Girl, Woman, Other

There’s so much to adore about Girl, Women, Other. I’m absolutely obsessed with the razor-sharp prose. I love the polylith-take of modern-day Britain. And I became heavily invested in the interconnected lives of the narrators: twelve very different and predominantly women of colour. Evaristo proves that it’s possible to write about complex, sensitive issues with both zing and wit, and love and care. Peckham and Elephant and Castle also get a mention too! Girl, Women, Other is such a special book. It’s one that I return to time and time again. A timeless, contemporary classic.

This book was surprising in both its humor and expansive narrative. Despite being somewhat experimental in its form, I loved this book as it told the stories of 12 British women of color who ranged in ages between 19 and 93 in London. Each life told separately, builds on the others. Spanning issues of class, gender identity, and family, the novel focuses on intersections of experience as generations of women are woven together. 

I've just started reading this book and already I love it.  Like my own, it shows what it's like to be female ... the insults, the exclusions, the limitations ... with a badass attitude, an acute awareness of and an unapologetic exposure of the sexism we have to deal with every frickin' day ... "perfect slave girl material one director told her when she walked into an audition for a play about Emancipation / whereupon she walked right back out again."