Comics’ Books - S01, E05 - Transcript
GUEST: SIKISA
HOST: LUCY DANSER
LUCY DANSER: Just a quick note to say that if any of this sounds a bit technically dodgy, for example like it’s perhaps been recorded remotely during lockdown, well, it has been. On with the show.
[MUSIC]
LD: Hello and welcome to Comics’ Books. I’m Lucy Danser and for many years I’ve worked as a producer alongside a number of excellent comedians. I’m also a book obsessive who’s always asking friends and strangers alike what they’re reading. So, I thought I’d bring my two passions together and find out, what do funny people read? I am delighted today to welcome a truly exciting and unique comedian. A multi talented human being, she’s been a finalist in competitions including the BBC New Comedy Awards and the Get Up Stand Up Comedy Competition. She’s a regular on the UK stand up circuit. Not only that but by day she’s an immigration lawyer. Please welcome Sikisa.
SIKISA: Thank you very much for having me.
LD: Oh I’m delighted to have you. I’m very excited. I was just saying before this podcast started to Sikisa that a lot of her, the books she started reading in childhood were similar to mine so for once I haven’t had to do a ton of reading before we start.
[LAUGHTER]
LD: Sikisa how are you dealing with lockdown and everything really?
S: I have my ups and my downs I suppose. I miss obviously being on the stage and performing. That’s probably what’s hitting me most at the moment. But I’m using the time well.
LD: Oh good?
S: I am using it to write material and jokes that will hopefully be funny by the time that we get back into the real world .
LD: That’s the dream.
S: But also like exercising more. Because of my crazy life before lockdown I didn’t get a chance to do much stuff like going to the gym or like exercising. So I’ve now got back into my dancing and like exercising and I’ve lost a stone. So it’s like -
LD: Oh wow.
S: Lockdown life, yeah! But all my friends are like, “I’ve eaten so much! Oh my God, get me out of lockdown!” I’m like no, I’m living this life, yes!
LD: Well I’ve got to say though, I’ve seen you doing your cooking on instagram, I’ve got to say like I don’t know how you’ve lost weight. Because you are making delicious looking but quite deep fried foods.
[LAUGHTER]
S: Oh yeah! I’ve been, that’s the other thing I’ve been doing more. I’ve been cooking more so I’ve been making food that I’ve never done before and experimenting and stuff. There’s been quite a lot of deep fried stuff I’m not going to lie, but what I’ve done is palmed it, most of it, off onto my parents.
LD: Keep them healthy!
S: Yeah!
LD: So have you got much reading into your very busy lockdown schedule?
S: I have, I’ve ordered a couple of books whilst I’ve been at home. I’ve ordered a book called, this sounds really bad but it’s not, it’s called Rape Jokes. It’s not actually about rape jokes but yeah, it’s called rape jokes by Louise MacGregor.
LD: OK.
S: It’s basically a story about this woman who unfortunately was raped. Well, it’s how she deals with it. So I’m reading that. I’ve also ordered some graphic novels.
LD: Which ones?
S: They’re mainly like Marvel ones.
LD: OK.
S: I’ve got Civil War and I’ve got, actually I bought a Batman one the other day but i haven’t actually looked at it. So I’ve ordered a couple of things to read. I’ve just got Ikea, Akailias, Natives.
[LAUGHTER]
LD: I thought you said Ikea’s catalogue!
[LAUGHTER]
S: No! My pronunciation is, I’m gonna get killed by this. Shame on me!
LD: Akala. Akala.
S: Akala, that’s it!
LD: Oh I’ve got Natives but I got it, I got it read ‘cos I like his voice. He’s got a very nice voice. I went to, you know he’s written a graphic novel?
S: Oh has he? No, I didn’t know that.
LD: I can’t remember what it’s called. I’ll try and find it and I’ll put it on the show notes. But I met him a couple of years ago. He did the World Book Night. He did a speech and one thing he was talking about was this graphic novel he was working on.
S: Oh wow.
