It’s 2007, you’re sitting at the back of the bus, and the air is dense with the smell of chicken and chips. Sony Ericsson Walkmans are pressed against foggy windows, amplifying the sound of T2’s “Heartbroken”. Someone sidles up next to you – smelling of Lynx Chocolate or Impulse True Love – and asks: “Have you heard of Keisha The Sket?”
Variations of this conversation took place in classrooms, canteens and playgrounds across London in the mid-aughts. And thus, a 13-year-old’s first foray into creative writing went viral, before virality as we know it even existed.
For the uninitiated, Keisha The Sket (KTS) was written by someone called “Jade LB” on a desktop PC she had been gifted for her birthday. It was published chapter-by-chapter on the blogging platform Piczo between 2005 and 2007, and disseminated via Bluetooth and Infrared. Written entirely in text speak, it told the story of Keisha, a teenage girl from east London who finally gets it together with her childhood crush, Ricardo. But Keisha can’t seem to escape her reputation as a “top sket”, and thus a series of traumatic events unfold. The story was highly explicit, hyper-violent and packed full of ludicrous plot points, as exemplified by one line in the opening section: “I lay bck dwn an jus thought abat all da eventz of yesterday. Imagine dat, I gt lashed twice, gt a hubby and shanked sum1! Rahhh!”
KTS was an integral part of many people’s school years. The fact that it was by – and about – a young, working-class black girl at a time when few literary offerings reflected that experience certainly heightened its appeal (as did the graphic descriptions of sex). But then, it disappeared.
Like so many things from the pre-social media era, Keisha was eventually consigned to people’s memories. Alongside MSN, cubed hair bobbles and the high-street shop Bardo, it became a kind of cultural shorthand for having grown up in “the endz”, despite there being very little tangible evidence of it ever having existed. Now, 16 years later, Jade’s story is finally getting the recognition it deserves: on 14 October, Keisha The Sket is being released in book form for the first time ever. Its publication raises important questions about cultural archiving, literary gatekeepers and what is considered part of the canon.
Jade was, and remains, anonymous. What I can tell you is that in 2005, she was attending an all-girls secondary school in Hackney, east London. Today, she co-hosts the Echo Chamber podcast, teaches African politics and works with young people at a London university to develop their academic skills. Growing up, the mystery surrounding Jade’s identity was part of Keisha The Sket’s allure, and #Merky Books (the Penguin imprint founded by Stormzy that is publishing KTS) was well aware of this.
Like me, #Merky’s commissioning editor Lemara Lindsay-Prince read KTS as a teenager. “We were all in ICT suite, just poppin’ off chatting there, and someone had printed off the first few chapters of the story. I just remember reading it aloud. And it was scandalous. And it was titillating. And it was a secret,” she recalls. “For it to be an actual publication is pedestal status for us.”
But Rachel Mann – Jade’s literary agent at Jo Unwin – says the fact that it took nearly two decades for KTS to reach a mainstream audience is symbolic of wider issues in publishing. “We should have known about [KTS] and we should have gone out and found Jade ourselves, because we should have had people working in our industry that had read Keisha The Sket.” She’s right, the story was devoured by thousands of teens – it even inspired spin-offs (like Deena and Rochelle The Sket) – but somehow it went completely unnoticed by parents, teachers and the mainstream publishing industry. “We shouldn't congratulate ourselves too much. It's shameful that we didn't see it until now,” says Mann.
The fact that an excerpt of the KTS landed on her desk at all speaks to the importance of diversity in literature. A young, black assistant called Donna Greaves forwarded it on, having read KTS as a teenager. “If Donna hadn't been employed in our agency, we might have missed it,” says Mann. “It's just such a vital point about representation at every stage. People are on it with publishing at the moment – obviously #Merky exists – but literary agents are the first gatekeepers, and they’re very often the most privileged of the industry.”
#Merky won the rights to KTS against two other major publishing houses (Mann won’t disclose which ones). Once the ink had dried, it was a question of format. How do you bring a story written entirely in 2005-era London slang to a wider readership? Early attempts to answer that question demonstrate how stifling – and exclusive – ideas surrounding literary “quality” can be.
“Initially, we decided on a rewrite,” says Jade. “It was a long editorial process of pinpointing all of the things that were wrong with the original in terms of traditional literature, and all the things that didn't make sense. Some of the slang and text language was just too urban, so I actually fixed it up. But then we were just like... this just takes the essence of [KTS] away.”
In the end, Jade and the team did include a standard English rewrite alongside the “OG” text, firstly, to open it up to as wide an audience as possible. “We’re talking about sharing something quite precious to my childhood with people en masse,” says Lindsay-Prince. “We want to bring people into the fold, and part of that means – quote, unquote – standardising the text.” The rewrite also gives Jade a chance to show off her present-day literary skills. KTS concluded abruptly in 2007 (to call it a cliffhanger would be generous), and the updated version finally gives Keisha the ending she deserves. Jade has fleshed out the characters and subplots, and enriched the text with details about location, music and fashion brands – all of which ultimately makes for a more satisfying reading experience.
It would be easy to dismiss KTS as salacious fanfiction. Jade was inspired by American erotica plucked from the shelves of Hackney Library; books like Harlem Girl Lost by Treasure E. Blue, Naked Truth by Chunichi and the rousing works of Zane. But to do so ignores the story’s import, not just as a work of literature but as a cultural artefact, too. KTS deals with some heavy themes; coercive control, toxic masculinity and rape among them. And while we certainly weren’t applying a critical lens in 2007, today, KTS serves as a reminder of teenage attitudes towards sex in the 2000s. Five essays included in the upcoming book are vital in unpacking and contextualising these themes. “Sex was a conquest shrouded in arbitrary patriarchal rules that we plucked from religion and a heterogenous diaspora,” writes Jade in her opening essay. “My own lens was informed by slut-shaming, the policing of young women’s sexual preferences, body counts and which sexual acts were deemed ‘acceptable’ to engage in.”
KTS is also a testament to black British creativity, and Jade thinks its publication is part of a wider trend. “We are in an age and a time where we are championing the things that people have done for The Culture,” she says, pointing to podcasts like The Receipts and 3 Shots of Tequila, as well as Candice Carty-Williams’ bestselling novel Queenie. Last year also saw the release of the “first grime movie” Against All Odds, and this month Channel U is finally getting the documentary treatment in a film titled Home Invasion.
As for KTS, the possibilities are endless. Mann wants to see it on university reading lists, and Jade is open to a TV series. But ultimately, her goal is to humanise Keisha. “There is a narrative that she’s completely gone, and I just don't believe that’s true. Keisha had many colourful years. But the reality is, the girls who have colourful teenage years usually become vanilla. They go to university. They have children. They’re just like everyone else,” she says. “If I do get the opportunity to continue writing about black girl and womanhood, we will see Keisha in all of the new characters and stories [I write], because Keisha could have been anyone.”
£9.19. At amazon.co.uk
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