The Mookse and the Gripes discussion

Awarded annually, this prize seeks out the best books by British/British resident BAME writers and awards one winner £1,000. The prize is unique in that it accepts entries published in the UK in 2017 by a writer of colour. Entries can be fiction, non-fiction, short story, graphic novel, poetry, children’s books, YA, teen and all genres. The prize is also open to self-published writers. The aim is the find the best writers of colour in the country.

Reni Eddo-Lodge was recently awarded the 2017 Jhalak Prize for Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race

The other books shortlisted for the inaugural Jhalak Prize were:

Nadeem Aslam, The Golden Legend
Kayo Chingonyi, Kumukanda
Xiaolu Guo, Once Upon A Time in the East: A Story of Growing Up
Meena Kandasamy, When I Hit You: Or, A Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife
Kiran Millwood-Hargrave, The Island at the End of Everything

The Guardian covered the prize in the same article as this year's RoC.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/boo...

I have read both Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race and When I Hit You: Or, A Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife and thought both were excellent.

Agreed on both Viv.

When I Hit You ... seems to be vying with Home Fire for this forum's choice as the best book on the Women's Prize shortlist.

I just read Why I'm No Longer Talking ..... and posted my review including some literary reflections prompted by the book

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

My children enjoyed The Island At The End of Everything and it was shortlisted for the Costa Award for Children's Books.

The full longlist is here

https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/1...

And includes a favourite book of mine (which we shortlisted for the Republic Of Consciousness Prize) - the King Lear retelling in Modern India We That Are Young by Preti Taneja (who is also passionate and eloquent on the topic of BAME representation in the worlds of British literature/publishing)

Finally, this was how the winnings of the prize were used

https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog...

My daughter rates The Island at the End of Everything very highly.

One thing I like with this is that it doesn't pull its punches as to what it is about. From the Q&A

Is this prize racist? How would you feel about a prize for only white authors? No. Ultimately, we have chosen to put our time and money and resources into this prize, highlighting this inequality, redressing this particular imbalance, confronting this lack of representation. This prize is about celebrating marginalised writers, not excluding overrepresented ones. If you feel you want to put together a prize for only white writers, put your time money and resources into setting one up and we’ll let the chips fall where they may.

My author is a writer of colour but they don’t live in the UK. Can they still enter? No. This country has a bad track record of nurturing homegrown talent. This prize is for British citizens or British residents. We’re hoping to highlight the need for more British writers of colour to be published in this country.

I have no problem with prizes set up for under-represented groups, whether they are BAME, women, small presses or authors translated from other languages, but I would rather they were not under-represented in the first place.

Interesting discussion this and interesting prize.

By my admittedly crude count, 4 of the 5 novels shortlisted for the 2017 U.S. National Book Award were by BAME authors, and 7 of the 10 longlisted novels were by BAME authors.

Most of the major UK based literary prizes are international, so not a direct comparison, but the British Book Awards (which is for writers based in the UK) does not have a great record.

Val wrote: "Most of the major UK based literary prizes are international, so not a direct comparison"

Yes, definitely not a direct comparison. The U.S. National Book Foundation's mission and values provide substantial flexibility to the judges each year:
"The mission of the National Book Foundation is to celebrate the best literature in America, expand its audience, and ensure that books have a prominent place in American culture.
"The National Book Foundation is guided by the following core beliefs:
-Books are essential to a thriving cultural landscape
-Books and literature provide a depth of engagement that helps to protect, stimulate, and promote discourse in American society
-Books and literature are for everyone, no matter where the reader is situated geographically, economically, racially, or otherwise."

Obviously any prizes drawing books and authors from many countries are going to be more culturally (and geographically) diverse than those limited to a single country, but the US limited National Book Award does seem to vary more ethnically than the British Book Awards. Both countries are ethnically diverse.
I don't know why that is, but perhaps it is because most of our prizes are international, so that (for example) a British-Asian or British-Afro-Caribbean author is more likely to be recognised by those broader international prizes (Booker, Baileys, Costa, etc.) than the internal ones, even when they are writing about the UK.

2019 longlist (for 2018 books) out:

Roma Agrawal, Built: The Hidden Stories Behind Our Structures
Akala, Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of the Empire
Raymond Antrobus, The Perseverance
Charlie Brinkhurst-Cuff (ed.), Mother Country: Real Stories of the Windrush Children
Yrsa Daley-Ward, The Terrible
Aminatta Forna, Happiness
Guy Gunaratne, In Our Mad and Furious City
Afua Hirsch, Brit(ish): On Race, Identity and Belonging
Damian Le Bas, Stopping Places: A Journey Through Gypsy Britain
Roy McFarlane, The Healing Next Time
Onjali Q. Rauf, The Boy At The Back of The Class
Sharlene Teo, Ponti

(https://www.thebookseller.com/news/ak...# - although oddly seems to miss out In Our Mad and Furious City)

I've read In Our Mad and Furious City - and also the Afua Hirsch book which is excellent and in a way is this year's equivalent of the 2018 winner Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race

I heard there was an interesting review of that book on your favourite football teams manager’s Twitter feed.

