Comics’ Books - S01, E08 - Transcript
GUEST: NJAMBI McGRATH
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’m very excited about today’s guest. An incisive and fresh voice in comedy she’s also an author and a political commentator seen on Channel 4 news. Last year she won the prestigious New Act of the Year award and you can buy and stream her comedy specials including Accidental coconut and African in New York on NextUp, Amazon Prime and Apple. Earlier this year her debut book was published, a memoir called Through the Leopard’s Gaze. It’s Njambi McGrath!
NJAMBI McGRATH: Hey!
LD: How are you? What have you been up to?
NM: Well the thing is I’m the kind of person that likes to keep busy so I always have to have a project on the go. So I have been writing fiction. So I’m just about, I’m editing my first draft of my first fiction.
LD: Oh wow.
NM: Yeah that’s been quite amazing. So I thought during lockdown I would just keep myself busy that way because it’s just too easy to just sort of sit down moping around analysing the state of the world.
LD: Oh God.
NM: And I just worried about the state of comedy and stuff so I just thought, “I’m going to distract myself by writing”. So I’ve almost completed my first fiction.
LD: So you’ve written the whole book in lockdown?
[LAUGHTER]
NM: Well. that sounds…
[LAUGHTER]
NM: The truth of the matter is that I have been researching this for actually quite a long time
LD: OK OK well yes. I mean I began writing just before lockdown and I haven’t finished, so you’re making me feel-
[LAUGHTER]
LD: -less impressive.
NM: You know it, these things, it’s when you feel it. When you feel it you can even write a whole book in just whatever. And sometimes you don't feel it. Sometimes I’m staring at my computer and I’m like, I’m getting nothing.
LD: Have you been really disciplined about sitting down even when you don't feel like it?
NM: Yes I am. And sometimes, even now because now I'm editing it I just go, “I’ve got nothing to give right now” and I’m just looking at the words and I’m forcing myself to read it. And I’m like “aah”. Because I like to divide my time up in the year so that I know what I’m doing at different months which sounds diabolical. So because I try to write a new show every year to go to Edinburgh Festival, so I usually divide my year into quarters. So, the first quarter when I come back from Edinburgh I will write a new show, so from September until maybe December I write a new show. And then from January, then I start writing some sort of writing project.
LD: Wow.
NM: And I would do that until maybe April and then start honing in the jokes for the show, you know, coming on to Edinburgh. But because we didn’t have that, so at this particular time the book would be nowhere near finished because I’d now be concentrating on the show that I was meant to be doing next month at the festival.
LD: What made you move from writing just comedy to writing other types of stuff, so books?
NM: It was circumstance really. I wanted to write this book since I was fifteen because obviously a lot of stuff was happening to me at the time but uh, you know, when you’re fifteen you don’t have the discipline or even the ability to put down to paper what you’re feeling. And also at the time, if I had written it then it would have been a very different book because now I look back and so many things are very different than when I was fifteen.
LD: Yeah.
NM: So I wrote a little bit, I just took a pen and paper and I began writing it then and I wrote a bit and I showed it to a boy at the time I was kind of seeing. And he said, “Oh wow this is amazing” and that was the end of that. And then I knew at the back of mind I would write a book. But the thought of writing a book is very, you know, is enormous. It’s like saying I’m going to build a mansion one day .It sounds like something that is so far out of reach but it’s still there at the back of your mind. But the thing that got me started was when I was very angry when my father died and I was really angry. I was angry at myself for not speaking to him about all the things, I was very angry about the, everything. And the only way I could cope with the anger was to write about it.
LD: What got you into reading?
NM: I was always interested in books and the one thing that I really missed from my childhood was the lack of books. Because I, I don’t know, I just found it interesting. I like to get lost in a world far away from my own so yeah, I just really liked stories and the only books that were available to African children were, I wouldn’t say the best books but we had obviously the Famous Five and a lot of Mills and Boon.
LD: Oh my God I love Mills and Boon.
