Through all of it runs Evaristo’s unshakable need for self-expression, a passion that has shaped her first as a performer, then as a writer, but above all as a person: “Through joining the ‘arty class’ via the youth theatre … I was now willingly owning my outsider status, and moving away from the self-conscious child who looked at the pavement rather than ahead.” Through joining the ‘arty class’ via the youth theatre … I was now willingly owning my outsider status Bernardine Evaristo Many of the social issues of Evaristo’s youth feel highly relevant today, a reflection of the sometimes cyclical nature of social history. Together, as a mixed-race family of 10 – she has seven siblings – they occupied a unique space, both firmly a part of the local community and denigrated by it, “with violent assaults on their family home”.įly-on-the-wall depictions of 1960s and 70s “white Woolwich” and the 80s black creative and underground queer scenes are especially intriguing. Her British-Nigerian father was “of the brown immigrant class” but her white, British, Catholic mother’s “education and profession were considered middle class, even though her parents were working class”. from birth”, but which works differently, she observes, when gender, race and culture are brought into the mix.
She is good on the complexities of Britain’s class system, a structure “we are all subliminally inculcated into the nuances of. Unconventional as it may be, the format works: the autobiographical parts of the book serve as vivid lessons about the power of change, growth and self-confidence.Įvaristo’s frank observations about British society and the challenges of growing up in it as a mixed-race woman are entertaining as well as instructive.
The chapters run the gamut from Heritage, Childhood, Family, Origins, to The Self, Ambition, Transformation, Activism, and the book ends with the eponymous manifesto, in which Evaristo drives home her message to “pass on what we know to the next generation”, with the reminder that there is a manifesto in every one of us. Manifesto combines the personal with the practical to powerful effect.