The Angevin Talks:
Sarah Ladipo Manyika

The latest Angevin Talks session took place on Tuesday 1st November with Sarah Ladipo Manyika, best-selling author, as the latest distinguished guest in this series. Sarah is a British-Nigerian-American writer of novels, short stories and essays translated into several languages.

The Angevin Talks are an innovative speaker series for Queens’ to invite a select group of the most inspiring and influential individuals of our time to share their experiences with College members and discuss the most critical issues facing our society today.

The talks are organised by Queens' postgraduate community (the MCR) and hosted by Anna El-Erian. Following a book signing and cocktails in the Audit Room of the President's Lodge, Anna hosted a fireside chat in the Long Gallery, followed by a Q&A. The event was a fascinating in-person discussion of Sarah's work and her latest book, Between Starshine and Clay: Conversations from the African Diaspora, which addresses racial reckoning and decolonisation, structural inequalities, and the role of the artist, activist and public intellectual in society.

You can watch the recording of this event on YouTube by clicking on the button below:

Alternatively, you can find the full transcript of the talk at the bottom of this article.

For more details on upcoming guests, follow the Instagram for the Angevin talks: @angevintalks_qmcr

About the speaker:

Sarah Ladipo Manyika is a writer of novels, short stories and essays translated into several languages. She is the author of the best-selling novel In Dependence (2009) and multiple shortlisted novel Like A Mule Bringing Ice Cream To The Sun (2016), and has had work published in publications including Granta, The Guardian, the Washington Post and Transfuge among others.

Sarah serves as Board Chair for the women’s writing residency, Hedgebrook; she was previously Board Director for the Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco; and has been a judge for the Goldsmiths Prize, California Book Awards, Aspen Words Literary Prize, and Chair of judges for the Pan-African Etisalat Prize. Sarah is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. Her most recent book is Between Starshine and Clay: Conversations from the African Diaspora

Transcript of the interview:

Anna El-Erian: Good evening ladies and gentlemen, and a very special welcome to you all this evening. We are delighted to host our very first live, in person Angevin Talk of the Michaelmas Term of 2022, and thank you to all of our guests from far and wide who have joined in person and via the livestream. I am truly honoured to introduce our very, very special guest: Dr Sarah Ladipo Manyika.

Sarah is a British-Nigerian-American award-winning author of novels, short stories and essays. A citizen of the world, a cultural critic and thinker whose extraordinary contribution to the world with her beautifully written work has led Sarah and all of us who read her work on a remarkable journey of meeting both real people and fictional characters whose lives immerse us in overarching themes of self-determination, ambition, commitment to social and cultural change and achievement against all odds.

Sarah's own life as the daughter of a Nigerian father and English mother is as engrossing as anyone she has ever written about. Sarah, a very special welcome to Queens' and thank you very much for making a special effort to join us in person, we really appreciate it.

Sarah Ladipo Manyika: Thank you so much, thank you.

AE: Your debut novel, Independence, has sold over three million copies internationally. What is literature all about to you, and what were your inspirations for this story?

SLM: First of all, I want to thank you so much Anna, it's such a joy and privilege to be here and thank you to the Master [President] Mohamed and to all - I see various people here who've worked behind the scenes for this, the MCR, and it's such a privilege and honour, so thank you so much. And thank you to everyone who's come and anyone who's watching out there as well.

So the question about literature and what does literature mean to you - my first novel has sold over three million copies, but I want to start by saying that I failed my English Literature A Level.

AE: No!

SLM: And it's not something I used to talk about before, it's not something I was particularly proud of, but I think I say it more these days because I feel that when people are reading out CVs and everyone's accomplishments, you don't talk about the struggles and the failures that we've had in the past. And so when I was much younger and I thought I was going to do really, really well in my A Levels - I was actually going to come to Cambridge, this is the university that I wanted to come to - I got a C, a D and an E in my A Levels. But here I am, all these years later, having sold a couple of million books.

AE: And counting!

SLM: So we'll start on that note. Literature… what does literature mean to me. When I'm writing novels, when I'm writing stories, I'm trying to step into the shoes of others. I'm, as I say in the beginning of this book, I'm fascinated by people's life stories. I am fascinated by what makes us tick and what we all have in common.