NM: I know! That’s why I, and the other books that they flooded the country with was James Hadley Chase. Have you heard of James Hadley Chase?
LD: No.
NM: It’s similar to Mills and Boon except it’s about different ways of killing women.
LD: What!?
[LAUGHTER]
LD: You grew up on some rough stuff.
NM: I know! And at the time we used to read it, so it’s about crime and in each of the books was always about somehow a woman ended up dead.
LD: Wow.
NM: Yeah. It’s really bizarre. And why is it that Africa should be flooded with such material? But those were the only books that were available. So I used to read a lot and then somebody loaned me Danielle Steel. Again I started reading things like yeah Danielle Steel and stuff like that. So reading was always there but uh, it’s very interesting how, when you’ve read all these books about romance, it just kinds, and the romance was always you know this dashing white man and all of this stuff. So all these girls growing up in Africa expecting to find their handsome white man because you know it’s all we read. I mean literature in Africa is still very interesting but uh yeah, so that’s how I got into reading and a lot of us in school we used to trade in books. So we would swap you know. It was always swapping and stuff. So there was a lot of bookworms but we had no books at school. So yeah, I missed greatly the opportunity to read.
LD: Were there no sort of local authors?
NM: There were local authors but this is the thing people don’t understand about colonialism. Colonialism teaches people to be ashamed and embarrassed about anything that is African, anything that is ethnic, and so therefore those books were never promoted in Africa. The local authors were never, the only author that I’m aware of and shamefully I never read his work until now, is Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o who is the world famous Kenyan author. But even then you’d think his books would be in schools and all, you know. And then of course when I did literature, English Literature I read, the set texts were The Mayor of Casterbridge, uh King Lear-
LD: Oh.
NM: Yeah. And Richard Wright, I can’t even remember the book now. And an Indian one by Bhabani Bhattacharya. So African authors is a very weird mentality and they still suffer from that to this day where literature is only celebrated if it comes, like if you go to a bookshop in Kenya it’s embarrassing, you just see all of the titles that sort of would be in a London bookshop except that it’s missing is the African authors. And Africa has so many stories and this is, I felt like I was in Wonderland when I was doing research for my memoir. Just thinking, Oh My God I can’t believe how rich these stories are and yet these are not celebrated in Africa, why are they not celebrated in Africa? We are still suffering from a very colonial mentality. And I, the fiction that I’m writing is based on that, it’s based in Kenya because I want the world to know just how rich these stories are because I was completely lost in this world.
[MUSIC]
LD: So the books you chose to talk about today?
NM: Yes.
LD: They’re all biographies, or autobiographies?
NM: They are because as well as fiction, I do like fiction, but I seem to be attracted by these types of books. So when I read Wild Swans by Jung Chang, that book did everything for me. I knew absolutely nothing about China, it was basically like a history lesson about China, the history of China, but through the eyes of the participants or inhabitants of China. And I love that book and when I finished it I said to myself I will write a book like this one day. And again, again. So that is the second time you know that thought just went, “I will write a book” but I knew I would like to write a book like this one day. A book that told my personal story but the wider history. But at the time I didn’t even know the wider history. I don’t know why I thought that I could do that but I didn’t even know the wider history at the time. Like I was saying we don’t have this information. So that made a big impact for me.
LD: I was so pleased when I saw that you’d chosen that because it is way in my top books. It’s one of the best books I’ve ever read .
NM: Yeah me too!
LD: It’s so big.
NM: Yeah.
LD: I think a lot of people, I think it’s one of those books that people keep on their bookshelf and they say, “Oh I must read that, it’s one of the ones I must read”.
NM,: Yeah.
LD: And they don’t necessarily think it’s going to be that enjoyable of a read. And I read it very young and I don’t know what I expected. I think maybe I read it, ‘cos I was quite young and I thought, “Oh this is a cool book to have read. I can tell everyone I’ve read this epic even if I hate every word of it”.
NM: Yeah.
LD: But just like you it was my introduction to China.
NM: Yeah.
