When Maria Paul was a little girl, she began to wonder if she was a celebrity.
Visiting her grandmother in Bootle, she remembers heads turning and passers-by staring open-mouthed at her family as they walked down the street.
Then there was the uncle who refused to look at her, while her nan always seemed to be in a hurry to usher them inside her house.
She shrugged it all off – but, as she grew up, she realised the truth was far more sinister.
Maria’s mum, Lillian, was white and was shunned by much of her family after falling in love with and marrying a black man, Nwoko, in 1970s Liverpool.
“I remember it vividly,” Maria says. “We would go to Bootle and see my nan. We were walking down the road and a car was going past, and the driver was just watching us.
“I was going to my sister ‘We must be famous!’
“I didn’t know it was because we were black – we lived in Liverpool 8, and it was a melting-pot of different cultures.
“We were protected there, and colour was not an issue until we went to other parts of Liverpool.”
Maria grew up to become an actress and drama practitioner, and she became determined to document the experiences of women who, like her mum, had interracial relationships.
It’s resulted in Sweet Mother, an ongoing oral history project to chart the stories of white women from L8 who faced racism after they fell in love with and married black men in the 1960s and ’70s.
Told through verbatim accounts, it’s social history but also a celebration of those women – and the community of Toxteth.
Maria, 46, said: “I had experience of the racism my mum endured, and I really felt, as an artist, that it was very important to archive those stories and document the strength of the women in our community.
“With Brexit and everything else going on in this country, there’s an undercurrent of something negative. For me, this is something positive, and it’s needed more than ever now.
“People associate L8 with the uprising in 1981 and I want to change people’s perceptions. We get a lot of backlash from outside, but this is a community where people stick together and support each other.
“You have to tell your truth.”
Her father, Nwoko Paul, was a boxer who moved to the UK – first to St Helens, then Liverpool, from Calabar, Nigeria, when he was 15.
His promoters found his name difficult to pronounce, so he became known as Victor Paul.
He and Lillian met in Toxteth in the 1960s, where her sister, Maria’s Aunt Helen – known to the family as Nellie – already lived. Lillian was initially drawn to the vibrant community for its energy and the music of its many clubs.
But when she fell in love with Nwoko, she was faced with a heartbreaking dilemma.
“My mum’s family said: ‘You have to choose’,” mum-of-three Maria says. “It was her family or my dad. She picked him and moved to L8, which shows hr strength. That’s what she did for love.
“You can imagine that L8 was where my mum felt safe bringing up black children.
“She would go and see my nan now and again and she’d take us with her, but growing up I don’t remember my mum’s family coming to see her – except my Aunt Nellie, who was in L8 and also had mixed-race children.
“I remember when we went to my nan’s she would usher us in so no- one could see us.
“We would go in and my uncle, who must have been 20-odd, maybe 30, would be sitting in a chair. We had to cross the living room and he wouldn’t even look at us.
“I just thought he was sick! He just sat there looking at the TV. I’m glad I was oblivious to it.
“I always used to feel sorry for my mum because she was always a bit sad for a day or two after we went to see my nan.
“It’s only when you grow up that it makes sense.”
Maria’s parents were married for 10 years, but there has been no trace of Nwoko in the years since they split, and she believes he could have been deported to Nigeria.
She named her company, Nwoko Arts, in tribute to him.
“When they split up, we don’t know what happened to him,” she says. “I’ve been on the births and deaths register and there’s nothing.”
Lillian became a single parent struggling on limited resources, and she was determined to keep her children connected with their Nigerian heritage.
“She would cook African food for us, and she did it to instil that culture in us,” Maria smiles.
“I hated it when I was a kid because I wanted chips and egg!”
Mum-of-six Lillian – also known as poet Lily Paul – later moved to Everton and died in 2008.
Five years ago, Maria and Margaret O’Connell, formerly of the Lantern Theatre, secured funding for her long-awaited project.
She began by talking to women she knew in L8, by now in their 70s, about their experiences.
“I knew them and they trusted me,” she says. “They were able to give me their stories honestly. As someone from that community, I didn’t want their stories to be lost or someone coming into our com-munity to tell them.”
It turned into a scratch performance, Married in Black, which was a sell-out at the Lantern Theatre.
That has now evolved into Sweet Mother – and Maria says it’s still very much a work in progress.
“There is so much material,” she says. “You could literally do a six- hour play with it.
“The stories are so strong – they are about struggling, about getting by. There’s so much I wanted to put in it, which is good! It’s better to have more material than not.”
The latest phase of the project is being staged at the Royal Court Studio on March 13 and 14 with a grant from the Arts Council.
Maria says: “I’m made up that it’s progressed to this point. People should be able to come to a theatre in the city centre and watch their stories being told.
“However, this doesn’t feel like the end. I’m hoping to tour it next year and I’ve got an idea of doing a pilot for a drama series. Each episode would tell a different woman’s story.
“It’s exciting, and this is only the start of it.”
Sweet Mother is at the Royal Court Studio on Friday, March 13 and Saturday, March 14, at 7.30pm.
Tickets are £12 (£10 concessions) from www.liverpoolsroyalcourt.com or call the box office on 0151 709 4321.
There will also be a launch event at the Caribbean Centre, Upper Parliament Street, on February 28.
For more information, find Nwoko Arts on Facebook.
