On Tuesday evening, award-winning writers Bernadine Evaristo and Claudia Rankine read excerpts of their work and reflected on storytelling during an event at the Lindemann Center for the Performing Arts.
The talk, titled “Celebrating the Words That Make Us: An Evening with Claudia Rankine and Bernardine Evaristo,” was organized by the Department of Literary Arts and the Brown Arts Institute as part of the institute’s IGNITE series.
The women are “two of the most masterful writers of our time globally,” said Matthew Shenoda, literary arts department chair, in an interview with The Herald.
Evaristo is a Booker Prize-winning author for her novel “Girl, Woman, Other,” and Rankine is a MacArthur Fellow and the bestselling author of “Citizen: An American Lyric.”
Shenoda praised Evaristo for having “broken multiple barriers for both women and people of color,” and using multiple genres and mediums to transform the world around her.
He also recognized Rankine for her experimentation and innovation in literature: “The iterative and experiential spaces (Rankine) creates” transcend the boundaries between the page and the reader’s social sphere, he said.
Claudia Rankine is a MacArthur Fellow and the bestselling author of “Citizen: An American Lyric.”
“I can think of few American poets whose poetry get folks talking and thinking about the systemic realities that govern our lives in the way that Rankine does,” Shenoda continued.
The event was intended to highlight the presence of community in writing, according to Shenoda. The evening began with readings from Evaristo’s “Girl, Woman, Other” and Rankine’s “Triage,” which is currently a work in progress.
Rankine’s reading was accompanied by a slideshow of deconstructed couches, images she said resonate deeply with themes of familiarity, disruption and memory in her work.
In an interview with The Herald, Rankine said her “ambition is always to make whatever it is I’m saying hold as much expanse as it possibly can.” She is known for blending essays, poetry and multimedia in her work.
The readings were followed by a conversation moderated by Kwame Dawes, the poet laureate of Jamaica and a professor of literary arts. Dawes invited audience members to shout out numbers, then prompted the authors to reflect on moments of their lives at those years of age.
Bernadine Evaristo is a Booker Prize-winning author for her novel “Girl, Woman, Other.”
Evaristo didn’t commit to being a writer until age 30, she told attendees.
“Even when my first book was published, I didn’t call myself a writer,” she said. “I was embarrassed about calling myself a writer.”
Evaristo also described how her life defied expectations for her age: “When I was 50, I got my first full-time job,” she said.
Owen Harris ’25, a literary arts concentrator, attended the event after he heard Rankine speak at a University event last semester. “I’ve never heard of Bernadine Evaristo, but after this, I'll definitely be checking her out,” he told The Herald.
Rachna Iyer, a senior research assistant at the Warren Alpert Medical School, had never read either of the books excerpted during the event. But the readings, she said, felt “experimental and autobiographical.”
Both Rankine and Evaristo push the boundaries of poetry and literature, Shenoda told The Herald.
“One of the greatest things about art is its ability … to make us see the world a little differently,” he said.
Annika Singh is a senior staff writer from Singapore who enjoys rewatching Succession and cheating on the NYT crossword.
