Simi Bedford

{{short description|Nigerian novelist based in Britain|bot=PearBOT 5}}

{{Infobox writer

| name = Simi Bedford

| birth_name = Simi Bedford

| birth_place = Lagos, Nigeria

| occupation = Novelist

| alma_mater = Durham University

| notableworks = Yoruba Girl Dancing (1991)

| children = 3

}}

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.Hodapp, James, [https://www.academia.edu/31655329/The_Proto-Afropolitan_Bildungsroman_Yoruba_Women_Resistance_and_the_Nation_in_Simi_Bedfords_Yoruba_Girl_Dancing "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. Her second novel, Not With Silver, was published in 2007.

Biography

Bedford was born in Lagos, Nigeria,Leese, Peter, [https://books.google.com/books?id=L5kcBQAAQBAJ&dq=simi+bedford+born+lagos&pg=PA50 Britain Since 1945: Aspects of Identity], Palgrave Macmillan, 2006, p. 50. to parents who had come there from Sierra Leone.[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WpdhEJWQvk Simi Bedford interview] on Woman's Hour, BBC Radio 4, 25 July 2007. YouTube. Her great-grandparents were from Nigeria and were rescued from a slave ship.{{Cite news|url = http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6972124.stm|title = Bedford's 'Complete' Slave Picture|date = 3 September 2007|work = BBC News|access-date = 4 February 2016}} Bedford spent her early years in Lagos, before being sent for her education to Britain,{{Cite book|title = Stories Fly: A Collection of African Fiction Written in Europe and the USA|last = Cooper|first = Brenda|publisher = New Africa Books|year = 2011|isbn = 9780864866080|pages = 60}} where she attended boarding-school from the age of six.[http://www.vub.ac.be/TALK/BBWW/index.php?id=69 "Simi Bedford"], Black British Women Writers.

She read Law at Durham University, and subsequently worked in the media, including as a radio presenter and a television researcher. Living in London, she married and raised three children. 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.{{Cite news|url = https://www.telegraph.co.uk/goodlife/11705449/Friends-after-divorce-It-is-possible.-I-should-know.html|title = Divorced? You Can Be Friends With Your Ex. I Should Know.|last = Hodgkinson|first = Liz|date = 20 July 2015|work =The Telegraph|access-date = 3 February 2016}}

=Writing=

Bedford's debut novel Yoruba Girl Dancing is semi-autobiographical, recounting the experience of a Nigerian girl's education in Britain,{{Cite book|title = Bearing Witness: Readers, Writers, and the Novel in Nigeria|last = Griswold|first = Wendy|author-link = Wendy Griswold|publisher = Princeton Studies in Cultural Sociology|year = 2000|isbn = 978-0691058290|pages = 26–27|url = https://books.google.com/books?id=kf7_x8yz430C&q=%22simi+bedford%22&pg=PP1}} 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."Prose, Francine (27 September 1992), [https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/entertainment/books/1992/09/27/england-through-young-african-eyes/5cfeb3a4-62c5-4d9f-8387-425264de3c79/ "England through young African eyes"], Washington Post. 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.[http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/schedules/radio4/fm/1991-10-23 "Listings"], Radio Times, Issue 3539, 23 October 1991, p. 93. The novel is extracted in Busby's 2019 anthology New Daughters of Africa.Busby, Margaret (9 March 2019), [https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/mar/09/from-ayobami-adebayo-to-zadie-smith-meet-the-new-daughters-of-africa "From Ayòbámi Adébáyò to Zadie Smith: meet the New Daughters of Africa"], The Guardian.[https://myriadeditions.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Myriad-Editions-New-Daughters-of-Africa-Contributors.pdf New Daughters of Africa contributors], Myriad Editions.

Bedford's second novel, Not With Silver (2007), is historical fiction, focusing on mid-18th-century West Africa, slavery and court intrigue.{{Cite news|url = https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/not-with-silver-by-simi-bedford-463597.html|title = Not With Silver, by Simi Bedford|last = Dabydeen|first = David|author-link=David Dabydeen|date = 30 August 2007|work =The Independent|access-date = 3 February 2016}} 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. 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."Durrant, Digby,

[http://www.spectator.co.uk/2007/11/pity-the-oppressed-fear-the-oppressed/ "Pity the oppressed; fear the oppressed"], The Spectator, 7 November 2007.

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}}.