Lawrence Hill is one of Canada’s most distinguished and published authors. In this extensive interview, we discuss everything in Hill’s purview. In his words, “I have to say that I don’t think I’ve ever been interviewed by somebody who had such a profound grasp of such a wide variety of things that I’ve shared, written, or spoken about whether they are personal, professional or things to do with my books or my family life.” This series will explore his life and philosophy, just for you, part 10.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: If you look at the early 20th century, we have The Holocaust. Similarly, if we look at the early 21st century, we have a singular tragedy in the Syrian refugee crisis. 12,000,000 Syrians are refugees, or more. By comparison with the total Canadian population, that is about 1/3 of Canada, at least. That rhetoric of those mentioned and unstated can be damaging to people in a similar manner as with blood or on being a ‘real [fill in the blank]’ (American, Canadian, and so on). These are individual human beings going through extraordinary circumstances.
You worked for the Ontario Welcome House at Toronto Pearson International Airport welcoming refugees at age 16. My sense is deep empathy for refugees from you. Also, something unstated about them. This experience never leaves them. That is, it is important to get compassion right the first time. Related to The Book of Negroes, Aminata’s life is marked forever by the experience of being stolen and enslaved. Her entire travels, life story, and narrative of being taken against her will out of Bayo is ever after marked by this. This was important for The Illegal with Keita Ali as well. How did this and the current Syrian refugee crisis inform the foundation for this novel as the events in Syria progressed?
Lawrence Hill: The refugee crisis in Syria did not inform the writing of The Illegal. Like many Canadians and most people around the world, I was not aware of the buildup of refugees in Syria when I wrote the novel. The novel was finished well before we talked openly in the West, about that particular refugee crisis. However, there were many other refugee crises in the world and they did inform The Illegal.
Jacobsen: We have images of the Vietnamese woman fleeing napalm bombs, Aylan Kurdi, and so on. The phenomenon of genocide neglect is real. Individual images and stories move hearts more than statistics and news reports. How might the arts community humanize the downtrodden, the desperate, the fleeing, and the suffering?
There is a role for every type of person in talking about the downtrodden and the suffering, and in this case the plight of refugees. There is a role for great humanitarians in the field attempting to alleviate immediate suffering in refugee camps. There are advocates working for organizations. They speak up. They tell us the results of studies. There are activists and university professors.
There are lawyers. There are politicians learning a great deal about the plight of refugees. There are endless numbers of organizations from the United Nations onward. They produce reports for the public to read about it. There are people and organizations with things to share. There are journalists. They do a great job bringing the information about the world to us.
There is narrative too. Artists can more intensely, efficiently, and with more ardor, passion, and success than a typical historian, journalist or university professor excite and trigger the imagination. The artist is capable of taking somebody by the collar and saying, “Look at this person. Behold this humanity!”
The role of the artist is to connect with the humanity of the individuals perceiving the art. It is to excite and stir and provoke people.
It is the work that I do in life. It is my contribution. I do not want to overstate it. I do not want to understate the role of the artist. The artist is not unlike the rabbi, the imam, or the priest. A person who evokes the story of humanity to evoke or elicit faith. We all need story to understand ourselves. We need narrative to understand the world and our place in it.
Some of us look to religion. Others look to art for the same thing: guidance. For words that tell us how to be, remind us of the deeper truer values, that set us on the right path. Religion plays a similar role in satisfying a fundamental need to be told a story, how to be, and how to be good in the world.
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Original Publication (1, 2, 3, and 4) in www.in-sightjournal.com.
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Photo Credit: Getty Images