“The biggest thing that frustrates every child is inequality,” he says. “Children feel, not so much understand, but feel the injustice of inequality more than any of us. As an adult we start getting a bit wisened, we start to think that’s just the way the world is. But children are more likely to ask ‘why’?”


In his own case he said: “There was a lot of tension around different groups coming from different places and our family stuck out like a sore thumb. We were one of the few black families in our area and we were also very different in that most people in the UK – if they had seen black people – they were used to seeing Afro Caribbean people, not African people, especially not African people dressed in African clothes. And my parents were very proud, they would play Nigerian music from their house, have parties, so they didn’t hide where they were from and that upset many people in our area.”


Ade recently appeared in a Channel 4 programme called The Talk – about black parents having to help their children navigate society and avoid dangerous situations particularly with authorities. “If you don’t see that bias, or if you do but don’t do something to try and change it, that’s the real crux and the reason people refuse to believe it, because if they do, then they have to believe that they are part of the problem.”


Ade says: “You don’t have to make a blunt point. Just having a book where the main character is black and disabled and the other main characters are black, Asian, working class kids, from different background. What’s important to them is the content of their character and the fact that they value friendship and what they bring to the group. And the big characters in the book who are judgemental, they are the baddies. And, in simplistic terms, the open-minded people are the goodies.”


Solution: friendship


And it is friendship that solves problems in the book – not parents or other authority figures, not even libraries (although Ade says “I lived in my local library, Plaistow library. From seven to 16 I read pretty much every book in that library. They have a really important part to play in the community. I’m a fan of anything that brings communities together and libraries are one of those things, it’s what keeps us human.) Friendship played a big part in Ade’s real-life challenges and the Parsons Road Gang recreates some of that. They include “Melody the sensible organised one, Brian the problem solver, dexter the out-of-the-box thinker and entertainer...” but the diversity of their


Autumn-Winter 2020


backgrounds is not the important bit, because it wasn’t in real life: “Newham was one of the most ethnically diverse boroughs in the UK and one of the poorest. But there was the rich kid who lived up the road, the Asian kid around the corner, the white kid next door, and we didn’t see the colour of our skin, we just saw ‘can you play football? Are you funny? Will you be my mate?’ That’s the essence of this book, getting rid of all that judgemental nonsense.”


Ade says: ““Initially all kids are like magpies, we’re all like magpies, we all go for the thing that shines. Often that’s the group that seems to be the coolest or maybe who has the most likes on Instagram, or wears the flashiest clothes or is the loudest. But I found that I gravitated towards people that I found


interesting for different reasons. It was just that we bonded, they made me laugh, they all had something that I thought was cool. I guess it boils down to what you think is cool. I’ve always perceived cool as talent, but I also talk about defining your own cool.” If you’ve got friends who will always help you when things are not going well that was something I valued as a child, way more than anything else. Having people who are there, when you are at your lowest points, who help raise you up. That’s the lesson I hope the Parsons Road Gang can pass on to anyone who reads the books.” PEN&INC.


l Cyborg Cat and the Masked Marauder (9781848128507) by Ade Adepitan is out now and published by Piccadilly Press www.piccadillypress.co.uk/


PEN&INC. 17


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