A Black History Month Special
Malorie Blackman’s New Autobiography “Just Saying” Is Released On @Merky Books This Month. Black History Month 2022! It’s The Publsiher’s First Big Name Memoir.
@stormzy & @tinnietempah Have Lyrically Declared Their Admiration of Prize-Winning Writer, Novelist, Poet & Author @Malorie Blackman
Blackman Only Discovered Black Writers Such As Alice Walker, Author of The Colour Purple, Toni Morrison, The Author of Beloved, @toni_morrison_society And Poet @officialBenjamin Zephaniah In Adulthood, In The Mid 80s (citylit.ac.uk). Movingly She Says She Writes Children & Young People Books For The Child In Her “Who I Felt Missed Out On Having All These Wonderful Books In My Life”.
Former Children’s Poet Laureate (2013-2015) Malorie ‘Lorie’ Blackman Speaks Openly & Powerfully To Alan Yentob In This Episode of His One To One Interview Documentary Series ‘Imagine’. Although A Children’s Poet Laureate For Two Years Blackman Has Been A Successful “Published” Writer For Decades, After Many Years of Struggle Trying To Enter The White, Male, Middle Class World Of Publishing.
Having Just Published Her Autobiography, She Shares With Yentob Elements of Her Life Story Up Till Now And How The Early Hard Times Inspired Her Writing. What Is Fascinating Is The Clear Dichotomy of Her Life Experiences And her Ability To Sustain A Positive Mental Attitude (PMA) Throughout It All. Including An Absent Gambling Father, Child Homelessness, Sexual Assault In A Public Place By a Group of Racist White Boys As A Young Girl (Which She Describes On Camera), Being Subjected To Day To Day Racism As A Child By Members of The Public, And Being Subject To Racism In School – Including By A Careers Advisor.
She Also Speaks Engagingly of A Near Death Medical Drama Resulting In A Life-Changing Diagnosis And An Official Medical Reduction In Her LIfe-Expectancy, Miscarriage, And A Knowing Misinterpretation of Her Words By A National TV News Channel After She Finally Achieved Her Dream of Becoming A Writer. This Resulted In Her Being Attacked By Racists Again, Including Death Threats. To Her. And Her Family This Time.
And Yet Still, She’s Survived It All.
How?
Well, As She Puts It,
She’s
“A Silver Lining Girl!”
Reading Was My Lifeline.
Books Told Me That I Wasn’t Alone.
They Made Me Believe I Was Going Through It Now But It Wouldn’t Last Forever.
It Was A World I Loved, But I Kind of Did Feel That It Didn’t Love Me Back.
Because I Could Not See Myself In Any of The Books I Was Reading.
Without
Ever
Asking
Or
Being
Told
I Thought I Knew Why There Were No Black Characters In The Books I Was Reading.
It Was
Because
There
Were No
Black
Writers.
It’s Just Fascinating to Me The Things The Minority (In Any Society) Will See What The Majority Just Don’t,
Because They Just Don’t Have To.
And Stand Up To It.
I’m Not Into This Idea That We Can’t Tell Children That Evil Exits. It Does. What We Need To Do Is Arm Them For It. Prepare Them For It. So That They Can Recognise It, Challenge It
@masalibaduza (Black South African Actress) As ‘Cross’ Persephone ‘Sephy Hadley ‘ And @JackoRowan As ‘Nought’ Callum McGregor In An All Star Cast of Her Game-Changer Book Noughts & Crosses (2020). Written (2001). So Virtually 20 Years From Page To Screen. Plus Her First Ever Published Book (1993) Virtually 30 Years Ago (Republished With A New Cover)
The Whole Point of It Is Bigatory And Prejudice. They Maime And They Kill. And Racism Kills. To Shy Away From That Would Be Doing A Disservice To The Story.
Malorie Blackman Talking To Journalist & Former BBC Executive Alan Yentob About Her Bestselling, Prize-Winning Novel Noughts & Crosses
This Is The Only Book I’ve Read In School That I Wanted To Keep On Reading. We’ve Done Alot of Shakespeare But I just Don’t Think It’s As Interesting As Noughts And Crosses
Year 9 Thomas Tallis Schoolboy
What If?
The “What If?” Element of The Title of This Episode Relates To Her Interest In Parallel Worlds And The Inability To Know For Sure What Would Have Happened If We Didn’t Make Certain Choices Compared To The Known Consequences of The Choices We Have Made.
Her Unexpected Falling In Love With Computers After Taking A Temp Job At A Technology Company Developed Into A Detective Mindset When It Came To Programming (“Fitting Pieces of Computer Programmes Together Like A Jigsaw And Working Out Where The Bugs Are”). She Describes The Explorational Element of Sci-fi As ‘The ‘Ultimate’ What If?” Hence She’s A Trekkie @startrek And A Regular Attendee of The Annual Comic-Con @YALC (The Young Adult Literature Convention) Which She Helped To Set Up With @Waterstones Whilst Poet Laureate (2013-15) @malorieblackman. The First One Was 2014.
From This Deep Dive Into Her Life Story Up To This Point We Detect A Constant Dynamic Dichotomy In Her Life That Veers Between Disappointment & Pain And Joyous Momentum. And It’s So Inspiring…
The Author Reveals She’s Now 60. And Yet Notably She’s Still Bright, Bubbly, Youthful And Giddy The Glee of Writing. She Has A Dynamic Dichotomy of Eternal Youth & Momentous Maturity.