At the end of the day, we're all human and despite all the things that divide us or that we put in each other's way, there is that basic humanity that unites all of us. So literature and stories I think - you know, I'm not saying that stories can change the world, but great stories bring us together. And so I think that's where I would start with literature.

AE: And it starts the conversation and we can all think about that. You discovered that you started writing at the age of eight years old. Can you describe to us your own journey of discovering what is important to you and what grounds you, and how do you honour that in your life's journey?

SLM: It's interesting, maybe I did start at eight, but when I think about stories, I think more about hearing stories. So my father is an Anglican vicar, and as you said, he's from Nigeria and my mother's English from the north of England. When my grandparents - my British Grandparents - were alive, my grandparents would talk a lot about World War II and those stories.

My Nigerian grandmother only spoke Yoruba (which I can understand a little bit but I don't speak fluently), and so I would hear her stories, I would hear her speaking, and I have vague memories from when I was young. So I guess where I'm going is that my life has been one with different sorts of stories from different cultures, and that's probably had an impact in terms of at least what I noticed or what I'm eager to write about myself.

AE: So in your extraordinary new book, Between Starshine and Clay, in your discussion with Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr (who is an alumnus of Clare College right here in Cambridge and a great friend of our President here at Queens’), there is a very important reference in your discussion with him to economic inequality along colour and ethnic lines which in turn exacerbates anti-Black racism.

Now he describes this concept of structural inequality – what does he mean by that? How does he explain that to you, and what can we learn?

SLM: You know, I think – so I'm looking into the audience and I'm like “Where are the economists here!” You’ll probably do a much better job of explaining! But I want to take a few steps back and say that part of my inspiration for writing this book was reflecting on the times that we have gone through, which have been difficult times for all of us, wherever we are in the world, and being very cognizant of the fact that we've gone through the pandemic, something of a racial reckoning, shaky democracies, and all of these things have disproportionately affected Black people. This is one of the things that Henry Louis Gates is talking about when he talks about structural inequality and systemic inequalities.

So I'm kind of backing back and not necessarily talking about that specific issue –

AE: Yes, but just generally.

SLM: But saying that all of the people in this book speak to issues that affect us today and they speak to the history of these issues, how we got to where we are, and get us to think about the future as well. So all of the people that I write about have inspired me at a time when I've been searching for answers, I've been searching for hope, I've been searching for direction. And so that's why bringing these twelve people together in this book is particularly important.

AE: How did you go about choosing the twelve?

SLM: Well, I think all my life I've thought in one way or another about the importance of art – what art means to us. I thought about the importance of history – those stories that are told, those histories that are recorded, those histories that are not – and I have thought a lot about progress and how we can't take progress for granted. And so I was thinking about all of those things, maybe even more in terms of what's happened to the world in the last few years.

The book is divided into three sections: ‘creatives’ (so these are artists), and then ‘curators’ (historians) and then change makers. Many of the people overlap, some of them are artists and change makers, but they all address these things that I've been thinking about a lot, and I have also been lucky enough to meet most of these people and spend quite a bit of time with them in different settings over the years.

So meeting them, but also getting to know their work. There are many people that I could have written about, and in fact in the introductory chapter I think I mentioned more than fifty people that could have been in this book. Many of you in this room could be in this book, and maybe in future iterations [you] will be, or a book like this. But yes, I think what's particularly important that I want to highlight is that these are people that I've known, many of them quite intimately, and so I try to bring that to the book.

AE: In your discussion with Anna Deavere Smith you talk about success, and she mentions Michael Sandel's book The Tyranny of Merit – that if we get where we get to of our own doing, we get what we deserve. But the political philosopher Jackson says no, you get what you get, and with Anna you speak about the concept of the door opening, and is it luck or is it God, or [something else]?

How do you measure success and your outcomes – how did you think about that with her, the concept of success? Because it's very pertinent to all of our young people here in the room and what we think of it ourselves as we get older.

