Margaret Busby: ‘My friend Bonnie Greer fearlessly spoke out and forged connections’

Bonnie Greer personified courage, humour, principle and generosity. Before knowing her in person, I met her work. Her 1994 debut novel Hanging by Her Teeth – about a Black American woman travelling through the US and Europe in search of her father – was sent to me for endorsement by its publisher, and I commented unhesitatingly: “Writing with sharpness, wit and poignancy, Bonnie Greer gathers the sequestered memories behind one Black woman’s bitter-sweet blues.”

The scope of Bonnie’s own life is beyond anything fictional, encompassing highs and lows, triumphs and challenges, her trajectory starting in the West Side of Chicago and ending up navigating iconic areas of London – whether Holland Park or Covent Garden or Soho – as if to the manor born. It was an honour to become her friend, sharing many a good time, offering a consoling shoulder if needed. An added bonus was to meet her husband David Hutchins. What a wonderful mutually supportive team they made.

Bonnie’s activism marched side by side with her creativity and powers of persuasion. Friendship, support, empathy and behind-the-scenes involvement were all part of who she was. She could be effervescently sociable. There was an era when she relished get-togethers of a sort of ladies-who-lunch club that she would organise, where we might chat for hours, exchanging memories, planning dreamy never-to-be-fulfilled projects. I recall one gathering that took place at the House of Commons – with Diane Abbott, Verna Wilkins, Maya Jaggi and Nana Ayebia Clarke – when Bonnie suddenly made us all pause to reflect on the fact we were all sitting there, with a view of the Thames and London’s landscape, given where we had come from.

Seemingly ready to re-invent herself, she was perhaps defying anyone to easily label her. She could be public intellectual, television pundit, dramatist, librettist, academic. Her repertoire was wide-ranging and ever-expanding, with fresh ideas emerging at every opportunity. She fearlessly spoke out, forged new connections, took on weighty burdens.

She lent expertise to numerous national cultural institutions – including on the boards of the British Museum, the Royal Opera House and the London Film School, and as vice president of the Shaw Society and chancellor of Kingston University London. She shared her vision with such ventures as the Black Theatre Co-operative and Talawa Theatre Company (where, during her stint as artistic director, she mooted an ambitious dramatisation of my 1,000-plus-page anthology, Daughters of Africa). We were both patrons of the SI Leeds Literary Prize for unpublished fiction by Black and Asian women in the UK.

It was pure delight to accompany her anywhere to experience music, art, drama, film or anything intellectually stimulating.

In June 2019, we went to a lecture by Lonnie Bunch III at the British Library – then newly appointed to secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, the first African American and first historian appointed to do so, who recently announced his intention to retire at the end of 2026. Dr Bunch’s recent communication with me echoes my own feelings: “I have been made better by my interactions with Bonnie. She was generous with her time, with her contacts and with her friendship. Her passing is an immeasurable loss. I am crying but also smiling because of her impact on so many. She was simply amazing. Her ability to speak truth to power made her such a unique voice in both the UK and the US.”