LD: And it hadn’t, I don’t think it was finished when he was speaking about it, and then I never remembered to go back and order it but you’ve just reminded me.
S: I’ve read like the first chapter of the book.
LD: OK.
S: So just from what I’ve, like what I had, a company that I work for in terms of cabaret called The House of Burlesque, so it’s Tempest Rose and the House of Burlesque, they’re reading it every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday on their instagram.
LD: Oooh.
S: At seven O’Clock. So that’s really nice of them to do that. It’s obviously in light of everything that’s been going on recently. But yeah I really, the book is really interesting so I just really wanted to like read it properly and do that. So I’ve got those. Mainly I’ve tried to read as much as I can. Like my best friend sends me books every birthday and Christmas, it’s kind of our exchange.
LD: That’s nice.
S: So, and me and her are very obsessed with Eric Jerome Dickey who is one of the authors I chose for this podcast.
LD: Yeah I looked him up.
S: So I have managed to read all of them apart from maybe two. When I first started reading him I was in school.
LD: Yeah.
S: So I went to the library to get the book when libraries were in existence.
[LAUGHTER]
LD: Oh don’t! I was just thinking today how much I miss the library now that I have to keep, you know, paying for more and more books.
S: Well a lot of them have closed down sadly which is most of the reasons there’s a decline in reading nowadays, it’s such a shame. Especially for like, children. But I, yeah I used to go and get his books from there and I would just order them from Waterstones whenever they came out.
LD: The cover art’s amazing. I didn’t see who his artist was but they’re all really beautiful. They’re all quite colourful in the background and then this scrawling writing over the topic.
S: Yeah he’s got, some of the covers have been updated. Some of the old ones have been updated but the new ones haven’t been. But the newest ones look like graffiti style-
LD: Yeah they’re the ones.
S: Yeah they look really beautiful. The old ones you can tell they’re old. You can tell it’s like he was like no can’t be bothered with this one. Yeah you can tell.
LD: Oh well we’re going to come back to him because I think this book is too potent to begin this podcast with.
[LAUGHTER]
LD: You’ve got to build up to this one Sikisa!
[MUSIC]
LD: So your original choice was a little less sexy. It was Peter Rabbit.
[LAUGHTER]
S: Yeah! A little less sexy, yes.
LD: Is this the first book you read?
S: It is one of the first books I remember reading. I was given, so me and my cousin who is three years or two and a half years younger than me, we were very close growing up. ‘Cos I’m the only child and she was an only child at the time and we were both given sets of Beatrix Potter books and they came in a set of five and she had the set which had Peter Rabbit in it.
LD: Oh.
S: Now, I was upset that her set had Peter Rabbit in it so I stole her book and didn’t give it back.
[LAUGHTER]
S: She’s now got an incomplete set basically. But it was, I enjoyed, Peter Rabbit was obviously like a stepping stone for I think most children reading books, and I loved the book Peter Rabbit. And obviously the other books as well but Peter Rabbit is obviously the one that stood out. But also just because of the artistry in the book .
LD: Oh it’s beautiful isn’t it?
S: Beautiful beautiful book. And Beatrix Potter was obviously quite influential in her time to be writing 23, I think 23, children's books.
LD: I know that she sold 45 million copies.
S: I think people forgot that she was a woman-
LD: Yeah! It’s still one of the top selling books of all time.
S: Yeah! I think it’s just so beautiful, the story that is told. It’s got a different context in it as well in terms of family, in terms of just the creativity of it, I just really enjoyed the book and it is one of the first books I remember reading and loving.
LD: Did you read it yourself or was it read to you?
S: I believe it was read, I think my mum read it to me when I was little. I remember that but I remember me and my cousin reading the books together and then the books came back to life for me when I was about, oh fifteen because I did GCSE Dance and weirdly enough one of our bits we did in class was we had to watch the ballet version of Beatrix Potter. Yeah! So we had to recreate that in dance class so I went and found my books because it like ignited something in me about my childhood so I went and found the books and started reading them again. I’ve got a few sets of books from my childhood that I gave away but these are the, these set of books in particular, and obviously Peter Rabbit, is the ones that I never threw them away.