SLM: Yeah and I think maybe that's also why I started where I started with highlighting the fact that I failed my English A Level, and to be honest I don't actually remember the specifics of talking about success with Anna Deavere Smith, but it's important to bear in mind that measures of success by society are one thing, and then one's own measures are another thing. Just speaking personally, it's important to focus on what's important to you – not necessarily what the world tells you is important or should be a measure of your success.

It's hard to stay grounded and I think particularly – again I don't want to generalise – but in a world of social media where you're being told, ‘Well this is what you should accomplish by such and such an age,’ it's hard to resist that and to focus on what's important to you. Also just not (I guess here's my pastor's daughter coming out in me) but not to get carried away with whatever success you may have now, and the right in me - the person that's looking at trying to embody other people's lives and trying to step into other shoes - always wants to make sure that we're listening or listening out for others and be grateful for what we have and what success we have, what doors have opened, but always try and open doors for others as well.

AE: The way I read that part and the way you discussed it with her was [with] success, you can have your own volition and you can push through and you can try and get to the other side, but ultimately the infrastructure needs to be there, the timing needs to be there, there has to be an element of luck, and there has to be goodwill around you. Because every single one of the characters in your book and the people that you talk to – everyone has had their own challenges and yet rose to where they are and now are giving back and helping, and it's not a straight line essentially.

SLM: On the point of giving back, one of the things that really struck me about at least half of the people in this book is that they said some version of what they are doing is that they are planting trees under whose shade other generations will sit, and that was just something that strikes me.

AE: Your remarkable chapter on Mrs [Willard] Harris – I loved the part when she says, and I've quoted this to the President in the last few days, ‘Part of our journey is deciding which bridges to cross and which bridges to burn.’ Now I love this. How does one have the courage to make those decisions?

SLM: Well, Willard Harris is a remarkable person, and there are people in this book that most people will have heard of: the Nobel Laureates Wole Soyinka, Toni Morrison, Michelle Obama. There are other people like the civil rights activist Evan Mawarire that certainly most Zimbabweans, at least Southern Africans, will have heard of, and his courage as a civil rights activist. And then there's someone like Willard Harris that probably no one in this room has heard of, and I really wanted to have someone like her in the book because she's amazing starshine like all of the rest.

She is going to be 103 years young in December and I've been walking with her weekly. She was born in 1919 – I’m just going on a roll with her because I've got to give you a little bit of a sense – so the year that women were given the vote, and she really embodies a century, a century plus of history. She's seen it all, from the desegregation of schools in the United States to Roe vs. Wade to the decriminalisation of abortion, and now the roll back, and she's just someone who inspires me in so many ways.

But I think to your point about which bridges to burn and which bridges to cross – one of the things that really strikes me about her is her openness to the world and her desire to learn and to listen, and that is such a powerful message for me. But [she is] also someone who has seen it all and she's seen roll back. She's seen taking two steps forward and one step back, and she still has this joie de vivre and she's always wanting to learn new things. I mean, she would love to be here!

AE: We should have brought her! So you mentioned it in the book: Michelle Obama's book Becoming. The actual title says that one is never done and that there is always room for personal growth, with the implication that one can always do better. So Sarah, what is next in your stage of ‘becoming’ and how do we all think about our next steps?

SLM: I'm thinking about Willard as well, and again she's just an example of that, she's still learning, I think I said this, she's still growing. I feel there are so many next steps for me, there's so much more that I have to learn, [and] that's never going to end. In terms of practically what's next for me, I'm really excited to come and talk about this book in part because it also gives me an opportunity to meet new generations, younger generations, and all the starshine that you will bring to the world, so I'm excited about every event that I do around this book. I am in the middle of a new novel – that’s on a personal note something that I'm doing.

AE: So, aspects of Michelle Obama's life mirror your own and your journey. You were born in Nigeria, Michelle on the south side of Chicago, yet you're very similar in what you think about what's important. And Michelle says, ‘Failure is a feeling long before it is an actual result.’

Now the universal challenges of women and young girls continue to be faith that young women and girls continue to face in the world. As Michelle discussed with you, it’s the challenge of squaring who you are from where you came from. So in all of our journeys, how do we become present and understand who we are without letting where we come from intrude, and how do we stay grounded in that?