LD: And I would never, I don’t think I would ever have read just a history book.
NM: And this is what I like. You just get the real history. ‘Cos a lot of history is whitewashed, you know it just doesn’t give you the full picture. Like the book I’m currently reading, it’s nauseating. Because it’s written by a colonialist about Kenya. And the way they write is as though, I mean he talks about the first man to live in the city of Nairobi was this Mark somebody and I’m like, huh? What do you mean the first man to have lived in the city of Nairobi? Like, the Masaai and the Kikiyu were living there for a really long time. So basically they see things, like the Black lives are invisible, and it’s quite infuriating. Obviously I learn quite a lot from it because they give a lot of, because at the time when they were writing all of this because they were in the know and Africans were never in the know because they were never considered as human per se. But I’m finding it quite nauseating. And now, I never really understood the depth of racism until I began reading all this material and it’s just horrifying to see how, how and I think, yesterday watching, reading, I don’t know if you saw David Starkey, what he said about the [unclear].
LD: Yeah I was just going to bring that up.
NM: Yeah they all thought like David Starkey, exactly the same. All these people just, you know. And to me they actually sound and they look really primitive speaking like that because it’s like as though you’re speaking about us as though we are trees. We can see, we can read, we do read and you are just so caught up in this world of self importance that you don’t actually see how ridiculous you are, you know, speaking of Black people in such a way. And a lot of it is very barbaric to be honest with you. It’s nauseating to read. And sometimes I keep saying to myself, “Maybe I won’t read this”. And this is just followed by the book I was reading just before that, the book I was reading just before that it’s by Chigoze Obioma, I don’t know if you read any of his works?
LD: No, I haven’t.
NM: Oh my God. You must.
LD: I mean, send me a reading list! This podcast has really given me so many books to read.
NM: Yep.
LD: And I’m always happy for more on my list.
NM: Oh God, do you know what, that, as well as Wild Swans, and I don’t even know why I didn’t put The Fishermen on here/
LD: I saw the play! So I haven’t read The Fisherman but it was adapted into a play at Trafalgar Studios with just two men in and it was fan-, I thought it was fantastic.
NM: Yeah. But this book is, Oh My God, when I was reading it I could feel the hairs on my skin crawling and it’s rare that you feel this way with books. So just to say what I was saying, I went from reading the follow up book which is The Orchestra of Minorities.
LD: Yeah.
NM: Which was also shortlisted for Man Booker Prize.
LD: Oh wow.
NM: And he is a very confident writer. He’s got such command of the language that he is, like many of us it’s probably his third language but such command of the language that he’s able to write so confidently. And so, having come away from reading just such a book so rich in culture, it’s so beautiful about the celebration of everything that is African. To just be steeped in the world of colonialist mentality is quite a shock to the system. But still I gain from all of this because it gives me sort of, I can see, I can examine this history from a different perspective.
LD: So Wild Swans, I don’t know, that was published I think in the UK, but so that’s banned in China still, or as of 2013 it was and I have found nothing to suggest that it still isn’t.
NM: Wild Swans is it?
LD: Yeah. So she can only visit still her family in China personally with permission from mainland China. Like I said, I can’t find any confirmations of this past 2013. At least as of 2013 Wild Swans was still banned in China because they didn’t want that story told.
NM: I didn’t know that but of course information is power and information can change the way people view other people and of course this, with the Black Lives Matter movement this is, and the sort of I don’t know, the highlighting of the problems of visibility for back people in publishing is very prominent.
[MUSIC]
LD: What brought you to reading Kaffir Boy?
NM: Again, it was just presented to me on, you know when you have a suggested reading list. Because sometimes deciding what to read next is quite difficult. Even when people recommend it. Sometimes people recommend a book and you’re like, “Whoa, what the hell is this!” But that again just really put you into the place to see the brutality of apartheid in South Africa. So Kaffir Boy, that’s what it is, by Mark Mathabane yeah, and it just immerses you into the frustration, the oppression, the selfishness of these supremacists in South Africa. And it’s very real because this is based on, it’s non-fiction, it’s based on their life experiences and then. And I like the title, well I hate the title but I like the title. It’s like Kaffir Boy, what is this!? And then yeahI actually loved it. It just again illuminated what apartheid was in South Africa. Although I read, what’s his name, um Trevor Noah’s book. Trevor Noah’s book is a bit lighter on that.