LD: And never threw them away. I think that’s so lovely. One of the things I loved is that my mum was also a really big reader and she gave me and my sister, my sister and I, many of the books that she kept, you know from her childhood. So quite like old copies or things that she’d read a few times and they feel more important than her suggesting a book and us rebuying it.
S: I just like the fact that you can pass something down to children. But yeah like, even The Tale of Tom Kitten is where I got my love of cats from. Like I love cats and that’s my earliest memory of loving cats.
LD: Isn’t it funny how you remember these things. Because I obviously hadn’t regularly thought of Peter Rabbit! But when you said it and I looked it up I remembered straight away the whole story. You know, the vegetable garden and Mr McGregor and how Peter Rabbit is not allowed to have his dinner because he was naughty.
S: Yeah it’s such a, it’s one of my favourite children’s books and it’s something that is part of my childhood.
LD: Yeah I also think what you said about her being a woman and it being really unique is a nice thing for when you grow up because I read that she wrote it originally as a set of letters for her governess’s son and it was her governess who said she should write this into a kids book. And for the first few years it was just rejected over and over again by the publishers and she actually, the first lot she self published.
S: Yes I did know that yeah, I did read that.
LD: I found that quite a positive story.
S: Yeah because back in those days, like women wasn’t really seen as anything more than housewives and stuff like that and for her to come through and become one of the most successful authors of all time, as a woman, because even before then women didn’t even have the vote at that time. As the years went on she lived through the wars and she managed to see quite a bit and see how time has evolved.
[MUSIC]
LD: Your, the second book you chose is Noughts and Crosses by Malorie Blackman which is the one I was most excited to see on the list because that is, i think, the book that blew my mind the most when I was a kid and read it. I think I didn’t realise there were so many, there are five or six of them now, I think I read the first three.
S: Yeah I actually came to this book quite late to be honest.
LD: Ooh.
S: I know it’s meant to be a Young Adult book but I only read the book probably like five years ago. I don’t even know how I came across the book, but the book itself is very powerful and for a young adult, because obviously that’s what it’s aimed at, to read this book is such a beneficial thing because it covers so much about representation, about power structures, about class, about heartbreak, about racism, about coming of age. It covers so much in the one book and it’s very powerful.
LD: Have you just read the first one or have you read the whole series?
S: I read the first book and then I started reading the second book and then I felt it was gonna ruin my vision of what this story was.
LD: Oh really?
S: Yeah, yeah. So I was like I’m just gonna leave it with the first one and let that linger for me.
LD: What is it that’s kind of put this book so high up for you in your choices?
S: Just because of how much it made me, like I’ve never, being a person of colour and growing up in the world that we live in, having it flipped round and having the perspective of how caucasians would see that and how they’d feel about them being the lower level was really eye opening for me for them to, ‘cos for me it was kind of like well you’re now in my shoes.
LD: Yes.
S: This is how life would be if you were in our shoes. And the book covers quite a bit, and it covers quite a lot in terms of, I’m an open person anyway, I hang around with quite a lot, equal amount of friends in terms of colour and class, and I don’t want to be judged myself and I don’t want to judge others just because of the colour of their skin or their class and this book was kind of how I viewed the world, especially in terms of the two title characters. Where they just see past a lot of things.
LD: Yeah.
S: And just wanna be themselves around each other.
LD: It was such a good message wasn’t it? It was saying these things shouldn’t matter.
S: Yeah.
LD: And it didn’t necessarily have the, you know what it’s been so long since I read it but from what I remember I wasn’t that clear on as much of the history as to why, you know, you had the noughts and the crosses and one was so much higher status than the other but I understood that was the case. But it was the people who fought to keep it that way who didn’t want the two to mix and didn’t want there to be a change in circumstances. And Callum and Sephy were so young but they understood that that was ridiculous and that love was more important and that everyone was equal.