She Loved Books But Didn’t Feel They Loved Her Back. As She Was Not Reflected In Them. Nor Were People LIke Her. Even When She Found Success She Was Discouraged From Having Black People On The Cover. And Some Even Suggested She Have Asain People On The Cover To Appeal To A Wider Audience. Such Racism She Naturally Resisted.
She Dealt With The Day To Day Racism That She Experienced By Writing Down Incidents In A Journal. She Developed Confidence In Writing. And Daydreaming About A Better World Became Her “Super Power” Which Fed Her Imagination. An Essential Tool For Writing.
The Experience of Living In A “Hellhole Homeless Hostel” Built In Her A Resilience. One Which She Says She Has SubsequentlyEndeavoured To Pass On To Her Daughter(Despite Her Own Family Now Living In Much Better Circumstances).
The Near Death Medical Scare Followed By A Diagnosis of Sickle Cell www.sicklecellsociety.org Spurred Her On To Pursue Her Dreams More Directly. And So She Applied For A Literature & Drama Course At Goldsmiths University. Successfully.
Yet Eventually She Surrendered The Hard Won Course After Falling In Love With Computing Whilst Temping At A Tech Company To Pay For It. But This Led To Her Meeting Her Scottish Husband From Edinburgh, Who Happened To Be Working There And Took An Interest In Her. They Now Have A Long-Lasting Marriage And A Beautiful Daughter.
Their Experiences of Being In A Dual Heritage Relationship Gave Her Insights Which She Was Able To Inject Into The Writing of Her Most Famous Book, Come Televison Series, ‘Noughts And Crosses’. 2001 And 2020 And Available At @Waterstones And On BBC iPlayer Respectively (Note The 19 Year Gap).
Noughts And Crosses Is A “What If? Look At What Society Might Be Like If Structural, Systematic, And So Deeply Hurtful Racism Were Reversed And The Tables Were Turned. Nothing Sums It Up Better Than A Simple Scene With A Plaster In Episode One Which Highlights The Racial Thoughtlessness The Global Majority Are Dealing With Day In And Day Out. It Is So Powerful. The Pharmaceuticals. The Fashion, The Hairstyles, The Media And Racist Newspaper Owners, The Police And The Military, And The Legal System. It’s All Considered. And Substantial Elements of The Writing Are From Lived Experience. Suffice To Say Stormzy As The Racist Newspaper Owner Is Convincing. And In His Element!
Before Writing Noughts & Crosses (2001) She Received So Many Rejections That They Began To Give Her Nightmares. Again, She Decided to Write Her Experiences Down. They Morphed Into A Collection of Short Stories. She Submitted Them To A Publisher. That’s How She Eventually First Became A Published Author. Through A Serices of Short Stories (Called Not So Stupid). And Her Perseverance Will Undoubtedly Have Helped A Whole New Generation of Great More Diverse Writers.
And Yet, Later On She Thought Transworld Publishers (Part of @PenguinukBooks) Had Invited Her In To Discuss Publishing Another of Her Early Submissions (Hacker), Only To Discover That It Was Infact To Discuss What Was Wrong With It And Why They Couldn’t Publish It. Naturally She Was Deeply Disappointed. She Tore up The Manuscript. But She Started Again Using The Critique They Had Given Her. She Re-Submitted It. They Loved It. And She Got Published. Again!
It Taught Me A Lesson. It Made Me Think About Novels In The Way You Think About Programming.
You Have To Design Them First And Work The Out.
Otherwise If You Go To Launch Straight Into It, It’s Going To Be Full of Bugs
Malorie Blackman Talking To Journalist & Former BBC Executive Alan Yentob About Her First Published Novel – Hacker (1992)
Inspired She Eventually Undertook An Adult Writing Course At City Lit (Which She Discovered Quite By Accident Whilst Strolling Down Drury Lane, Covent Gardent, Where She Saw A Sign To The Adult Learning Centre). And That’s When Her Discovery of Black Writers Led To Yet Another Dichotomy of Joy & Pain. The Joy of Discovering Black Writers. And The Pain of Not Having Been Told About Them In Her School Days.
And Yet Now She’s One of The World’s Greatest Children’s Writers And A Former Poet Laureate. Noughts & Crosses (Written Virtually Ten Years After Hackers – In 2001) Was To Become One of The Most Popular Children’s Books Ever Written. And Subsequently A Ground-Breaking BBC TV Drama Series (Virtually Ten Years After It Was Written – In 202o) Available On BBC iPlayer.
Then There’s The Contradictory Cool Factor. She’s A Geek, Or Rather, In Her Own Words “A Numptie”. But Yet Amongst Her Many, Many Fans She Can Count Two of The Coolest Guys On The Planet. Tinie Tempah And Stormzy. @tiniegram And @stormzyofficial_ Her Daughter Is Bemused. She Herself Says Even With Her Imagination She Couldn’t Have Imagined That. The Way She Tells It, Like So Many of Her Stories, Is Amusing.
Respect!
Imagine…Malorie Blackman: What If?
BBC One, 10.40pm, Oct 31 2022
A Black History Month Special
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