LD: Yeah.
NM: But Kaffir Boy just takes you right into the depth of things. But then of course Kaffir Boy was written way before Trevor Noah’s book.
LD: A lot before yeah. I also thought obviously Kaffir Boy is dark and it’s sad and it’s shocking, but I also think it’s a bit of a love letter to education. And you know how he talks about a, that education and his mother’s sort of insistence on education was what helped him get to the point where he could even tell his story, let alone being able to tell it from a place of relative privilege now.
NM: Of course.
LD: I also thought it was a very kind book because in a way he tears apart everyone. He says, you know “These are the people doing the terrible things and this is how terrible it was and there’s no excuses”. But he also points out all the people from different countries and different races that stood by him and weren’t a part of the problem. Which I thought was also a very helpful thing to do and a very generous thing to do.
NM: But that’s being a truthful person.
LD: Yes.
NM: Because not everyone is horrible. But the systems are horrible. The systems put down were horrible. But the reason that a lot of these brutalities are hidden from the general public is because there are very many good people who will not put up with that.
LD: Yeah.
NM: And you know my own journey, looking at my own journey, there have been very many people who have been very kind. Even here where I’m doing my comedy, I’ve been supported by a lot of, I would say White people, who have encouraged me greatly. I wouldn’t never have had the strength certainly without the White people who come and see it and they just lend me their support. You know my agents. They believe in me greatly. My husband is White. John Fleming really encouraged me to write the book because I saw him when I was so raw with emotion and [unclear] and he said, “Why don’t you turn all this pain into shows. Write about this”. And he’s always the person that I run to when I’ve got a problem in the comedy world and stuff like that. He’s always there for me and he’s genuine. So you will always have people and this is why you cannot put a whole group of people into one category. But by saying that, the system was set up again by supremacists.
LD: Yeah.
NM: And we were talking about David Starkey. How many people would identify with David Starkey? But how many White People would stand up against that? Many.
LD: Hopefully many many.
NM: I hope there would be many.
[MUSIC]
LD: So I think your final book choice, The Pianist of Yarmouk, so that’s another biography, autobiography. Again sort of what people are calling an Own Voices book as well. So, someone who was there and someone who is telling their own country’s story. What about that book specifically has popped it into your top three?
NM: Oh, it’s everything.
LD: Yeah?
NM: It’s, the decisions again that are made by these people in certain countries, people of power, they decide “so and so needs to go, let’s go bomb that country”. But it’s these people’s lives, these are real lives. When Katie Hopkins calls them a swarm of people, it’s people like this who had a life, whose lives were fulfilled. And they have to flee their country because of everything that has been done to them. And again it’s the same thing, is that people refuse to accept the role of their countries in causing these problems. I like The Pianist of Yarmouk because he’s trying so hard not to get broken, because it’s very easy to get broken in an environment like that. And it just shows the human resilience. What is it that would keep him going? The piano kept him going. The singing kept him going. And people hang on to different things when facing all sorts of adversity. Adversity that I have faced in my life. Adversity that was faced by the women of my tribe when there was no hope, they were all locked up. And there was no way for them to escape. What was it that kept them going? There has to be something that keeps people going. In this, The Pianist of Yarmouk, it was the music that kept them going. It is the music that reached the world and touched the world with his piano in the rubble, singing with all these children, giving children a purpose. So amongst all of this devastation there is hope and people trying to find happiness. There are little pockets of happiness like, in whatever way they would, in a similar way my Grandmother used to be, used to entertain all these people, and it’s easy to forget that they were all in a concentration camp. They used to have my Grandmother telling them all these jokes, and all of this. Finding those pockets of happiness despite the hopelessness of their situation. And it’s the same with The Pianist of Yarmouk.