S: Yeah it’s just, like I, that’s very interesting that you say that because I didn’t actually question how it got to that point. I was just like well this is how this book is going to be set. But I got to a point where I really just related to the book because for Callum and Sephy to just accept that they’re just people, they bleed the same blood-
LD: Yeah.
S: It’s how I see life and there are people who just want to break people down, make people turn to hate in our world nowadays and it shouldn’t be that way. Like we’re just meant to be living for life. And embrace life. And race, colour, religion, shouldn’t affect anything. Like, as long as you’re nice to me I’m going to be nice to you.
LD: Yeah.
S: And we should just be nice to each other. And having to deal with issues and being aware of things like racism, class, the representation from such an early age and racism is something that I think this book benefits these people that are reading.
LD: Yeah I definitely think this is, I have definitely seen it a lot recently of course because they made the TV series with Stormzy and there was a play I think at the Royal Shakespeare Company a few years ago. Neither of which I’ve seen. I don’t know if you watched the TV Series?
S: I haven’t watched the whole set of TV Series, like the whole episodes yet, it’s one of my things to do in lockdown.
[MUSIC]
LD: So the book you recommended, you chose, Small Thoughts and Poetry by Lucy Thatcher, I found that quite difficult to find. In the end I found it on the Kindle thing, but she self published this.
S: Yeah.
LD: And she writes some really interesting stuff at the back about how she didn’t, she specifically didn’t get all the grammar carefully checked and everything because it was really important to her to express herself the way she expressed herself and that, you know, spelling mistakes and grammar shouldn't stop you from getting someone’s point across.
S: Yeah.
LD: So I just wondered did you just pick this, did you come across it, was it recommended?
S: The author actually is a friend.
LD: Right. She said at the back that you could message her.
S: Yeah. Message her, Feel free!
LD: I’ll message her!
S: She’s absolutely lovely. I made her read this, some of her book, at a show that I was running and she was worried because obviously everyone else on the bill was comedians. And I was like no you’ll be fine, get up there, just be you! And she was funny!
LD: I found some of this quite funny!
S: Yeah. She is someone that I have known for about seven years now and her dad is from Barbados and my Mum is from Barbados and my Dad is half from Barbados. So I actually met her when we was in Barbados through a mutual friend whilst we was all on holiday. And we just got chatting and we had a really good time whilst we were in Barbados and just became friends. And I’ve helped her with some stuff over the years and then about last year, beginning of last year she announced that she was releasing a book. I knew, because she writes poetry, I knew she writes poetry and she has done some open mic stuff poetry-wise but whenever we have discussions about life and stuff like that she’s always discussed about the fact that she’s a bi-racial, mixed race person and the conflicts that she has in terms of that sometimes and when she became a mother that kind of was inhoned even more. And she’s always been a person who’s been aware of her words and she’s very articulate but she also, growing up in South London she speaks a certain way, she speaks a lot like me, we just speak how we speak. She’s very, when I read the book and her poetry, and to be honest I’ve read her stuff before but I’ve never seen her in person reading it, I find her words come off the page when you just read it. And especially in terms of her conflicts of the life that she leads and her wanting to do better for her child and wanting her child to be in a world where her being a person of colour and being female shouldn’t affect the life that she’s going to lead. And I didn’t really understand her point of view before reading the book and her conflicts that she had until I read the book. Even though I’ve been friends with her for years.
LD: Well you know people are just different in writing and speaking, people can be articulate in a way, I said trying not to even get a sentence out here, people can be very articulate in writing and they are things that they really struggle to say out loud to other people even if you’re very close friends.
S: Yeah. It’s a very touching book and I have read, my cousin just turned ten the other day, and I’ve read to her a couple of the poetries or small thoughts out of it. Just because I think educating children and making them aware of their own creativity and making them think is a good thing.
