As Bernardine Evaristo read in the rich voice of her protagonist, Barry, she transformed before the audience into a man internally torn between loyalty to his wife and becoming the man he knows he is inside. Yesterday evening, Evaristo read from her newest novel, “Mr Loverman,” which navigates themes of gender and sexuality through a mix of dry humor, vivid descriptions and catchy expressions.
The story details the life of 74-year-old Barrington Jedidiah Walker, a closeted gay Caribbean man who has lived in London for 50 years. The text is told in two voices: Barry’s first-person narrative from 2010-11 and a second person narration directed at his religious wife Carmel, who has no idea that he is gay, over their loveless marriage.
Evaristo said she aimed to create characters that defied stereotypes in order to tell a story that has never been written before.
“There is hardly any black homosexual literature in Britain, especially not about an older man,” Evaristo said during a question and answer session following the reading. “I like to explore these themes from a perspective that you wouldn’t normally expect.”
As she read, Evaristo adopted Barrington’s Antiguan and British accent, one that she said she modeled off a close friend of hers from Antigua.
She highlighted the importance for writers of using their surroundings as inspiration.
“In this novel, many of the characters’ expressions are ones that I have overheard in my everyday life,” Evaristo said.
In the end, Evaristo said, her novel is about relationships. As a writer, she strives to know how people live, how they experience life, how they become what they are. Being a writer, she said, is “mad” because the writer begins to exist in someone else’s world.
“When I was writing this story, the character began to take me over,” she said.
English professor Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina, who took advantage of the fact that the author was touring the Northeast, invited Evaristo to campus.
“She is very well-known in Britain,” Gerzina said. “I think that it is wonderful to expand our knowledge of British literature here at Dartmouth.”
Evaristo said she hopes that her tour will introduce more Americans to her work. Readings, she said, help her share her story with a live audience.
“Otherwise the only feedback I hear is from individuals and critics,” she said.
Assistant admissions director Racquel Bernard ’13 said she came to the talk because she was curious about Caribbean literature.
Chloe Jones ’16 attended the reading at her professor’s encouragement.
“I was interested in hearing, from a creative writing perspective, how we can translate the black experience in literature,” Jones said.
Other readings and talks by writers will take place this week as part of the creative writing department’s “Poetry and Prose series,” which brings authors and poets to read on campus each term. Snowden Wright ’04 and Diana Sabot Whitney ’95 will read Thursday.
English professor Ernest Hebert, who invited Wright, said that the goal of the series is to expose Dartmouth students to published writers.
“I, along with most people in the creative writing concentration, really believe in the oral tradition,” Hebert said. “When you read your work, there’s a kind of beauty to that.”
Wright will read an excerpt from his 2013 novel, “Play Pretty Blues (The Life of Robert Johnson),” about mysterious Mississippi jazz musician Robert Johnson.
The novel follows famous blues guitarist Johnson, who died at 27 and is said to have sold his soul to the devil. Wright said in an interview that he struggled to find an angle until he came across a theory that Johnson had multiple families and wives. He used this perspective to write the novel from the point of view of Johnson’s six wives, using the first person plural, a collective “we.”
Hebert, who was Wright’s thesis advisor during his time at Dartmouth, said he knew that his student had the right “stuff” to be a writer.
“He was very serious about writing,” Hebert said. “One thing I’ve learned is that the people who give it their all are the people who end up publishing. You need to have a full-time commitment.”
Whitney will read samples of her poetry. Herbert, who also taught Whitney at Dartmouth, remarked on the “magnetism” that surrounded both her writing and her personality.
Wright and Whitney’s reading will take place Thursday at 4 p.m. in the Wren Room of Sanborn House.