Glad this award is around as British BAME books often get overshadowed in award lists and online discussion by American ones.

Got a couple of these as audio, and been in a library queue for months for the Damian Le Bas book.

Good to see Aminatta Forna making a list - she is consistently interesting and I liked Happiness a lot.

Gumble's Yard wrote: "I heard there was an interesting review of that book on your favourite football teams manager’s Twitter feed."

Indeed - a reference to AFC Wimbledon for those who don't know: Hirsch lives in Wimbledon and was the subject of one of several awful tweets (now deleted) from the person appointed as the club's new manager
http://twohundredpercent.net/wimbledo...

Hirsch is also a judge on this year's Booker Prize.

Incidentally - rather ironically given the longlisting - she strongly dislikes the BAME label:

The concept of BAME has a lot to answer for, creating as it has the impression that as long as the minority box can be ticked, the job of improving diversity is done. But BAME encompasses people of Chinese or black African heritage, who are outperforming others in school exam results for example, as well as those of black Caribbean backgrounds, who – for a complex assortment of race- and class-based reasons – are more likely to be significantly behind. It includes Indian doctors, considerably over-represented at consultant level in the NHS, as well as Africans and Eastern Europeans, who make up a disproportionate number of hospital cleaners, in some cases paid below the living wage.

Is that from Brit(ish)?

I've never seen the term used about East Europeans before. Does she mean in the public and third sectors? (Too long away from working in that area :( ) I can see how it would make sense to do so there from a service provision viewpoint, but all cultural and online discussion I've seen tends to take the US path of defining it as the British equivalent term to PoC, i.e. people from non-white backgrounds.

Yes from Brit(ish)

And yes including Eastern Europeans in BAME seems odd but her wider point is an interesting one and I am not sure if I agree or not.

IMO it's a good point (probably most relevant for schools, universities and employers) that needs making, but on a day to day social-experience level it's also a very London / big city viewpoint as smaller towns can be less comfortable and more discriminatory for even 'model minorities'. And the quote itself highlights how even within one ethnic demographic (black African) there can be significant disparities, never mind between different groups under the BAME umbrella.

An interesting area and worth reading the book. I note the prize sometimes uses BAME but prefers 'writer of colour'.

Yeah, there has been quite a bit of criticism/discussion of its usage, e.g.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentis...

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/lo...

It is quite strongly associated with the public and voluntary sectors and a lot of white people not working in relevant areas probably never see it. One of my own reasons for using it (apart from as a way of connecting tacitly with old work) is that it's a British rather than an American term and I stuck to it stubbornly on GR in the past for that reason. Lately I've been using BAME for British contexts, and PoC /WoC etc if talking about American stuff, and/or as a synonym to vary vocab. Criticisms of PoC as a term (from the left) are rarer AFAIK, although not non-existent.

Though the problems with any terms, however current, that lump together disparate groups of people because of minority ethnicities are heavily connected with the underlying problem of racism.

I'm probably not the only one suffering from prize-announcement fatigue this week (there were 3 new lists posted on the board just yesterday), but here is the shortlist for the 2019 Jhalak, which has been announced:

Built: The Hidden Stories Behind our Structures by Roma Agrawal

Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire by Akala

The Perseverance by Raymond Antrobus (poetry collection)

Happiness by Aminatta Forna

In Our Mad and Furious City by Guy Gunaratne

The Boy At the Back of the Class by Onjali Q. Rauf (children's novel)

what is it with the first week of April and prizes. Was it planned as a post Brexit thing or something (culture still lives on)?

I have only read Gunaratne and Forna, but would be happy to see either of them win something.

It means that some distinctive prizes which it would be nice to give a bit more attention (like this one) don't get as much as they might at another time of year - at least among those who follow book awards in general.

I guess April means there has been enough time to read and re-read books from the previous year, without them starting to seem old and overtaken by new publications from the current year.

The prize also tweeted the following:

The shortlist is evenly divided between 3 men and 3 women and consists of fiction, YA, non-fiction, debuts, and poetry. It reflects the extraordinary range and quality of creative output by writers of colour in Britain.

Sometimes mixed-genre lists work and this one I think does. (Or I think most of the books look interesting.) Whereas the Folio one seems like an odd hodgepodge.

This works I think because it is a celebration of (in their words) the extraordinary range and quality of creative output by writers of colour in Britain, whereas the Folio is a rather desperate attempt to create something the Booker won't just copy. (And I still think they missed the most obvious trick - have translated and non-translated compete head-to-head a la Dublin Literary Award).

And the winner is ...