LD: Yeah, it’s the one called No Small Thoughts where she’s saying how you can think massive thoughts and you can think tiny little things that seem like they might not matter to anyone else but actually every thought can have the same impact or has an effect in the world.
S: Lucy’s very good at reflecting. I think this book kind of emphasises that.
LD: There were bits where I felt totally seen and they were really, the bit where she says “I always thought I’d grow up but at 33 I constantly feel like an adolescent who ponders what would an adult do in this situation” where I feel extremely seen.
S: Yeah it’s very eye opening. I like to read things that people, it’s called Small Thoughts and Poetry because it is her own thoughts and it’s nice to have someone else’s thoughts and that makes you reflect on your own thoughts about certain situations.
LD: It really did actually, it really led me to reconsider things that I’ve thought about and also to feel maybe less alone in some of them.
S: Yeah.
LD: Ok so we have come to the Eric Jerome-
[LAUGHTER]
LD: Eric Jerome Dickey book.
S: Yay.
LD: It took me a while as I said to get a hold of this book and I finally got it on audiobook and I have to admit, it made me blush.
S: Ahaha, aha!
LD: Yup, it made me blush.
S: This is, this is very much my original Fifty Shades of Grey.
LD: Oh it is yeah.
S: Like I said I’ve been reading him for years. Quite a lot of people that I knew at school knew of him, I’ve actually met him, he signed one of his books for me.
LD: How old is he now?
S: I think he’s like fifty.
LD: OK.
S: His books are not always this way. There is normally, especially with, mostly his later books have a sense of sexuality and sensuality to it and hitting on types of erotica. His earlier books were, even those they had mentions of like maybe some sexual scenes, it wasn’t as graphic.
LD: Oh this one opens, this one’s called Pleasure I don’t think I just said that at the beginning, this is Pleasure by Eric Jerome Dickey. It really opens strong does it?
S: Yeah. This is the first book I think out of the ones that he’s written that really was quite open, graphic and for me, it was eye-opening to, even though it’s a man writing this book-
LD: Yeah.
S: Of how he allows Nia to just be open with her own sexuality and her own feelings of exploration in terms of her own sexuality. And for me it was a nice breath of fresh air for a man to be writing about that.
LD: OK.
S: Because prior, at that time when I had read the book and probably when the book had come out, it was kind of like a taboo for women to be doing certain things and obviously the twist in it of very, of very gripping for me personally. I just, I think I read this book in about three days. I was just like oh, what’s going on next, what’s happening, what twin is she going to end up with?
LD: Well I don’t know because I haven’t finished yet so no spoilers please.
S: No spoilers. I won’t tell you no spoilers. I feel like this is kind of better than Fifty Shades, just because it’s more sensual, the character Nia’s in control even though she does let her emotions take over at some point. But it’s her trying to find the freedom and trying to explore herself and it’s like a coming of age for her. So, that’s why I really enjoy this book.
LD: I thought he added quite a nice layer to it as well from the bits that I’ve read so far is that, he did what some of the best sort of erotica writers do where there was another story that wasn’t at odds with it, it didn’t make it impossible for you to enjoy you know the sex scnes but you had that conversation with the publisher about the book she’s working on and you had the scenes where she talked about her mother and other women in her world that she looked up to and I thought it set her up as a more three dimension character than maybe happens in some straight up sort of soft-core erotica.
S: Yeah. Soft-core. Soft-core, yeah. I found the character believable so it’s not just about the erotica. Which, this is why I enjoy it. And even though his other books do have like I said a feature of sexual ness and sex scenes in it, that’s not the main feature of the book or any of his books. It’s not just meant to be, it’s another erotica book. No, there’s an underlying element and a storyline to it.
LD: Did you read it when it came out?
S: I read it about two years after it came out I think
LD: OK but you were still fairly young?
S: I was 24, 23, 23. No I lie to you, I was 21. 21,
LD: So many years ago!
S: Yeah.
LD: Do you think that being that age made a difference to how it affected you? Like if you’d read it now for the first time?
