Transcultural Feminism in Bernardine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other

Abstract

[Abstract] The purpose of this paper is to present the multiple perspectives used by the British writer Bernardine Evaristo in Girl, woman, other awarded with the 2019 Man Booker Prize (with Margaret Atwood’s The testaments). The author, current president of the Royal Society of Literature, was the first black woman to be awarded the prize, after a transgression of the contest rules, which permit only one winner. This novel is the epitome of cultures both in contrast and in contact as it depicts the lives of twelve characters, mainly female, who live in the United Kingdom having mixed origins, particularly Anglo-Nigerian. The work deconstructs concepts such as woman, culture, society, civilization or nation so that they can be perceived from multiple, comprehensive perspectives, transculturally following König and Rakow (König and Rakow, Transcultural Studies 2:89–100, 2016). Some of the characters have been living in the London metropolis for generations, but are still regarded by some as foreigners or outsiders. The book starts with a female character who is preparing a play for the London National Theatre, itself an emblem of high culture, and ends with a successful premiere. The work is labelled as a novel, but it contains a mixture of genres and can be read as poetic prose as well as containing many connections with drama, the author being a playwright herself. The difficulties experienced by the main characters in order to reach the climax of the stage presentation at the National are analysed as the difficulties suffered by the people, particularly women, who have come from the different lands belonging to the former British Empire in order to reach a prominent place in the metropolis.