Author from St Paul’s to have debut novel published

Solange Burrell, who was born and grew up in St Paul’s, has written a book which imagines a world where the slave trade never happened.

Yeseni and the Daughter of Peace is a product of the coronavirus pandemic, and is being published by Unbound, the UK’s first crowdfunding publishers.

“This process is awesome but often people from marginalised groups don’t have large networks of people with deep pockets so I am relying on people to notice this project is something special and pledge for it to make it happen,” says Solange. “I can’t do it without you and I wouldn’t want to.”

The book, which is set in the 1748, will be published once the crowdfunder reaches 100 per cent.

In Solange’s novel, the main character sees visions of life on slave ship and is encouraged by an oracle to travel through time in order to prevent the transatlantic slave trade from ever taking place.

With only two per cent of published authors and illustrators in the UK are people of colour, and only five per cent of people in the publishing industry self-identifying as Black African or of Caribbean descent, there is an astonishing lack of diversity in the UK publishing industry.

Solange hopes that by crowdfunding her book, she will play a part in changing that statistic.

Bristol24/7 spoke to the 34-year-old about the book.

In a sentence, what is Yeseni and the Daughter of Peace about?
It’s about a young lady who has an opportunity to travel through time to try and stop the slave trade from taking place. But it’s really about hope; exploration of thought, aspiration and human feelings, and how they play out. Then eventually exploring the idea that race is a social construct and has little basis in science. It is about so much.

Why publish through Unbound?
After I completed the first draft of my manuscript I quickly realised that I didn’t fit into literary agents’ boxes. Unbound didn’t have any boxes. Instead they had a space/platform that you could use to demonstrate why you should be published.  Tough as it gets at times, there is more freedom in publishing with Unbound.

Solange is publishing her debut novel through Unbound. Image: Solange Burrell

Normally you would find a literary agent first and then that agent would pitch to directly to publishers. Often literary agents are looking for very specific stories; most of them didn’t include my genre.

Honestly I felt quite disappointed, I’d spent months writing only to find that I’d been blocked, not by the quality of my work but because my story just wasn’t what they were looking for at that time. I couldn’t think of a story more topical for these times. I just couldn’t figure out what the issue was.

That’s when I realised the barriers that exist for black people and people from marginalised groups within publishing. I started researching and couldn’t believe only two per cent of published authors in the UK are Black. When you look closer at the process of application to literary agents, you soon understand why.

Why tell this story, and why tell it now? 
I think that this story had never really been told. We all know what a world with the transatlantic slave trade, as part of our history, looks like, just look around. I wanted to explore what the world would be like if that never happened.

I thought about what might have started slavery, I thought really pragmatically about it, and then I thought: “well, how could someone stop that from happening?”. Like what things would need to physically happen in order to stop it. “Where might she need to go, who might he need to talk to, how can she be exposed?”.

Solange Burrell was born and grew up in St Paul’s. Photo: Solange Burrell

I also wanted to tell a tale of Africa before the slave trade and a more complex tale about the slavery that existed in Africa before the transatlantic slave trade. A story about the families, the wars, the marriages the government structures and tribal systems, all before the transatlantic slave trade.

I wanted to describe the inevitable movement of people across vast landscapes within Africa and explore their reasons for making the journeys and what plights did they face at the destination or along the way? I wanted to explore all of this.

I also felt like the complex ethnic diversity within Africa’s continent isn’t often discussed or explored so I wanted to expose it and talk about the diversity within Africa. I didn’t want to tell a typical black and white tale, I really wanted to paint a deep picture for the reader to explore, taking them on a journey.

The story came to me all at once, complete in my mind. But a few months before, I started drawing to fill my days up. I drew a young lady and called the picture The Daughter of Peace.

Months later, after I had written the first few chapters, I started thinking about what my characters would look like, I went back to my scrapbook where I did all those initial drawings and realised I’d drawn the main character, Elewa, the daughter of peace. All those months before, even before I knew that I’d be writing a novel.

I also wrote it because for the first time in my life I had the time to write. I have been working in some form or other non-stop since I was 14 years old, totally out of choice.

At 14, I got my first job at Herbert’s bakery in St Paul’s. I’d work there two days a week after school until close and on the weekends as well. After that I worked at Specsavers on the weekend, all before my national insurance number came through.

Solange grew up in St Paul’s. Photo: Barbara Evripidou

At the time the government issued me with a temporary one. I don’t know if they still do that these days. I’ve always kept so busy with work I never gave myself the time to explore anything creative, I just kept myself busy in working.

This is strange because I am creative at heart, I think I may have been scared in some way to explore creativity, so I just kept busy with other things instead. But during Covid-19, everything shut down, all businesses all social gathering so I was sort of left alone with myself for the first time every and so I did what came naturally to me I started writing.

What was the inspiration for the tale?
Some of my inspirations are the Star Trek television series franchise; From The Original, Voyager to Deep Space Nine. Ken Burn’s documentary on the Vietnam War. Friends and family and things they say and do.

Outlander, the historical TV series from Diana Gabaldon developed by Ronald D. Moore. Old Jamaican folklore, tales that are quintessential Jamaican and how curious and elegant they are. The BBC documentary Out of Africa by Dr Alice Roberts. The maroons of Jamaica, the plight of the indigenous in Canada. Many inspirations for the tale, so many!

How long did it take to go from initial idea to this stage?
This is my first novel so I had no idea how long it would take or even really how long it had to be to really considered a novel. I would look to online forums where writers described their “novels of appox 70,000” then another would quickly interject correcting them that “70,000 wasn’t really a novel, it was more of a novella”. “Gosh these people are specific and quite tough,” I thought, until I took a look at the manuscript application process then I started to understand why they’re like that.

So I decided on my own desirable word count, thought about how I would attack it and started to write. Once I wrote one chapter I figured out how long it would roughly take me to write 20 chapters and that was my goal.

Only, what I didn’t know then was that different chapters took different timeframes to write. Some could take up to two weeks to write whilst others would only take a few days. Those are some of the things only experience can teach you I guess.

The novel will be published when 100 per cent of the crowdfunder has been reached. Photo: Unbound

The most I’d ever written on any one projects was about 10,000 words in my dissertation at university. So I thought it would be like eight dissertations. I tried to plan each chapter but that didn’t really work for me. I preferred to just flow with what I felt at that time. I started writing in April just at the beginning of the pandemic, so that’s eight months ago now.

What do you hope people take from it?
I want it to give people hope, make them think about the world in a way that they might not have thought about it before.

If I can create a world where slavery didn’t exist, then that world does exist, in some way, at least within the pages of this book, and when people read it, a little peace of that world will, hopefully, stay with them. I also want people to care about what’s going to happen next within the plot. I want people to finish the book and feel inspired.

Back the book at www.unbound.com/books/yeseni

Main photo: Solange Burrell

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