Back to Me

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T

he goal of fiction is escape—right? It’s not always the result, however, as this year’s Amazon First Novel Award nominees know well. Their respective writing processes led them to unearth an unexpected character: themselves. They may have shared little in common with their respective protagonists—not historical epochs, appearances or even outlooks—but they nonetheless managed to glean a little something about their own non-fictional experiences from each.

Here, we dig into those sometimes accidental self-realizations, asking: how did the process of writing your novel help you better understand your own place in the world?

“I’ve spent the last few years failing to answer this question. When I fictionalize war, am I to impart a message? Keep the conversation alive in the public eye? Am I a cultural translator of ‘my’ people for a Western audience? Do I owe accuracy? Is accuracy even possible? If I think too hard on such questions (what my place is, what I owe to whom), my writing and the environment in which it thrives—playfulness, anonymity, risk-taking—risk death.

I suppose what I am is a mollusk. To live, I suck in the world around me; it seeps through a filter, and a slightly altered water comes out. Other mollusks pass my water through their own filter, and so on and so forth, resulting in a collective filtration. I don’t mean to imply that we necessarily improve the water—art that strives to be morally good can be the most morally suspect—but we do alter it.” – Maria Reva, Endling

“Small Ceremonies taught me a lot about Winnipeg and the many rez’s in its solar system. In my post-rez life, I often hated living there; I wanted nothing to do with it. But I came to learn that Winnipeg is a complicated, beautiful city with a unique place in Canadian history. There is a deep, almost Chekhovian sadness to it: not rejected, but unloved. And yet, somehow, Indigenous people—so used to operating in this space of uncertainty and frustration—have made it a cultural and political epicentre.

Small Ceremonies is a novel about characters coming of age, becoming aware of the world around them and their place in it. As a writer and a person who calls Winnipeg home, I emerged with them.” – Kyle Edwards, Small Ceremonies

“When I started writing I Remember Lights, a novel about Expo ’67, I didn’t know I would eventually incorporate a different element of Montreal’s history into the plot: the gay-bar raids of the late 1970s. Nor did I know I’d seek out and interview men with firsthand experience of those raids, about which precious little had been documented, then or since. These men were enjoying beers at their local, then, suddenly, they were in paddy wagons—then jail cells for the night. Though they later sought justice for what had been done to them, they weren’t all predisposed to activism. Still, they had all been wronged, and they had a sense of what was right.

In writing this novel, I learned that my place in the world is mine thanks to lots of individuals who thought that same way: What the hell was that? They think that’s okay? How do we fix things? And, I learned more than I knew before about the precarity of occupying that place in the world.” – Ben Ladouceur, I Remember Lights

“At the mid-point of my novel, Property, one of the characters thinks, ‘It did not matter that she had theories. It mattered that she had property.’ One of the wellsprings of the book was trying to think through how my life—including my artistic life—has been made possible by being a person who owns a house, especially as the divide between those who do and those who don’t widens. (For many, ‘not yet’ is turning increasingly into ‘never will.’) Property is about the tension between the interior drama of ourselves and the material facts of our lives, explored through shifting perspectives over a single day—the point of view ranging from very old to very young, and human to animal, on a small street. Each character exists in relationship to their houses, to whether or not they have one, and the tension this creates.

As I wrote, I thought about what it means to be situated in a place, to bear responsibility to my neighbours (including the ones with whom I will never agree), and to fail in that responsibility. We are all failing each other all the time, and also, mostly, trying our best not to. In writing, I felt like I was trying to see myself from the outside as best I could, and trying to think about the way fiction enables us to understand ourselves as being looked at (as well as looking). A novel is a place to comprehend yourself as one voice among many.” – Kate Cayley, Property

“I write so that I can understand the world, and Black Cherokee brought me face-to-face with the plight of the Black Freedmen. They were African Americans whose ancestors were enslaved by the elite of the Cherokee tribe, and who, for hundreds of years, shared their fate, only to be denied membership in the Cherokee society. To process this, I had to see that world through the eyes of its most vulnerable: a young girl who is both Black and Cherokee, and trying to find her way. In the character Ophelia, I saw the struggle of anyone ostracized from a community they belong to. She is constantly being asked to abandon a part of herself to fit in.

Whether in terms of appearance, race, religion, gender, politics, or class, at some point, all of us must confront the question of what happens when we are alienated and what happens to those that alienate. Ophelia taught me that, rather than give in to the either-or that requires me to amputate essential parts of myself, I must strive harder for both-and. I must be radically me.” – Antonio Michael Downing, Black Cherokee

“Before Nowhere, I was feeling stuck in every way possible: stuck in the small town I live in, stuck creatively and stuck emotionally. So, I took a deep breath and looked around. There was a giant white cube on the edge of town (true), there were monsters of all sorts (like all places), and there was my family (thank goodness). I thought, Okay, here are the materials that are available to me—a mystery, a menace and connection. Now, what could the story be? As I wrote and drew, my resentment towards being stuck turned to gratitude. Everyday I spent in the fictional world of Beausejour became more and more addictive. Everyday, a new daydream. Even though it was a dream filled with terrors that reflected our actual world, I found it comforting.

I experienced the world through the eyes of Joel (a 12-year-old in a new town), and I was able to see the monsters of his life (especially his terrible stepfather) in a new light. Like many of us, Joel feels powerless to affect change; he is left to simply observe and cope as best he can. To do this, he turns to a sketchbook. As he says, ‘The best way to escape monsters is to draw imaginary merch for my imaginary band.’ So much of writing Nowhere was like that for me.

Maybe it wasn’t an escape as much as a place to put my anxieties, fears and doubts. That did help me better understand my place in the world. It also reminded me that creativity is as much a human need as the air we breathe. Without it, I would still feel stuck, angry and resentful. Not that writing Nowhere was therapy—it wasn’t—but it did connect me with where I am and who I am. Now that I’ve finished it, I feel like I’ve been exiled from my dream. I’ll probably feel that way until I start a new book, a new daydream.” – Jon Claytor, Nowhere

 

 

To learn more about the authors and their novels, visit thewalrus.ca/afna The post Back to Me first appeared on The Walrus.