Our host Vick Hope is joined by journalist and broadcaster Charlene White.
Charlene is a pioneering journalist, author, and broadcaster. She began presenting ITV News in 2008 and in 2014 became the first Black woman to present ITV News at Ten. Charlene is also one of the presenters of daytime show, Loose Women. The show’s first all-black panel special, which Charlene helmed, won a Royal Television Society award and was nominated for a BAFTA. She also presented the award-winning ITV series IRL with Team Charlene – a mix of short films, animation and music dealing with racism in the UK, and how it impacts the lives of young people. Charlene uses her platform to mentor aspiring journalists, and work alongside various organisations to achieve better representation in the industry. Her critically acclaimed debut non-fiction book, No Place Like Home, was published last year.
Listen to the full episode here and read on to see Charlene’s top five most influential books written by women.
“It was a book that I grew up reading in my house. My brother, my sister and me – our parents read this book to all three of us. And one of the first presents that my brother bought my eldest, who’s now 7, was this book. […] For my kids, I want them to understand the joy of language, I want them to be eloquent and to make sure that their voices are heard in a way that makes sense. This book is a very early chance for them to do that.”
“One of my friends in the year above passed me her copy. And from the outset, I knew it wasn’t a book that my parents would necessarily want me to read. So I sort of hid it at the bottom of my school bag and I’d read it in secret every now and then. And I could not believe what was in this book! I guess when I got older, I realised it’s so beautifully written and it covered a lot of subjects that we weren’t covering in school – it taught me about boys and love and sex and relationships.”
“[My mum and my aunt] wanted us to read, especially the girls in our family, powerful women writers, black women writers who would be able to show us that being powerful, intelligent and wanting things in life was not bad. And through the writings of Maya Angelou and Toni Morrison I learned that.”
“It’s incredibly well-written and the story arcs are amazing and all the themes that run through it connect with so many of us. But for me, it was the connection to South London […] it’s a real celebration of South London. When books are set in South London, they tend to be really gritty and show the darker side, which yes, does exist. But it exists in so many other parts of the country too. For me, it was a real love letter to South-East London and that will always feel like a blanket wrapped around my shoulders.”
“I think for me it’s timing more than anything, which is why it was so impactful to me. One of my best and oldest friends, Daryl, passed away about five weeks ago. […] He was the one that was really there for me when my mum passed when I was 21. It’s almost like history repeating itself, seeing what his kids are going through. […] I think [this book] is a really good guide for anybody that’s going through grief to have an understanding that there are so many different ways to deal with this. And it’s not an admission of failure to say “Actually I need a little bit of extra help.’”