LD: Pockets of happiness. I like that.
NM: Mmm.
[MUSIC]
LD: I wanted to say congratulations because your book has been optioned for television right?
NM: Yes, thank you!
LD: Very exciting. Do you know anything more, is there anything more you can tell us or is it, that’s as far-?
NM: I would like to tell you a lot but I can’t as you can imagine.
LD: Yes. I’ll be patient then!
NM: But in due course hopefully there’s going to be more information coming out. But it’s all very exciting, I just cannot wait. And again, you know talking about people that believe in you,. Those producers, Nerise and Charlie, I just can’t tell you what incredible humans they are. They just, again these are the people Mark Mathabane would thank.
LD: Yeah.
NM: Because the people who see you, the people who feel you, the people who put their hand out to help you cross the road or whatever. These are them. And I’m just so touched by all the people that believed in me. And they know themselves because they have given me, if you like, the fuel to keep going. Because before they contacted me I decided that I’m not going to do shows on colonialism anymore because people are not interested in this stuff and I thought I’m not doing myself any favours talking about this. You know, it’s almost defeatist thinking that way. But then I think who else is gonna speak, you know. Who else? And they’re giving a voice to the people that, I wrote a blog called The Voiceless, my Grandmother and my Mother and all those women who were voiceless, their voice was never heard. Except now with this, my Mother’s voice will be heard. My Grandmother’s voice will be heard. And these people are making it possible for me.
LD: Well I’m so glad they are because honestly your book is just like nothing I’ve read before and so unexpected. And I think a lot of people, that’s how they access these stories and that’s how they learn and definitely for me that’s how I’ve learned a lot of things in my life but particularly I think your story has opened a world that I didn’t really know anything about. So hopefully the TV show when it comes out will do that for a whole different range of people as well.
NM: Yeah I hope so too. I really do. And I like the fact that, so my friend, she bought the book and she gave it to her mother. Her mother is in her eighties and she absolutely loved the book and when she heard it had been optioned she was like, “Oh good, I can watch it then”. So it’s nice that all these people again, that she should tell her mother and her mother should say she can’t wait to watch it on TV.
LD: Oh absolutely. I mean this is going straight to my Mum as soon as I’ve finished.
NM: Oh thank you.
LD: We’ve spent most of lockdown trading books back and forth and this is definitely something she won’t have come across but I think it’s something she would have bought. Because the reason I have Kaffir Boy is because my Mum and Dad bought it to read and then handed it on to me.
NM: Oh wow that’s incredible.
LD: Yeah so I think they’ll love your book, it’s definitely up their alley.
[MUSIC]
LD: Before we go Njambi, always I like to know what someone’s favourite bookshop is that they can recommend to our listeners. Do you have one for us?
NM: Yes, I do have a little bookshop called the Pitshanger bookshops.
LD: Pit Hanger?
NM: Pitshanger, yeah. It’s a quaint little bookshop and it’s where I had my first book signing.
LD: Aw.
NM: And she was very supportive and she likes supporting local authors as well. So that is my favourite. But also, I like supporting small bookshops, but I also want to say big up for Foyles who gave my book a whole shelf!
LD: Ooh!
NM: Yeah! In Charing Cross. They gave my book a whole shelf. I walked past and I saw a whole bookshelf with my books on it and it was the most incredible feeling and I could have just knelt on that pavement and cried.
LD: Aaw.
NM: Because I never thought that I could see anything like that in my whole entire life.
LD: Aaw.
NM: Yeah.
LD: It’s been so amazing to talk to you today Njambi.
NM: Well, thank you for having me.
LD: Hopefully we’ll talk again soon but I will, I’ll await the reading list you’re gonna sending me!
NM: Ah yes!
LD: I’m excited for it
NM: Yes, yeah.
LD: I look forward to it.
NM: Thanks very much.
[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.