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books@palatinate.org.uk

Black history month: author spotlights

Jessica Donaldson and Ellen Olley discuss the impact of Roxane Gay and Derek Walcott

There is a wonderful (and supremely unflattering!) photo of me from my holiday this year; wrapped in my towel, I am lying in a position similar to a corpse on Brighton Beach. Beside me? Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay. The essay collection had accompanied me over the entirety of the 5 day trip — on the train, on the bus and now on the beach. I had even cracked it open whilst watching England’s defeat at the Euros… this book had been through a lot.

I had come across Gay many times before, online or in an article, usually receiving copious amounts of praise and attention. Always meaning to pick up one of her works, it wasn’t until this summer that I finally settled in to read ‘Bad Feminist’. ‘Time’ had called the novel ‘a manual on how to be human’. Gay is “the gift that keeps on giving”. With such praise in mind and little idea of what the novel was actually about, I began it with high expectations.

The ability to make the mundane exciting is, for me, part of what makes Gay so special as an essayist. She doesn’t need to discuss ‘big’ or ‘powerful’ topics to draw you in. On the contrary, she shines on a smaller level. A manifesto on How to Be Friends with Another Woman is another one of my favourite essays and provides feminist advice on a human level. Telling us to “abandon the cultur-

of us struggle to shake off. Gay takes the seemingly mundane and gives it a voice, and manages to stand out as a prominent essayist and voice in feminist literature, despite being a self-confessed ‘bad feminist’. I couldn’t help but wonder, prior to reading the text, why this was. Yet, having reached the final page, I got it. For one, throughout all of her discussions, she never preaches or condescends. Even when she does discuss ‘big’ topics, such as racism in the essay The Last Day of a Young Black Man, she doesn’t utilise academic or complex language. Instead, it is understandable, empathetic, and emotional. Secondly, she also achieves a level of relatability that feminists text often fail to reach. She is honest about her past experiences, no matter how painful. She does not sanitise her experiences, no matter how messy. In not trying to be relatable, Gay

Her feminism is messy and realistic

al myth that all female friendships must be bitchy, toxic, or competitive”, Gay speaks to stereotypes and judgement that even the best becomes even more so. Gay says herself that she embraces being a so-called “bad feminist” because she isn’t trying to be an example. When one reads the poetry of Derek Walcott, one cannot help but be transported. Like many other great artists before him, Walcott’s poetic process was instinctive. A segment would come to him, a couple of lines perhaps, and the journey would begin of the authentic construction of verse around this vignette. Much of his poetry captures this feeling of journey and development and it is this balance of the dynamic and the delicate which underlies the mastery of his work.

His talent is best demonstrated in Omeros, the epic which would seal his Nobel Prize, awarded in 1992. Walcott takes the European Homeric epic form but sets it amongst the Caribbean islands of his youth. He takes a complex cast of characters and uses their individual journeys, both literal and emotional, to elegantly tease out the themes which haunt all of his poetry, conceptions of home, History, and the self, in a post-colonial world, as well as confronting his own poetic journey.

His themes are often placed in conflict in Walcott’s dramatic early work. He explores the conflict between “Africa and the English tongue I love” in The Schooner Flight - his African heritage and the European oeuvre he so admires. He was heavily influenced by Milton, Shakespeare and Yeats, amongst others. However, he knows many of the European poets were “ancestral murderers” too (Ruins of a Great House). Much of his work references this conflict in the oblique.

It was this treatment of heritage which brought significant criticism against Walcott in the middle of his career. This was the time of Black Power, and many of Walcott’s contemporaries sought to create a stark divide between the colonial and post-colonial world, rejecting European influence. Walcott’s response to this, as he explored in The Schooner Flight, was that to reject the colonial aspects of Caribbean history was tantamount to the rejection of African history by the colonists: “The first chain my hands and apologize, “History”; / the next said I wasn’t black enough for their pride.” He may have been “absolutely a Caribbean writer”, as he once said, but he was one that stood noticeably apart from his contemporaries.

