am not my hair….‘
I disagree with her. I am my hair. Of course my hair (dreadlocks these days) is not all that I am. But it is all that I have chosen it to be. Hair’s one of the few physical characteristics we have control over. Everything we do to our hair is a choice. We can (fairly easily) change its texture (temporarily), style, length, feel …whereas it’d take plastic surgery to alter our facial features.
So what’s the point of spending vast amounts of money, time and energy putting in a weave or relaxer only to say “it’s only hair?” All of it is a choice. Personally I’ve sported weaves, relaxers, braided extensions, afros, twists, cornrows….And when I chose those styles I chose them because I liked the way they looked on me, at the time. Later, I fell in love with the natural texture of my hair and chose to reveal it. Whatever style we go for, why should we disown our hair and our hair choices – whatever those choices are – by saying I am not my hair? Our hair is surely as much a part of us as our brain, our eyes and our heart . I claim my hair 
Read on for an interview I did with the writer Memphiz at Charcoal-Ink
The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives
08 Nov 2011 Leave a Comment
in books, life, literature, random thoughts, writers Tags: alice walker, chester himes, chris abani, emma donoghue, hanif kureishi, lola shoneyin, martin amis, nigerian authors, wizard of oz
I love books and I’m a promiscuous reader but every now and then I become completely besotted with a novel. One of my first obsessions, as a kid, was The Wizard of Oz and as an adolescent, I fell for everything by Alice Walker…. 
Later (late teens), it was all about the works of Chester Himes. And then Kureishi’s Buddha of Suburbia. Shortly after that: Martin Amis’s London Fields. More recently I fell in love with Chris Abani’s Graceland and, around the same time, Emma Donoghue’s Slammerkin. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve re-read the aforementioned books and yet they remain ever-fresh. My current favourite novel is Nigerian author Lola Shoneyin’s Orange Prize long-listed debut The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives. Lola’s language is gorgeous and her characters are vivid and they muscle their way into your memory, your heart, your nightmares. Like Chris Abani, she is a poet and she has so far written just the one novel. I hope she (and Abani) write more novels, and sooooon.
Can you be black and *English (*English as opposed to British)?
02 Nov 2011 Leave a Comment
in adoption, interviews, politics, race Tags: adoption, ben douglas, precious williams, trans-racial adoption
Alex Wheatle: “My name’s not on the list & they won’t let me in…”
02 Nov 2011 1 Comment
in books, literature, politics, race, writers Tags: alex wheatle, booker prize
Novelist Alex Wheatle has written an article I consider to be really quite brave. And timely. It appeared in yesterday’s Independent with the subhead: ”Britain’s premier book prize is presented tonight. It’s a shame it continues to ignore talented black writers, argues author Alex Wheatle”
Alex says the Booker and other major literary prizes exclude (black) authors like him.
Many (the majority, even) of the Indy readers commenting on Alex’s piece disagreed with him. One comment read “Unfortunately, this article reads as the spoilt sayings of a cry-baby author – black, urban, or otherwise.”
Is Alex right?
Haven’t Zadie Smith, Andrea Levy, Helen Oyeyemi, Aminatta Forna and Diana Evans all won major prizes? Didn’t Ben Okri win the Booker back in 1991?
But Alex is talking here about black authors who specifically write about the lives of”the black underclass” – authors like Stephen Thompson and Courttia Newland. And Alex would like to know why the response seems to be so much more positive when a white author – such as Stephen Kelman - writes about that very same subject.
The last black author to win the Booker was Ben Okri, in 1991.
Black Booker Prize nominees include Esi Edyugan (Half Blood Blues) this year, Andrea Levy (The Long Song) last year and Zadie Smith (On Beauty) in 2005.
The odds….
01 Dec 2010 1 Comment
in adoption, books, life, random thoughts, writing
The odds….
I was just thinking about how the things and situations and people we quickly write off as being dysfunctional can actually be nurturing in their very own way.
One of the recent reviews of my memoir said something like “Against all the odds she went on to become a writer”. But I think it is because of “all the odds” that I achieved my ambition of becoming a writer.
I was raised by an elderly, very, very eccentric white woman who called me ‘coloured’ and seems to have wanted to foster me mainly because I reminded her of Topsy in the novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The situation looked – and was – odd (huge understatement). But this same woman also spent her state pension buying me endless books and writing paper and pens and paints even when it meant she couldn’t afford to pay the electric bill. (Which meant that her own grown-up children often had to help her out with the household bills). She introduced me to the works of Chaucer and Dickens when I was little more than five years old.
As a young kid I was forever making excuses as to why I couldn’t go into school that day (my attendance levels were almost laughable some years). I just wanted to stay home and write short stories and poems and read books. A functional parent would have made their child attend school regularly. Instead my foster mother indulged my ridiculous excuses for not going into school that day and often let me sit at home writing, daydreaming, reading my poems out loud to her. She acted as though every verse I wrote was on a par with Shakespeare.
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| Bunking off from school again? |
My foster mother would tell everyone who’d listen that I was going to be a published writer one day, stating this as if it were a fact. I’m sure many of our neighbours on our council estate laughed behind her back and thought that both my foster mother and I were utterly out of touch with reality. Truth be told, I think she prided herself on being out of touch with reality.
When I was about ten I was still writing my mini-novels in exercise-books in felt-tip pen but I felt a bit frustrated that my foster mother was the only person who read my words. “How much longer till I’ll be a published author?” I asked her. “Well you’ll need a typewriter first,” she said. She got me a typewriter for my twelfth or thirteenth birthday. I spent hours and hours typing up my latest work-in-progress and sent it into a major publishing house who were sweet enough to send me an encouraging, hand-written rejection note. Twenty or so years later, when my agent submitted my memoir-in-progress, that very same publishing house made an offer to buy my memoir Precious, A True Story (although in the end I signed with Bloomsbury)!
My foster mum died in 2009, in her mid-90s. Just a few days before she passed I’d told her I was about to have my first book published. She said: “I’m not at all surprised, darling. It will be the first of many.”
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