SLM: The first thing that comes to my mind in terms of how do we stay grounded is who do we surround ourselves by or with. I think the older I get, the more I think that's really important, but I just have to go back to Michelle Obama. I love the fact that you say that there are some kind of similarities but girl, she is like on a different plane! And I don't know if I mentioned this in the essay that I wrote about her, but I've seen Michelle like we’ve all seen her on TV, and then I saw her (and this is in the essay) at the White House from afar, and then I got to meet her in a more intimate setting on holiday with her family and some of her friends.

Again I can't recall if I actually said this, I don't think I did actually, but I was introduced to Barack at an event first and it wasn't like, ‘Hi Barack!’ but it was nice to meet him. And then I hadn't seen Michelle and I was talking to Elizabeth Alexander, a close friend of theirs, and I was so engrossed in talking to her – she’d just written a memoir that was amazing – and I didn't see Michelle. And then I was introduced to Michelle and it's the first time where I really sort of lost it, I just started gushing, and she has such an incredible presence so she's even more stunning and amazing in real life than in all the glamorous pictures.

AE: Very big energy.

SLM: Yeah, and when you said that there are some similarities, I'm like, ‘Whoa, I don't think so!’

AE: You discussed with her, and what she does when she talks is she urges that we women should prioritise ourselves more than we might ordinarily do. Now, to learn how to put ourselves essentially in our own calendars first rather than allowing everyone else to get into our calendars ahead of us. Have you learned how to do that Sarah? Because I have not learned how to! How does one learn that, for all of us here really?

SLM: I don't think I have learned it very successfully and I think as a writer there are times when you really need to immerse yourself in your work (at least for me) and not worry too much about staying in touch with everyone else. It's hard, but then at the same time there's real life. I mean this isn't exactly what Michelle is talking about, but if you're looking after family or you're looking after older people, you can't completely abandon everyone else.

But I think going back to Michelle's point, it's a very valid one but we've got to be able to, we can all do better in terms of prioritising. Also I think the older one gets, I don’t know if you found this Anna, but it really becomes clear that life is not very long. So that also helps to concentrate the mind and to decide what's important and what you value.

AE: Senator Cory Booker. The discussion with you was very moving in the book, I know he's a great friend of yours from Oxford. So Sarah was at Oxford even though she didn't come to Cambridge!

SLM: Just because my brother was there and my boyfriend, I can't even claim that either, but I can pretend, I spent a lot of time there.

AE: He describes his own father's struggle and his own quick rise from Oxford then to Yale and then two degrees from Stanford. Now we've all had some time with Cory over the years, and his dad said to him, ‘Life ain't about the degrees you get, it's about the service you give. Prove yourself.’ And that's his dad who really struggled and was very unimpressed with his own son after he had all these wonderful accolades as a Senator now. He talks about staying grounded, staying in touch with people, doing the right thing, he ran for President, he's very young. I understand he was vegetarian, now he's vegan, he keeps pushing. So how do you see him in what he's doing out there?

SLM: I think what you highlighted, his father saying it's not about the degrees, it's more than that - it kind of goes back to what you were saying about success. And Cory, I think I mentioned this in the chapter, one of the things that I find so inspiring about him is he really walks the talk. He lives in a neighbourhood that's not very wealthy, he literally stays grounded in every way, and he's poured a lot of effort and energy into thinking about the criminal justice system and many other issues that are really important.

So yes, I think perhaps it's his father [and] his mother who've helped instill in him that you need to stay grounded. But also, and I think I mentioned this in the chapter, one of the things that I love about Cory is his emphasis on joy and not forgetting to celebrate, and that's kind of a theme for the book as well in terms of the title. He didn't want anyone to steal his joy with Ketanji Brown and that's also a powerful message as well. Whatever we face, trials and tribulations, there's also time to celebrate and to be joyful.

AE: When you met with Toni Morrison, what was your most memorable minute, or what energy were you left with? That was a very important occasion for you. How would you describe her?