His poetry captures a journey...The balance of the dynamic and the delicate underlies the mastery of his work

Walcott’s legacy is yet to be decided. His memory is coloured by unorthodox views and misconduct allegations. However, it is clear that his poetry will live on as an example of his prodigal talent in capturing the effervescence of his Antillean home.

music@palatinate.org.uk

Pinkpantheress: the voice of Gen-Z?

Jieyi Li comments on the rise in TikTok artists and their relevance to the Gen-Z female

There is something very apt about PinkPantheress’ label of her own style of music as the ‘new nostalgic’. The masses of fans and music magazines who have rushed to experience and apprehend the boom of this year’s most recent breakthrough artist have noted the interweaving of mid 2000s D’n’B and UK Garage music with contemporary movements of lofi and bedroom pop in her sound. Indeed, if her internet presence is anything to go by, PinkPantheress has been accepted as the ultimate voice of GenZ. After posting her music on TikTok at the beginning of the year, her music hit viral popularity with hundreds of millions of streams, and numerous top 40 chart entries. She is now signed with a label with which she recently released her first mixtape to hell with it, and her face is the cover of Spotify’s ‘Our Generation’ playlist. Chris Deville of Stereogum writes “this still mostly anonymous 20-year-old university student from South London could not be more zeitgeist-y if she tried”, and her audience can’t seem to agree more.

These artists usually fit into the new category of DIY artists who create everything in their bedrooms

PinkPantheress’ emergence on the music scene can be seen as one of many waves of new, young, internet-born super stars that have made their initial mark through unpredictable social media algorithms and the mass consciousness of netizens. Olivia Rodrigo’s escalation to fame in 2020 is attributed to the use of her songs in TikTok videos, and beabadoobee met a similar fate when her song ‘Coffee’ was sampled in a song that garnered 4.1 billion plays on TikTok in March 2020 alone. Here, there is a defiance of industry-generated stardom. These artists usually fit into the new category of DIY artists who create everything in their bedrooms – PinkPantheress’ TikTok sounds were all created on Garageband in the evenings of working weeks and university terms.

...the parallels between her music and diary-keeping should not be ignored.

Less noticeable but equally crucial is the voice that these young female artists have carved into mainstream music for women their own age. The early to mid 2010s saw the rise of artists such as Marina and The Diamonds and Lana del Rey, yet there was a detachedness between their music’s ideas of femininity and that of the 2010s teen. Both artists were in their mid-20s when their music was released, and their reflections of being a young girl are mostly retrospective. What Pinkpantheress and recent artists like her introduce is a perspective that seems like it’s straight out of a present-day eighteen-yearold’s diary. Written in her bedroom in the evenings after a long day, the parallels between her music and diary-keeping should not be ignored. A disillusionment over the promises of adolescence, where they find that their expectations for themselves and those of others have not been met is shared across these artists’ music. In her song ‘Brutal’, Rodrigo mocks, “I’m so sick of seventeen, where’s my fucking teenage dream?” Pinkpantheress voices a more jaded sentiment in ‘Nineteen’ where she sings “I wasn’t meant to be//This bored at nineteen”. Here, there is a tangible sense of existential crisis caused by intense loneliness. PinkPantheress describes life moving on around her and being left behind, an experience shared by most in that transitional period where you return from university and your home has changed. It is also worth noting the cultural diversity represented by these artists – PinkPantheress’ mother is Kenyan, Olivia Rodrigo is half Philippino, and beabadoobee migrated from the Philippines at two years old. As the historical contributions of the black community are being recognised this Black History Month, the waves they are making in the music world ought also to be celebrated. This internet-facilitated group of Gen-Z women are announcing the Gen-Z female experience to girls just like themselves. As these diverse artists share their experiences and display true vulnerability through their lyrics, their female listeners can feel less alone as they navigate life as a late teen.

Easy on Me by Adele

Described by The Guardian as “reliably, relatably Adele-esque”, this leading track asks for forgiveness and understanding. The single promises to be inescapable this Autumn, and we can’t wait for the album on November 19th.

Hymn for St Cecilia by Choir of St. John’s College, Cambridge

The Choir of St John’s has had a big week. The first track released from their upcoming album Sicut Aquilae (available November 19th), this setting of Howells’ is simply magnificent.