Jacqueline Crooks: ‘Toni Morrison’s voice made me want to find my own’
The novelist on learning empathy from Charles Dickens, the playfulness of Irenosen Okojie and avoiding Jane Austen My earliest reading memory I was eight when
The novelist on learning empathy from Charles Dickens, the playfulness of Irenosen Okojie and avoiding Jane Austen My earliest reading memory I was eight when I was given The Water-Babies by Charles Kingsley, after being moved from my grandmother’s care to live with my mother and her husband, who I barely knew.
The story is about leaving one world, adapting to another. Surviving. It gave shape to unnamed feelings and developed my survival imagination: imagining beyond my circumstances. My favourite book growing up David Copperfield by Charles Dickens.
I followed David’s journey from exclusion to belonging. Dickens vivifies his characters; you grow alongside them. The novel taught me empathy, and that some relationships sustain us while others must be left behind.
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