SLM: Well I think that was the literary highlight of my life for sure, and you'll get a sense by reading the essay that I write about her and the conversation that we had. She is very theatrical and very generous, so I went to speak with her with Mario Kaiser, a journalist, and we went to talk to her about the last novel that she wrote, or at least that has been published thus far, and I think what struck me was her theatricalness, her sense of humour, and her generosity. I think we were supposed to be there for an hour - a couple of hours later we were still there –

AE: And in her home, I think you mentioned her son?

SLM: Yes, her son dropped by and she jokingly said, “What did you bring me, did you bring me a sandwich?” and he brought books instead, which is really kind of the nourishment that she needed for the next whatever she was writing, and then her sister called. When she picked up the phone her voice just went really sweet, and she was very, very close to her sister so we got all these little different windows into her life in a way and her family.

She had a housekeeper there and a friend from the neighbourhood dropped by, it was Easter Saturday, with a big bunch of flowers, and he offered to bring her food. She wanted this and that and her housekeeper was saying, “You shouldn't eat this, you shouldn't eat that,” and she was dropping f-bombs here and, you know.

I think that's the other thing, going back to joy and celebration, that people's sense of humour and laughter is something that runs through this book and runs through the conversations which are so important in life. To be able to laugh and enjoy each other and have good times and light times.

AE: Well I look at all of our guests in the room, our MCR community here and our JCR community and our Fellowship, and Cambridge is an incredible institution and it also gets heavy in terms of its intellectual capacity and the seriousness of what we all think about and what we do. And yet those years go very quickly, and so it's important that we all think about how we can enjoy it, how can we have fun while we're being serious. How can we have fun while we're doing really well? So may I ask what would you say to your younger self today?

SLM: I’d say more have more fun. Don't take yourself so seriously. I'd say travel if you're able to, if you have the means or if you know people, and just I think moving. I'm lucky in that I've moved with my family, but I think what has really enriched me and the way that I see the world and think about the world has been being able to move and travel, but I want to go back to the heaviness.

I was advocating joy and laughter, and that's very important, I'd say laugh more. But I want to go back to the heaviness of intellectual scholarship and so forth in Cambridge and reference Henry Louis Gates Jr. One of the things I've been thinking about a lot, and also in putting this book together, is what he says about the last battle of anti-Black racism is around intellectual inquiry, and I think this is another reason why I was so eager to put this book together, because it's looking at creatives. It's looking at historians, it's looking at change makers and these are great scholars in different shapes and sizes, in different ways they've all been pioneers in different ways and we don't talk enough about people of colour.

People like Henry Louis Gates Jr who's just phenomenal in terms of what he has done, what he's created - the biggest centre for research around African American studies, and it's important that we recognise this and that we celebrate this and we give it something of a platform.

AE: Absolutely, and Sarah on this important note I would like to turn this discussion over to my co-host Sneha Baptista, who will facilitate the Q&A. We've had pre-submitted questions, and of course if anybody has a thought and would like to offer some questions – Sneha, over to you.

Sneha Baptista: So we have some pre-submitted questions, I’ll read them out to you. "In your book, Between Starshine and Clay, you take us on this journey through a wonderful set of interviews and on the journey we get to learn life stories of some of the greatest and most influential people of their time, right from their upbringing, their vision and how they came to do what they do best.

You talk about history, circumstance, background, but also how they recognise themselves and their ethnicity in these current times. I'm curious to know what inspired you to write this book and tell their stories, and why write in this descriptive yet very observant matter of storytelling?"

SLM: Thank you to whoever asked that question. I think I've answered it partly in terms of thinking about art and history and the fragility of progress, but maybe what I will do is I'll pivot a little bit and I'll talk about the title, because I think that also underscores what's important about this particular group.

So the title Between Starshine and Clay is a line and a half taken from the great poet Lucille Clifton, and the poem itself is entitled ‘won't you celebrate with me’, and I think I have it memorised. So it's short and I'm just going to share it with you because it's a good way of explaining why I think this title is an embodiment, it really stands for the people in this book. So it's entitled ‘Won't you celebrate with me.’

won't you celebrate with me
what i have shaped into
a kind of life? i had no model.
born in babylon
both nonwhite and woman
what did i see to be except myself?
i made it up
here on this bridge between
starshine and clay,
my one hand holding tight
my other hand; come celebrate
with me that everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed.

