Manifesto

October 18, 2021
Novelist Evaristo (Girl, Woman, Other) charts her path from struggling in a working-class family to becoming the first Black British person to win the Booker Prize, in this sprawling memoir. Beckoning readers with a clear-eyed account of her experiences growing up in the 1960s as a mixed-race child to a white British mother and Black Nigerian father in the U.K., she writes, “there was nothing in the British society of my suburban childhood that endorsed the concept of blackness as something positive.” In lithe prose, she tackles her complicated relationship with sexuality (“Queerness is a... statement of freedom and enlightenment”), reminisces on hustling her early books (published by “tiny” presses) into readers’ hands and finding “a room of my own” in her writing later in life, and dispenses advice on cultivating creativity and intergenerational consciousness. Though her personal narrative movingly speaks to themes of racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia and how she overcame them, Evaristo’s writing occasionally falls into platitudes, as when she describes how “our books exist as works of art... and once published, they are out there on their own in the world.” Still, readers will find much to ruminate over in this meditation on the power of art and persistence. Agent: Emma Paterson, Aitken Alexander Assoc.

Starred review from December 1, 2021
What a fascinating life Evaristo has led. The daughter of a white British and Irish mother and a Nigerian immigrant father, her very birth was a riposte to her country's racism. Raised by parents who steadfastly fought against their society's anti-Blackness and classism, Evaristo imbibed an ethic of resilience and defiance that would serve her well as a writer, actor, and theater manager. Fighting her way into drama school during a period where race-blind casting was most definitely NOT a thing, Evaristo was part of a pioneering generation of young Black female artists who redefined the world of theater in the 1980s. After decades of largely unsung work, winning the Booker Prize for Girl, Woman, Other (2019) brought acclaim and validation but has not, Evaristo feels, significantly altered the landscape for writers of color. Evaristo continues to fight the perception that multicultural writing is provincial or somehow less worthy than writing from the dominant white European perspective, noting that "If you factor in that brown people are in fact the global majority, then to write from this perspective is to therefore engage in the infinite, imaginative, historical, fantastical, multigenerational, and multidemographical possibilities of our lives." Manifesto is an inspiring yet unassuming memoir from a woman of indomitable creative energy.

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Starred review from November 1, 2021
The award-winning author of Girl, Woman, Othergenerously shares her pathway to success in this nonfiction debut. "You need the early knock-backs to develop the resilience that will make you unstoppable," writes Evaristo, who was raised in a working-class family in South London, one of eight children born to a Nigerian father and a White Catholic mother. Some of her early knock-backs involved attacks on her family home by neighborhood racists. These attacks and other injustices cemented young Evaristo's outsider status, which in turn fueled her relentless creative spirit. At age 60, she won the Booker Prize for her novel Girl, Woman, Other, the first Black woman and first Black British person to win the coveted award in its 50-year history, and the book was hailed as a favorite by Barack Obama and Roxane Gay. Here, Evaristo details the journey between her fraught beginnings and her career triumphs, and the result is part memoir and part meditation on determination, creativity, and activism. She writes with welcome candor and clarity about her biracial heritage, her fledgling early career in theater, and her rocky romantic relationships with both men and women. The author's passion and commitment to community especially shine through in her guidance to writers at all levels about the importance of envisioning the best outcomes for themselves and for their work--and protecting themselves from naysayers. "Creativity circulates freely in our imaginations, waiting for us to tap into it. It must not be bound by rules or censorship, yet we should not ignore its socio-political contexts." Evaristo inspires while keeping it real, deftly avoiding the sentimentality and vagueness that too often plague advice books. She lays bare the nuts and bolts of her writing process; pushes back against sexism, racism, and ageism; and imparts her hard-won wisdom unapologetically and with refreshing nuance. A beautiful ode to determination and daring and an intimate look at one of our finest writers.

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