Last year, we published Dancing Barefoot: How to be Common by Glyn Brown. It’s an incredible book: a beautifully written memoir which lays bare the difficulties which come with living hand-to-mouth as a freelancer, and which are all the greater for women. So far, so good. But what sets Dancing Barefoot apart from a slew of other books is that it interweaves Glyn’s story with the fascinating and mould-breaking lives of seventeen women from history; and we can guarantee – because these women were poor and/or working class – that you’ll have heard of hardly any of them. Read this book and you can’t help but think how women’s lives have changed over the centuries, and how they haven’t.
We cannot recommend Dancing Barefoot highly enough, and we felt it only right to have a chat with Glyn about the book, and share it with you. Over to Glyn….
What did putting your story out in the world mean to you?
Validation: someone was hearing the story I had to tell. In many ways it’s not an unusual story – someone working-class takes a risk on trying to make their creative dream happen when they can’t afford the time to do it. But you don’t see a lot about this. What you see is blue-collar squalor, poverty porn. I wanted to explain about my little niche in the precariat, where you’re knackered doing a shit job to pay the rent but by night you’re working on the thing that gives life meaning. Hey, and make that funny.
What’s changed for you since Dancing Barefoot was published?
I feel a real sense of relief, frankly. Some people have been horrified by the book. Not just the life I’ve lead, but they genuinely didn’t seem to realise someone from a rough-ish background (the kitchen tap stuck out of a cement wall, that gives you a picture) could be witty and even, in my sleuthing about outspoken working-class women from history, intellectual.
How much research did you do on the characters in the book? And did you learn anything about yourself from writing it?
I did years of document hunting and I loved it. I was reading books or looking through library papers at 5am before work, on the train, then when I got home. There was a scarcity of information because these women were common, not the daughters of lords or landowners, so in most cases no one wrote about them. I often had to think hard to work out what could have occurred to link one fact to the following one, then I’d stumble on something and it fell into place. They lived blazing, adventurous lives, they lost their hearts, but they refused to quit because they believed in their ambition, whether to be a writer, a doctor, an artist, even an early pilot. They became real to me, probably because I got a bit obsessed, and it seemed they were in the room, eating my Tracker bars, looking at my music. I fell in love with them.
I’d just probably better add that I’d had a slightly resigned attitude to life. Some of these women did too – if you get knocked back enough it can happen – but most remained buoyant. I created scenes where they’d argue me out of my bad attitude, or argue hilariously with each other. It was great therapy. It gave me courage. And man, it was so much fun having conversations with these incredibly different women.
What’s the nicest thing anyone’s said about the book, or that’s happened as a result of the book?
Apart from some lovely reviews, quite a wide variety. A friend of my sister’s, a Glaswegian single mum working in the arts for disabled kids, said, ‘Dancing Barefoot made me feel proud and triumphant to be working-class and still staying true to what I want to do, hard as it’s been.’ She left my sister a really moving voicemail which my sister sent me. Vastly different, Johnny Green, who was road manager for The Clash, wrote to say he’d adored the book and it had been ‘Revelatory’, bloody hell, and he’s recommending it. At the Faversham Literary Festival there was spontaneous applause when I said if a man leads a risky life he’s a bohemian but if a woman throws herself into a wild existence – and, yes, I’ve done that, and the consequences of it are in the book – she’s a slag. Applause, stamping and whistles! At the Wolverhampton Lit Fest, one girl said she felt understood and hugged me for ages, and that was wonderful. A male friend told me, ‘I thought I knew you, but I really didn’t’, which of course could go several ways, and another male mate, a chemical engineer, said, ‘I thought I’d just skim it, but I read the first page and realised I had to take it on holiday with me.’ (A page-turner is exactly what I’d wanted to produce.) But my best female friend just said, ‘It spoke to us all.’ You can’t get better than that.
Was it important to you to represent these overlooked historical women in the book? If so, why?
As I mentioned, there was so little knowledge of them, and that drove me nuts. I hunted for ages to find them, women who genuinely hadn’t had a privileged upbringing and so hadn’t had financial or any other encouragement; they were raised to be servants or cleaners and getting out of their lane was frowned on. And their stories were so cinematic and contemporary, very relatable. They were all better value than, say, Taylor Swift, just as good value as Simone de Beauvoir or Aretha Franklin – sassy, funky, clever. So many people have talked to me about them. It was about damned time people heard what they did.
What projects are you working on now?
I’m not gonna say ‘something rubbish’ because I’ve learned from my women to be positive, so I’ll say something I’m really getting a kick out of.
Anything else you’d like to say??
Just that if you’re writing and looking for a publisher and you keep getting turned down, don’t give up. You will find the right one. New publishers appear constantly, staff change, or the right publisher might be one more click away, as it was for me. Many publishers, I’ve found, are amazingly establishment, very set in their ways, and that means nothing new ever gets discovered. Don’t let them beat you. You’re better than them.
Dancing Barefoot is available in our online shop, and can be ordered from all good bookshops.