So for me that speaks to people who have really faced barriers of all sorts of difficulties and yet they've been able to overcome and there is reason to celebrate that and it's not just them. I'm not just focusing on them, but it's a collective celebration of what peoples have gone through and have triumphed [over]. And maybe in a way I'm trying to speak to these times as well and add some hope that in many ways we haven't been to these exact historical circumstances before, but the world has seen turbulent times before. And there's hope and there’s certainly reason to celebrate.

SB: When you talk about colour and you talk about culture and people, I think it's my personal opinion that we make the world a beautiful place with all the colours that we bring into it. But in your book you talk about your own experiences of how race has been to you. You say you've been seen as oyinbo in Nigeria, African in England, Arab in France, Coloured in southern Africa and Black in America. We'd like to know your views of racial categorisation and why as a society we're so focused on giving everything a fixed status or category.

SLM: It’s these social constructs and the ways that we like to divide each other and categorise people in different colours and make some better than the others. So you just highlighted the way that I’m seen in different parts of the world, and it just sort of shows the arbitrariness of the way that we think about different colours.

It's interesting, I'm going back to Henry Louis Gates Jr - one of the books that I just got literally yesterday that I'm so excited to read is a book that's co-edited by him. It's called ‘Who's Black and Why’ and it's a series of essays that were published in response to a contest that was put out, I think in 1741, by the Bordeaux Royal Society of Science. And it was a contest inviting people to think about who is Black and why, and again

I've just literally started reading the book, but it's an interesting reminder of that time when millions of people were being transported across the world, enslaved, and the underpinnings even in the Enlightenment era. It was enlightening in some sense it says, but the reverse of another in terms of really establishing thinking and thoughts about the so-called inferiority or less-than-human Black people.

I'm going off on a tangent a little bit but I'm saying two things. Once again coming back to one of the people in this book, Henry Louis Gates Jr, and the incredible scholarship that he does in so many areas, and digging up these really fascinating texts that help explain how we got to where we are today and what the roots of this all are. So yes, I hope I got the title of that book correct, but I'm sure it's close.

SB: When you say you lived in these different places growing up, did you find that you would have embraced every place and their culture as your own, or did you find it difficult when we went through difficult times during the pandemic and before when people have kind of felt they needed to talk about colour, whereas other people feel like maybe they don't need to. There's this conflict, a dilemma - like should I talk, should I not talk, and if I do talk, why do I need to talk? Because at the end of the day we're all humans, we come from one race which is humanity.

SLM: So I'm not sure if this is quite an answer to what you're saying, but what it's making me think of is James Baldwin, who I reference in my introductory chapter. With a very reverent nod to him, the introductory chapter is entitled ‘Notes of a Native Daughter’, a nod to his Notes of a Native Son. I think I spoke to someone who's looked at Giovanni's Room in her PhD studies.

Baldwin has always been a guide for me, or someone that I've looked up to, and I really hold strongly to many things that he's said. But in particular the statement that - and this is a paraphrase - it's important to remain committed to the struggle against injustices and inequities while also keeping one's heart free of hatred and despair. So Baldwin for me is a great example of someone who really holds seemingly contradictory or difficult thoughts to have side by side but that are absolutely essential. So that, for me, has always been and continues to be a guide.

SB: From the twelve people that you interviewed, which one has had the most lasting impact on you?

SLM: That's an impossible question to answer. You know, Toni Morrison inspires me as a writer, Willard Harris inspires me just in life. I'm just going to talk about Margaret Busby because we haven't talked about her just for a minute.

So Margaret Busby was the youngest and the first Black British woman publisher in England and she published New Daughters of Africa and Daughters of Africa, two groundbreaking anthologies featuring hundreds of Black women voices from around the world and across the centuries.