S: I think now it wouldn’t affect me because now we’re in a day and age where talking about this kind of thing is more open, more mainstream if you want to call it that. It’s not like it’s a taboo thing. Whereas before it kind of was you can’t say certain things, you can’t do certain things, you’re going to be seen as this if you do that.
LD: Ladylike.
S: Yeah you gotta be a lady!
[LAUGHTER]
LD: Men can be studs, women have to be-
S: Yeah.
LD: Yeah.
S: Whereas this book is very much females in control. Until it gets a little bit crazy at the end! But yeah, I feel like if I had read the book now I don’t think it would have the same impact on me.
LD: Yeah I do think like when you read a book makes a difference. I know that there were certain books, my parents had a bookshelf in the corridor in our house growing up and there were definitely books, somewhere quite sexy like the Jackie Collins’ books and some were just books I wasn’t allowed to read. And I mean some would argue they shouldn’t have been in the hallway. But I remember I read a book about a couple taking their father with dementia on holiday and it was not sexy, but it was quite graphic. And I read it even though I knew I wasn’t supposed to and I think it wouldn’t have the same impact on me now, but it was so shocking to me that people would talk openly about each other’s bodies. And some was about the couple having sex and some was about the old man getting older and needing physical help but it wasn’t sexual. I don’t know if that would have had the same impact but then it was burned into my brain which is probably why they didn’t want me to read it.
S: That’s fair enough, I understand that!
[LAUGHTER]
S: I’ve never read a Jackie Collins book but I have heard some things.
LD: Have a go! Have a go. Maybe we can have one episode where we just discuss different types of erotica.
S: Oh that would be exciting, yeah let’s do that!
LD: This has been a delight Sikisa, I’ve really enjoyed talking about books with you today.
S: Well thank you very much for having me again, this has been fun.
LD: I was just going to say that during this period we are trying to big up some of the independent bookstores and you chose, what bookshop did you choose?
S: I chose Clapham bookstore.
LD: Is that your local?
S: It is now because unfortunately a lot of independent bookstores around my area closed and there’s no libraries. So Clapham Bookstore is great and I really hope they are able to reopen because I know a lot of businesses are going to be affected by what’s been happening.
LD: Well according to their website they will be reopening very soon.
S: Go and buy the books from there if you’re from South London, please do.
LD: Go and buy books from there. We’re going to put all the details on the show notes with the address and phone number and everything but at the moment they’re saying that they plan to open Tuesday 16th June and they’ll be closed on Monday but they’re going to open Tuesday to Sunday.
S: Yay.
LD: Sikisa I think you should be a spokesperson for libraries. I think you have a lot of passion and I think you could really help us maybe save some libraries.
S: The fact that they keep going I feel is a massive, they need to be funded, a lot of people enjoyed being able to go and get books, read books, have the deadline of reading the book in a certain period of time.
LD: Yeah.
S: Yes.
LD: Also reading the new books when they come out, you know when they’re still in hardback which is a big expense.
S: Yeah.
LD: And take up a lot of space in your house. And I think, so libraries, they are most importantly for books but they’re also, around my area most of them have been saved. Sometimes just by great authors speaking up but I live in North West London and a lot of our libraries, I mean they’re not open right now but have not closed down.
S: Oh OK.
LD: And they’re great because a lot of people just, there’s a lot of free lessons there like English lessons and stuff but there’s also a lot of computers people can use and the internet for free, which I think is pretty essential. So I do think you’d be an excellent spokesperson for libraries Sikisa. Let’s just start a campaign, join a campaign, there’s a lot out there.
S: I will do.
LD: Thank you so much for speaking with me today. It’s been excellent. I hope you have a lovely rest of lockdown and we’ll speak soon!
S: Yay! Bye!
[MUSIC]
LD: Thank you for listening to today’s episode of Comics’ Books. I hope you enjoyed it. In the show notes you’ll be able to find full listings of all the books we mentioned as well as links to our featured independent bookshop. Have a great week reading, laughing and then reading some more.