Simi Bedford

"I went to school in England and I was taught about slavery, but I was taught about it from a very European point of view - that this was a horrible episode, but actually, Europeans then realised that it was a terrible thing they were doing and so very kindly, as a gift, gave freedom to the slaves."

"How we danced. The music poured through our veins and we flowed with the beat. The wheel had come full circle. We wound and unwound our bodies seamlessly as if we had no bones. Is there a sight more beautiful, the older women said, than a Yoruba girl dancing?"

"Through Yoruba Girl Dancing, Simi Bedford ingeniously, entertainingly, eloquently, and intelligently examines the complicated issues of home and identity, language and diaspora, in multiple contexts."

"You can read a lot of books and the main characters are white people - especially in the classics - and after a while you forget that you're not white, almost, because it's this big pervasive culture. And then you find books like Yoruba Girl Dancing [by Simi Bedford] and you think: it's just as interesting to be Nigerian in England as it is to be white in England."

"In my pre-teen years, I read books such as Yoruba Girl Dancing by Simi Bedford, Beka Lamb by Zee Edgell and books by Rosa Guy. I also read a lot of Enid Blyton and Betsy Byars."