Rachel Edwards: Born On Three Continents

Rachel Edwards: Born on Three Continents

Any minute now, readers will, I hope, begin opening my latest novel, Lucky, which launches on 24th June. In the minds of the most interested, questions may form: why did she write this? Is the lead character really her? What happens next?

Interviewers are starting to ask questions too, happily: what drives you, as an author? Are you one of life’s gamblers? What about your primary writing influences? 

I am usually eager to answer. Of course I am: my fiction is rarely fact, but it is my truth. So, in the run-up to publication, I tend to overshare with abandon. Who are my game-changing writers, other than Shakespeare (obv)? Sure: today, I’d say Angelou, Morrison, McEwan, Evaristo, Walker, LKJ, Swift, Okri and Smith. I might edit that list tomorrow. Writing routine? Erratic and ever-changing, notebook-heavy, obsessive. Favourite colour? Red, of course. Then, the real humdinger: what are your primary literary influences? 

This question is one that gives me pause as, so far, it has differed from book to book. In both my first and second novel, the most fundamental reasons for writing them, essences of which colour all my writing in some shape or form, is an influence that goes much deeper than I am able to explain in a tweet or radio soundbite. 

In brief, it is this: I am the product of immigrants. I have had the sort of English education that has afforded me a rich and intimate relationship with this country’s language and at the same time I am Black British, born of a Jamaican nurse of the Windrush generation and a Nigerian doctor who was the first in his village to attend university. As I write, I am from here and I am from there; I am this and I am other; my prose has emerged from one who was, as I put it, born on three continents at once.

Was does this mean, in terms of my writing? Sometimes it manifests as an almost-nothing, merely an ironic choice of noun, a hint within a character profile, the slightest inflection of a sentence or a nuance that I create on instinct but may barely register myself until I re-read that draft. Almost nothing, but it is always something. Sometimes, it is everything. Sometimes, it burns through me, urgent, a guiding light that has exploded in my consciousness, searing every idea, every phrase.

This is why Lucky denounces the wrongs of racism, riffs about skin bias and rages against the great injustices of the Windrush Scandal. This is why my debut, Darling, opens on the dawn after the Brexit vote, when I felt that I had woken up in another country altogether. Perhaps I had: two days later, for the first time ever, I was abused by a resident of the local market town advising that I ‘leave the country’. I have never felt the significance of being the daughter of migrants to Britain more than since the time of the EU Referendum.

After that, the Far Right continued to rise. Then Trump came to power. George Floyd was later murdered. While at one level I experience such seismic world events simply as a wife and stepmother, born in Cornwall, to a greater degree I process them as a Black British woman and, facing the blank page, sitting still with my laptop in the eye of the storm, I process them as an author.

While I hope I would be able to cobble together a half-decent piece of prose while exploring any of the broad reaches of human experience, being born on three continents at once is, simply put, why I write what I write, right now.

My cultural references are overwhelmingly British, but there is a great richness to being the product of not one but three cultures. You embody diversity just by getting up in the morning and I feel fortunate to have a platform in which to express that in literature. All authors are magpies and I feel pleasure and sometimes a need to cherry-pick from my parent’s beginnings.

To get those stories told. There are infinite opportunities to explore everything from our relationship with ‘home’ through food – all that messy fun with jerk chicken, egusi soup, and fish and chips (or indeed chicken tikka masala) – to the interplay of slang and idioms in three nations that all speak English and versions thereof, to music, to clothing, to attitude to community and many other profoundly important aspects of belonging. 

In Lucky, both the lead characters, Etta and Ola, live in the suburbs of the south-east of England, as I once did, and have Nigerian fathers, like me. Also like me, Etta has a Jamaican mother. I wrote her story not only because she represents my particular heritage, but also because there is a complexity of backgrounds and ideas, each coming to the fore in different contexts, or working in concert to a surprising effect. Conversely, there is a simplicity: Etta is an everywoman. Not every woman will get involved in online gambling or long to marry a man, but her struggles and concerns will touch most of us, regardless of her skin colour.

Which brings me back to where it all started, for my writing and for me. My parents’ worlds collided in 1960s London and I exist because each of them took an enormous punt, crossing oceans and cultures to build a new life. My book, written by this British author with roots spanning the world, is dedicated – in both word and spirit – to them and to that existential gamble.

Lucky is published by Fourth Estate, HarperCollins on 24th June.

—

Edwards is an author with Fourth Estate, HarperCollins. Her debut, Darling, was described in the national press as ‘the first Brexit
thriller’. She has since appeared at literary festivals and events around the UK. Her articles have featured across the national media
including in The Guardian and The Sunday Times.

During the summer of 2020, she featured as a lead columnist for The Sunday Times Magazine and she is a regular guest on BBC Radio, featuring on Woman’s Hour in 2019 and 2020.

Her second novel, Lucky – a tale about race, migration, betrayal, online gambling and the risks we all take to survive – is out on 24th June 2021.

Twitter: @RachelDEdwards
Insta: @racheledwardsauthor

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RachelEdwardsAuthorOfficial/

Website: www.racheledwards.com

LUCKY

A tense, twisty novel about race, power, betrayal, survival – and an addiction so compelling it threatens to destroy everything in its path

‘A fresh, exhilarating voice’ Adele Parks
‘Impossible to put down’ Louise Hare, author of This Lovely City
Etta wants to get married. Ola, her partner, says he does too, but he’s also allergic to making concrete plans and keeps insisting that they save enough for a house deposit before they even think of marriage.
So Etta finds a way to start secretly making money: online gambling. And how lucky that she just happens to be so good at it.

Soon she’s playing quite a lot. She doesn’t like lying to Ola, but it’s all for the good of their relationship. She’s even made a friend on the site, StChristopher75, and she’s invited to a special VIP party. And even if she is losing a little money here and there – or even quite a lot – she’ll win it back eventually. In the mean time, perhaps StChristopher75 can help her out with a little loan, once she’s met him in real life. He’s just won big, and he’s been so friendly and helpful.

And he says her photo’s hot. Why wouldn’t he want to help her?

UK BUY HERE

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Tags: featured, women writers

Category: On Writing