Simi Bedford
BornSimi Bedford
Lagos, Nigeria
OccupationNovelist
Alma materDurham University
Notable worksYoruba Girl Dancing (1991)
Children3

Simi Bedford is a Nigerian novelist based in Britain. Her 1991 debut book Yoruba Girl Dancing, an autobiographical novel about a young Nigerian girl who is sent to England to receive a private school education, was well reviewed on publication and was the subject of a BBC Radio 4 abridgement.[1] Her second novel, Not With Silver, was published in 2007.

Biography

Bedford was born in Lagos, Nigeria,[2] to parents who had come there from Sierra Leone.[3] Her great-grandparents were from Nigeria and were rescued from a slave ship.[4] Bedford spent her early years in Lagos, before being sent for her education to Britain,[5] where she attended boarding-school from the age of six.[6]

She read Law at Durham University, and subsequently worked in the media, including as a radio presenter and a television researcher.[6] Living in London, she married and raised three children.[5] She is now divorced from her artist husband, Martin Bedford, but they still maintain a friendly relationship, even sharing space together in a house in Devon.[7]

Writing

Bedford's debut novel Yoruba Girl Dancing is semi-autobiographical, recounting the experience of a Nigerian girl's education in Britain,[8] which Francine Prose described in a Washington Post review as: "[b]eautifully written ... at once acerbic and moving, painfully honest about the cost of emigration and adjustment."[9] A five-part abridgement of Yoruba Girl Dancing (by Margaret Busby, read by Adjoa Andoh and produced by David Hunter) was broadcast on BBC Radio 4's Book at Bedtime in October 1991.[10] The novel is extracted in Busby's 2019 anthology New Daughters of Africa.[11][12]

Bedford's second novel, Not With Silver (2007), is historical fiction, focusing on mid-18th-century West Africa, slavery and court intrigue.[13] Drawing on its author's own ancestral history, Not With Silver is unique among books about slavery in depicting the lives of people in Africa before they were enslaved.[4] The Spectator's reviewer concluded: "This relentlessly honest book has no false or sentimental notes, absolutely no prettifying. A black warrior facing unexpected danger is taught to imagine the worst, 'look the leopard in the eye.' Simi Bedford does just that. A brave and uncomfortable labour of love."[14]

Bibliography

  • Yoruba Girl Dancing, London: William Heinemann Ltd, 1991, ISBN 978-0434055579; Mandarin, 1991, ISBN 978-0749310103.
  • Not with Silver, London: Chatto & Windus, 2007, ISBN 978-1856192354; Vintage (paperback), 2008, ISBN 978-0099445173.

References

  1. ↑ Hodapp, James, "The Proto-Afropolitan Bildungsroman: Yoruba Women, Resistance, and the Nation in Simi Bedford's Yoruba Girl Dancing", The Global South, Volume 10, Number 1, Spring 2016, pp. 130–149.
  2. ↑ Leese, Peter, Britain Since 1945: Aspects of Identity, Palgrave Macmillan, 2006, p. 50.
  3. ↑ Simi Bedford interview on Woman's Hour, BBC Radio 4, 25 July 2007. YouTube.
  4. 1 2 "Bedford's 'Complete' Slave Picture". BBC News. 3 September 2007. Retrieved 4 February 2016.
  5. 1 2 Cooper, Brenda (2011). Stories Fly: A Collection of African Fiction Written in Europe and the USA. New Africa Books. p. 60. ISBN 9780864866080.
  6. 1 2 "Simi Bedford", Black British Women Writers.
  7. ↑ Hodgkinson, Liz (20 July 2015). "Divorced? You Can Be Friends With Your Ex. I Should Know". The Telegraph. Retrieved 3 February 2016.
  8. ↑ Griswold, Wendy (2000). Bearing Witness: Readers, Writers, and the Novel in Nigeria. Princeton Studies in Cultural Sociology. pp. 26–27. ISBN 978-0691058290.
  9. ↑ Prose, Francine (27 September 1992), "England through young African eyes", Washington Post.
  10. ↑ "Listings", Radio Times, Issue 3539, 23 October 1991, p. 93.
  11. ↑ Busby, Margaret (9 March 2019), "From Ayòbámi Adébáyò to Zadie Smith: meet the New Daughters of Africa", The Guardian.
  12. ↑ New Daughters of Africa contributors, Myriad Editions.
  13. ↑ Dabydeen, David (30 August 2007). "Not With Silver, by Simi Bedford". The Independent. Retrieved 3 February 2016.
  14. ↑ Durrant, Digby, "Pity the oppressed; fear the oppressed", The Spectator, 7 November 2007.
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