A few years ago, I clicked on a YouTube video that promised to show me “how to manifest my dreams”. I was at university, settling into the idea that my life would probably go on to be ordinary, yet still hoping that there might be a chance I could one day do something extraordinary.
Through the smudged screen, an Australian YouTuber greeted me – perfect tan, perfect hair. As she launched into a spiel about how she’d manifested her perfect beachfront house in less than a year, I realised I was about to listen to ten minutes of bullshit. “Nonsense,” I thought. “You just wanted a nice house, found it and had the money to buy it.” Manifesting, I decided, was simply the rich, Goop-accredited way of writing to Santa.
Then, four years later, I meet author Bernardine Evaristo. Sitting on a step in London’s Shepherd’s Bush Green, a flock of pigeons to the left, a flock of teenagers to the right, she’s telling me about how, after winning the Booker Prize for her novel Girl, Woman, Other in October 2019, she returned to a box she hadn’t opened for years. Within, she found notes, collages and photographs, each visualising goals she wanted to achieve in life. Some of them were perfectly normal milestones: have a happy and successful relationship, own a house, be fit and healthy. Others were goals that could be categorised as “moonshots”, at least to most people – namely, winning the Booker Prize. OK, fine. I’m listening.
“When I started to go through all those visualisations, I was like, ‘Ooh, I got that! And I got that!’ But it took so long.” The now 61-year-old looks at me and accurately guesses I was born in 1994. “So, it was your lifetime. That’s how long it took.” Over the whole of my lifetime, people were raising their eyebrows at Evaristo when she told them about her visualisations. They called “BS”. Now they call her to find out how to do it too.
The aforementioned teenagers have ousted us from our spot on the steps, blaring Eminem too loudly to hold a conversation and now Evaristo is navigating the aforementioned pigeons’ droppings as she attempts to lean back on the patch of grass that serves as our new, socially distanced interview location. She talks about how, during the personal development course, Mindstore, that had prompted her to visualise winning the Booker, the most inspiring story told was about how when Whoopi Goldberg won the Academy Award for her role in Ghost, she openly admitted she’d dreamed of that moment all of her life. It taught Evaristo it’s OK to dream big. If you can’t imagine it, then how can you make it happen? I’m finding it hard to imagine Evaristo, the academic, activist and author, lapping this up from an enthusiastic life coach in the 1990s.
“Do you know who Whoopi Goldberg is?” she checks. Um, duh! Does she not know I was once nearly cast as Deloris in a village hall production of Sister Act? Let’s give her the benefit of the doubt. After all, news travels awfully slowly from my hometown, Hull...
Anyway, how does it actually feel to have achieved something she’s dreamed about all her life? Sorry, all my life. “It’s just so intensely, overwhelmingly wonderful that nothing can beat it.” And how does it feel to count Barack Obama as a fan? “Surreal and sublime.” And what about being welcomed into the literary establishment that once excluded her, as a black female writer? “I’m not a bitter person and I’m not resentful. Instead of thinking, ‘I’ve been around a long time; you weren’t paying attention,’ I’m just thinking, ‘Well, now you are and you’ve got seven other books of mine to read.’”
For many, although delayed, the introduction to Evaristo’s writing couldn’t have come at a better time. She finished Girl, Woman, Other in February 2019, more than a year before the world reeled in response to the killing of George Floyd. Evaristo is convinced the book wouldn’t have been as well received had it been published before 2013, when Black Lives Matter first gained momentum. I’m convinced her novel, which showcases black characters as individuals instead of one homogeneous depiction of blackness, may have played a part in the force with which Black Lives Matter returned to mainstream conversation this year.
I wonder if she’s been surprised by the movement’s widespread resurgence. “I think we all have been,” she says, glancing over for confirmation. I agree. That’s why I asked. “The fact that Black Lives Matter has been taken up by so many people and the institutions are taking it more seriously than ever before... that’s astonishing.”
Something about the response to Floyd’s death has indeed felt different, but I initially cautioned myself against my own naivety. It turns out that Evaristo – who attended antiracist marches with her family in her teens, helped set up the UK’s first black women’s theatre company, Theatre Of Black Women, in 1982, and became the first black woman and the first black Briton to win the Booker Prize – feels it too. “At the same time, I’ve been around long enough to know that you cannot just expect the institutions to do the work,” she says. “We’ve got to watch them. Talk is cheap. They need to put their money where their mouths are. When we’re considered a minority, there’s always going to be a battle to be fully included.”
Evaristo has been wearing her armour for decades. The battle of the Booker might have been won, but the war is still raging. She’s not about to quit simply because she’s ahead. “What I want to do is to put the black British perspective into the national narrative in every way that I can.” A look of bemusement scrunches up on her face as she considers the alternative. “There are thousands of white writers writing white stories. Why would I do that?”
The rise of Evaristo
From teenage drama queen to Booker-winning author
1979
Heads to drama school to pursue her teenage love of theatre.
1994
After many rejections, her first book, Island Of Abraham, is published. Begins visualising and manifesting, setting her sights on the Booker Prize.
2001
The establishment cracks the door open and The Emperor’s Babe is published by Penguin.
2019
Good things come to those who wait (and work hard). The Booker Prize is secured.
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