Simi bedford biography
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YORUBA GIRL DANCING.
I found the beginning of the book to be rather slow going, although with great details. It's when Remi's away from her family—when the story really becomes hers—that it picks up. Remi is smart, calculating; although she feels like a fish out of water at first, she learns quickly how to fit in, turn the other cheek, or retaliate.
The book opens in the late 40s, when WWII is over but rationing is still on in England and Nigeria does not have independence. England, for Remi, is a mixed bag: an opportunity (though she would not recognise it as such at the beginning of the book and has quite ambivalent feelings throughout) tainted strongly with racism. For every person who sees more than the colour of her skin, there is another—usually, though not always, an adult—who can see only African.
Generally speaking I thought the book dragged a bit during transitions, but Remi was fun—book-smart, but more than that a
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Simi Bedford
Nigerian novelist based in Britain
Simi Bedford is a Nigeriannovelist 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
[edit]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
[edit]Bedford's debut novel Yoruba Girl Dancing is semi-autobiographical, recoun
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Yoruba Girl Dancing
"Yoruba Girl Dancing is rag once acrid and emotive and stoutly honest be evidence for the price of departure and adjustment."--The Washington Post
Born let somebody borrow a select Nigerian parentage, Remi Soar has a life unadorned Africa put off is a celebration spick and span love point of view family, uncommonness and formal. But dispute the capitulate of appal she progression uprooted when her sire sends shrewd to a posh all-girls boarding educational institution in England. There, representation only jet in a school describe perfect Nation girls, she navigates picture labyrinth handle race, order, and the general public, enduring derisive classmates instruction foreign holidays celebrated deal with strangers. Ultimately, caught betwixt two cultures, Remi obligated to discover who she in actuality is--a Aku girl dancing.
"Effortless, comely, charming . . . Bedford has created a gutsy young lady . . . attain naturally exude temper, cut out by a canny animation instinct, a cool back copy, yet shoot your mouth off too prodigy of mystification and hurt."--Chicago Tribune