A Bite of the Apple by Lennie Goodings

Author:Lennie Goodings [Goodings, Lennie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780192563903
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Published: 2019-12-03T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

Beyond Borders

We had a little run-in with boundaries in the late 1980s. We received a manuscript from an agent who told us she was representing a British Asian author who had written some remarkable short stories for young people. We read and loved them, and decided we wanted to publish the collection in the Virago Upstarts series. The author’s name was Rahila Khan. Could we meet her? No, said the agent, who also hadn’t met her; she was apparently keeping the fact that she was writing fiction a secret from her family, and she didn’t live in London and could never get away from her home. So we corresponded by letter: agreeing the cover image, the cover copy. Rahila Khan provided us with a full biography, which we printed in the book: ‘Born in Coventry in 1950. She has lived in Birmingham, Derby, Oxford, London, Peterborough, and Brighton. In 1971 she married and now has two daughters . . . [in 1986] her first story, ‘Pictures’, was broadcast on BBC Radio 4’s Morning Story and since then five more have appeared on the programme.’ It was frustrating, but the many reasons provided to explain not meeting seemed credible.

Then the agent rang to say she had news about the author, and could we meet for lunch? Ruthie and I went off in great expectation: finally we would learn more. We arrived at the restaurant to find a slightly nervous agent. She had at last met Rahila Khan; or rather, she had met the person who wrote under that name. (And, it turned out, at least one other too.) His name was Toby Forward, and he was an Anglican vicar. Maybe he believed and felt he had just proved that it was easier to get published as a British Asian woman than a white man. Most surprisingly, this had never been done to us before.

Outraged, we went back to the office, sent out a press release, asked for the books in the shops to be returned to us, and pulped all his stock in our warehouse. I now see this was a little extreme. We could have probably just laughed it off—and then pulped his book. But we felt enraged by his duplicity. Possibly naively but in good faith we had taken ‘her’ story as the truth about the author and had presented his book as fiction by a British Asian woman to young people. We felt that we too were part of the misrepresentation—and we did not like being duped.

The press release set off fireworks. I was asked to go on Breakfast TV, BBC Radio 4, World at One, and it was all over the press. I protested falsehoods, talked about authenticity and ‘literary blacking-up’ (today I suppose I could have talked about cultural appropriation); the media attacked us for sexism and lack of humour; the tabloids had a go at us with headlines about feminists defrocking a vicar. Oh, not a time I would like to live through again . . .

Aside from thoughts on racism, lies, and feminism, a conversation and questions about the text emerged.

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