In Our Mad and Furious City by Guy Gunaratne

Nice to see that won something. Though a shame Akala missed out - Natives would have also made a great winner

2020 longlist out:

Johny Pitts - Afropean: Notes From Black Europe (Allen Lane)

Jasbinder Bilan - Asha and the Spirit Bird​ (Chicken House)

Mary Jean Chan - Fleche​ (Faber)

Irenosen Okojie - Nudibranch​ (Dialogue)

Candice Carty-Williams - Queenie​ (Orion)

Yvonne Battle-Felton - Remembered​ (Dialogue)

Jay Bernard - Surge​ (Chatto & Windus)

Dean Atta - The Black Flamingo​ (Hodder Children’s)

Claire Adam - Golden Child​ (Faber)

Maya Goodfellow - The Hostile Environment: How Immigrants Became Scapegoats​ (Verso)

Niven Govinden - This Brutal House​ (Dialogue)

Romesh Gunesekera - Suncatcher (Bloomsbury)

I've read a few of them: Afropean, Queenie, Remembered and Suncatcher.

Pleased to see Suncatcher on longlist , I really enjoyed it.

Afropean by Johny Pitts wins

Guardian write up

https://amp.theguardian.com/books/202...

2021 shortlist is

Romalyn Ante - Antiemetic for Homesickness (Chatto & Windus)

Catherine Cho - Inferno (Bloomsbury Circus)

Rachel Long - My Darling From the Lions (Picador)

Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi - The First Woman (Oneworld Publications)

Katy Massey - Are We Home Yet (Jacaranda)

Paul Mendez - Rainbow Milk (Dialogue Books)

Longlist also included:

Afshan D’Souza-Lodhi - [re: desire] (Burning Eye Books)

Caleb Femi - Poor (Penguin)

Kiran Millwood Hargrave - The Mercies (Picador)

Tammye Huf - A More Perfect Union (Myriad Editions)

Deirdre Mask - The Address Book (Profile Books)

Stephanie Scott - What’s Left of Me Is Yours (W&N)

The ceremony for winner announcement is available to watch live this evening (5pm UK) or on catch-up - free tickets here:

https://www.bl.uk/events/celebrate-th...

The First Woman wins - the book Robert and I had pegged as a serious Women’s Prize contender only to see if not even longlisted

Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer wrote: "The First Woman wins - the book Robert and I had pegged as a serious Women’s Prize contender only to see if not even longlisted"

I have not finished the book but from what I have read I would not be surprised to see this on the Booker list if eligible. I am not confident on publishing dates, but I thought this might be have been eligible last year.

It’s 1st October I think so eligible this year.

2022 longlist

Consumed, Arifa Akbar (Sceptre)

Somebody Loves You, Mona Arshi (And Other Stories)

Gay Bar, Jeremy Atherton Lin (Granta)

Like a Tree, Walking, Vahni Capildeo (Carcanet)

Keeping the House, Tice Cin (And Other Stories)

A Blood Condition, Kayo Chingonyi (Chatto &Windus)

The Roles We Play, Sabba Khan (Myriad)

Honorifics, Cynthia Miller (Nine Arches Press)

Things I Have Withheld, Kei Miller (Canongate Books)

The Khan, Saima Mir (PointBlank)

Brown Baby, Nikesh Shukla (Bluebird)

Things We Do Not Tell People We Love, Huma Qureshi (Sceptre)

I've read and would recommend Somebody Loves You (obviously also RoC featured) and Keeping The House.

2022 shortlist:

Consumed: A Sister's Story, Arifa Akbar (Sceptre) - biography (shortlisted for the Costa Prize)

Somebody Loves You, Mona Arshi (And Other Stories) - novel, longlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize

Like a Tree, Walking, Vahni Capildeo (Carcanet) - poetry, Poetry Book Society Winter Choice 2021

Keeping the House, Tice Cin (And Other Stories) - novel, longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize

The Roles We Play, Sabba Khan (Myriad) - graphic-memoir

Things I Have Withheld, Kei Miller (Canongate Books) - essays, shortlisted for the Bailie Gifford Prize

It's an impressive list in variety terms and books that have featured elsewhere.

But must admit having read the two novels - both of which I'd recommend - I'm not a poetry/essay/biography/graphic memoir person generally.

Nice to see a shoutout from the Jhalak Prize today to other prizes including the Republic of Consciouness.

We drew inspiration from literary prizes including the Polari Prize and Little Rebels Award and we have since been proud to join a range of prizes—including the Diverse Books Awards, the Barbellion Prize and the Republic of Consciousness Prize—to push forward a broad-based agenda of inclusion, equity and justice in publishing.

The Roles We Play was just announced as winner.

Was just browsing British Library events and saw that general release tickets for the Jhalak Prize 2023 online announcement will be available next week (9th March):
https://www.bl.uk/events/the-jhalak-p...

Jhalak Prize 2023 longlist just announced:
https://twitter.com/jhalakprize/statu...

More info here:
https://www.jhalakprize.com/the-prize

None of the Above: Reflections on Life Beyond the Binary
Birdgirl: A Young Environmentalist Looks to the Skies in Search of a Better Future
Takeaway: Stories from a Childhood Behind the Counter
The Attic Child
The Secret Diaries of Charles Ignatius Sancho
When We Were Birds
Here Again Now
Losing the Plot
I'm a Fan
Hiding to Nothing
Another Way to Split Water
The Room Between Us

I have read 4. Congratulations to Derek.

I've only read two so far but quite a few of these are very tempting.

Congratulations Derek! I will be reading Losing the Plot this weekend!