A line in a newspaper report over the weekend jumped out at me. It was this: ‘A Black woman hasn’t won the Booker prize since me.’ The quote was from Bernadine Evaristo, who won the prize in 2019. The reason it jumped out is 2019 isn’t so long ago. Subsequently, the statement lacked shock value if it was meant to highlight a lack of diversity. Black women make up around 4.2% of Britain’s population, so once in five years isn’t statistically an eyebrow-raiser.
However, the article also mentioned Evaristo was the first Black woman to win the Booker since its inception just over half a century ago. So, it did raise the question of whether there was a fair balance when it came to the diversity of prize-winners in general.
I’ve had an interest in diversity in occupational sectors since my days in the DWP. Part of my role as Ambitions Manager for the North West of England was to research, analyse, and report reasons for disproportionate unemployment among Black and Minority Ethnic communities in Greater Manchester. This involved working with various community representatives and stakeholders to gain an understanding of the barriers that prevented people from successfully negotiating the job market. I’m also a believer in positive discrimination, but only when it’s used to level the playing field, not if it simply replaces one imbalance with another.
Because of this interest, and Bernadine Evangelista’s comment, I looked at the authors who’d won the Booker Prize in the last ten years. The results make interesting reading.
Booker Prize Winners
2014
The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan, an Australian writer, born in Tasmania and descended from Irish convicts, apparently.
2015
A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James, who was born in Kingston, Jamaica.
2016
The Sellout by Paul Beatty, the first Black American to win the prize. In fact, the first American.
2017
Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders, the second American to win, albeit not Black this time.
2018
Milkman by Anna Burns, an Irish author born in Belfast.
2019
Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evangelista, born in London and … see above.
The prize was shared with The Testaments by the best-selling Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood.
2020
Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart, a Scottish writer who grew up on a housing estate in Glasgow.
2021
The Promise by Damon Galgut, A Pretoria born South African writer.
2022
The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka, a Sri Lankan writer born in Colombo.
2023
Prophet Song by Paul Lynch, an Irish novelist born in Limerick.
The list above reveals a rather rich diversity of prize-winners. If anything, the weight of success at the top-level leans toward the Irish (both Southern and Northern), but that’s probably because they are historically such wonderful storytellers, so it’s deserved. In reality, it’s a refreshingly healthy and positive mix. There’s an imbalance where women are concerned. But the 2024 shortlist includes five women and one man, the most women shortlisted in the Prize’s history. Five different countries are represented among this year’s potential winners.
We have a habit in Britain of focussing on the negatives more than the positives. When it comes to diversity, we do pretty well as a nation, generally speaking. We’re not perfect by any means. There is always room for improvement, and in recent years divisive politicians have done their best to drag us backward. However, and perhaps oddly, when we returned to Britain after living abroad for nearly two decades, one of the things that jumped out at us from amid the doom and gloom was the sheer diversity of the contestants who took part in TV programmes such as MasterChef, The Great British Sewing Bee etc. The mere mention of these programmes may seem trivial when musing on diversity. But to me they are more than popular TV shows, they’re a reflection of a society. Their equivalents in Spain simply didn’t have a mix of people that came anywhere close to that diversity, which is why it was so noticeable to us. TV adverts play a similar role. Want an instant insight into the prosperity levels/societal patterns of a country? Watch its adverts.
Like the contestants in the TV shows mentioned, The Booker Prize Winners reflect one of the more positive aspects of life in Britain.
Footnote: It’s just been announced that Samantha Havey has won this year’s Booker Prize for her novel Orbital, so that goes some way to helping address the gender imbalance.