Her books have been a real inspiration for me, and the reason I'm mentioning her is she is here, she's based in England, English Ghanaian, and she's someone who I still feel there's not been enough attention [about]. I wrote an essay on her but I think people should be writing books on her. She's one of these people that says, ‘I plant trees under whose shade other generations will flourish’. And that's great, but I would love to see people like her just receiving a little bit more attention, because she's just done incredible work and she's inspired so many of us coming up. So in answer to your question, I have no favourites, but you can just get me to talk about any one of them and I'll go on and on.

SB: At Queens’ we pride ourselves on being a multicultural, diverse community. We recently launched The Alexander Crummell Scholarships in honour of Alexander Crummell, which was a great initiative, and it gave full-fledged scholarships to quite a few students recently who might not have been able to get the opportunity [to go to Cambridge] so they finally get to fulfil their dreams to be at Cambridge and experience everything. I’d like to know what advice would you like to give to our MCR?

SLM: I always find questions of advice hard because I don't really feel I have advice to give people. But I celebrate what you have just said, that's fantastic.

Let me just go back to Willard Harris. It's funny actually, because I gave her the piece that I wrote on her before it was published just to make sure that I hadn't made any factual errors, and I had made one - she has brandy in her coffee every morning and I got the brandy brand wrong, so thankfully she helped correct that.

With the brandy I've forgotten where I was headed with all of this! But I think what I was going to say is she has various sayings that I mentioned in the chapter, and she said to me, “Well maybe we could put these sayings in bold, because maybe it will help people.” So in terms of advice, something I think about a lot is one of her sayings, which is, “Don't take your pain in advance.” You know, my train was cancelled today, and then another one was cancelled, and I'm like, “What!” And then I'm like, “Don't take your pain in advance.” So that's the piece of advice that I'll leave you, and it's not mine, it's Willard’s.

SB: Thank you so much. I would like to open the floor up to the audience if anyone has any questions? 

Q1: You mentioned you failed your A Level exam in English Literature but then you are so successful in selling books today. It's such a good example of how people get sort of setbacks and then being along with you in the future. So my question is, how do you really overcome this challenge and when did you discover your self-awareness that you really want to do this [i.e. writing]?

SLM: The book that sold several million copies - this happened to me when I was in my 40s, and life is weird, you don't know what will happen. It doesn't always have to happen when you're in your 20s. In terms of your question, I think I'd go back to what I said about the importance of having a good circle of friends and a community.

Someone that's just so special to me is Willard Harris, and I really treasure the hour or so that we walk together. She helps to keep me grounded, so I think finding those people who lift you up, who don't necessarily flatter you - I mean, sometimes flattery is good, but people who love you enough to want to see you grow and encourage you and can give you critical feedback when it's necessary. I think that's really, really important, and finding communities.

I'm kind of going off on a tangent, but I think that's one of the things during Covid – even though we're still in Covid sort of, even though we maybe think we're not in Covid – but just people in their own little silos and not having communities, whatever the community is for you. Whether it's a religious community or a sports group, community is important.

SB: We have a large audience from the YouTube livestream as well, and if it would be possible to read one of the questions – "Thank you so much for the interesting talk. As we have just finished celebrating Black History Month and you yourself mentioned there’s not enough recognition for Black pioneers, what can we do to shed even more light on these Black scholars in our day-to-day lives?"

SLM: I think first of all, realise that Black scholars and Black voices – these are human voices, and our knowledge as a human race is going to be much deeper, much better, if we pay attention to everyone's voices. This is so exciting, this is November 1^st - we're out of Black History Month but we're still talking about this book! Margaret Busby refers jokingly to Black History Month as ‘Black Employment Month’, but let's make it a year-round thing.

AE: So this is an opportune moment to announce that our Angevin Talks’ inaugural speaker, Dr Dambisa Moyo, who is a good friend of both Sarah's and mine, is now Baroness Moyo of Knightsbridge, and having received a life peerage from the British Government, [she] will now will be in the House of Lords. So please join me in a round of applause.

To end our evening's proceedings, I would like to ask Marina, who is the President of the MCR to please join me with Sneha to present a very small token of our appreciation to Sarah. Sarah, thank you very much for a memorable evening and for leaving us so much to think about and to act on. Good night to everyone, and thank you very much for joining us this evening.