Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo follows the lives of 12 principal characters (mostly Black women) as they navigate the world.
Evaristo is a longstanding advocate for the inclusion of writers and artists of colour. In the 1980's she co-founded Theatre of Black Women and the Brunel University African Poetry Prize in 2012.
The novel is divided into four chapters, each containing episodes about three women who are connected directly to one another in some way. The novel explores how race, sexuality, gender, history, and economic stratification intersect to define the experiences of the women in the novel. Despite the 12 women in the book experiencing various forms of oppression, many of them contribute to intersectional forms of exclusionism because of their life experiences, class, and social standing.
Girl, Woman, Other won best fiction book at the 2020 British Book Awards and was shortlisted for The Women's Prize. In June 2020 she became the first woman of colour and the first Black British writer to get to #1 in the UK paperback fiction charts.
She says:
“I learnt first-hand how women are discriminated against, which is why I became a feminist after I’d transitioned, an intersectional feminist, because it’s not just about gender but race, sexuality, class and other intersections which we mostly unthinkingly live anyway”