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[ARTICLE]

Soul Rebel

 

Bernardine Evaristo's new novel reveals the hidden history of blacks in Europe. She gives Mani Rao chapter and verse on the realities of racism

BERNARDINE EVARISTO is a child of the times. An intriguing mixture of highbrow and lowbrow, her unique style is marked by the ability to parody both literary and popular culture. "It's completely subconscious - but it's who I am," she says, in a gloomy London pub. "I watch Big Brother. At the same time I read erudite books. I don't know if that's simply typical of my generation."

Evaristo is a cultural and social hybrid. "My [Nigerian] father was a welder and my [English] mother was a schoolteacher," she says. "He wasn't a literary person at all, whereas my mother loved reading. My mother was kind of middle class. My father, as an immigrant, became working class."

Evaristo takes a search for lost roots as the theme of her latest novel, Soul Tourists (Hamish Hamilton). In it she sets out to unearth the hidden history of blacks in Europe. In the story, a British couple - Stanley, a strait-laced banker of Caribbean extraction, and Jessie, a free-spirited barmaid and cabaret singer of African heritage - hook up in a singles bar in London before heading off together on a journey of self-discovery across the continent.

The reader is introduced along with them to the rich vein of black history that runs through Europe via the ghosts of Shakespeare's Dark Lady of the Sonnets; French Queen Marie Thèrése's illegitimate daughter, the little Mooress Louis-Marie; Hannibal; Pushkin and his Ethiopian great-grandfather; the black Nightingale Mary Jane Seacole; and Pope Clement VII's "muulaatoooo bastardooo" son, among others.

Although there's plenty of fun along the way, a serious theme underpins the adventure. "It's about bringing attention to the influence of black people on the history of Europe," says Evaristo. "Part of the reason some of these people disappeared from history is because they were black.

"There's a sort of culture at the moment, I feel, that people almost believe we're living in a post-racist society, that we're all this lovely melting pot now, and it's not. The truth of the matter is that we're a deeply racist society.

"Very few people acknowledge that Pushkin was of African ancestry and that that was important to him," she says. "The Russians are in denial, and I couldn't stand it when I was in Russia.

"Why can't they accept that Pushkin wasn't what they think they are - that they're Aryan - which they're not anyway, because they're really also Asian."

Evaristo's search for a different approach doesn't stop with history. As you soak up the book's lessons it gradually dawns that much of the novel is written in verse, which swings coolly from street slang to drama script and Latin.

The verse helps the plot move with celerity, often condensing entire chunks of the storyline. Stanley and Jessie's courtship, for instance, is summed up with staccato stanzas in a three-page chapter titled Fifty-One Days in Blackheath:

beef casserole with black lingerie

lipstick warhols my cheeks

welcome home, banker boy

hootchy-kootchy, cha-cha, boogaloo

each touch leads to double-shuffle

bathroom, sitting room, bog (bed)

The original deal with the publisher was for a prose novel, says Evaristo, but she found herself unable to delive