Words At Large

I wanted to do some small justice to their heroism, and to represent the dementia in its full complexity–as a medical condition, as an existential sorrow, and even, upon occasion, as something darkly humorous or wondrous.

At the same time, I wanted to link this particular disease with the broader question of cultural memory. Of course, so many modern novelists (Joyce, Kundera, Morrison, etc.) have powerfully addressed cultural memory. Yet I don’t think this question (or set of questions) is any less exciting or urgent because of that. We haven’t come close to exhausting this complex issue, especially when it comes to the memories of disenfranchised peoples, or to experiences or events that we still, at times, find very convenient to forget.

Then there’s the plain weirdness of memory to contend with. When and what do we remember? How do we remember?

In Soucouyant, a novel that takes its title from a spirit of Caribbean folklore, the unspoken and difficult past emerges in spectral forms, in uncanny moods and actions, in stories or even individual words that remain haunting or seductive, but are not, in fact, fully decipherable.

At one point, the speaker of the novel tries putting it this way: “My past is a foreign word.” It’s just his momentary stab at summarizing a tricky situation. But it still begins to evoke some major questions in the novel: How on earth do we read the past? Where on earth do we read the past?

At the same time, Soucouyant is about young Canadians of a particular generation and background, and the “big” questions about mortality and memory are explored from a very specific viewpoint. It’s an exciting perspective, I’d say, that’s just beginning to break out in ways that no one novel could ever encompass (least of all mine).

In the sixties, Canada began allowing non-whites into the country in greater numbers, a phenomenon that has largely contributed to the “racial” diversity now so conspicuous in our cities and suburbs. We in Canada can boast of a truly impressive body of writing by these new immigrants.

However, the literature of their descendants–born in Canada, but marked, both physically and psychologically, by different cultural spaces–has been somewhat slow to emerge and to be recognized. This is especially true when the stories aren’t about inspiration and achievement but linked to discomforting phenomena such as poverty, youth crime and social alienation.

I think a whole new wave of writing on this “second-generation” experience is poised to sweep through Canada, joining similar trends in Britain, France and the U.S., but remaining, in the end, very much our own.

I addressed this generation and some of its more awkward situations and moods in Soucouyant, and I look forward to writing more on these matters.

Soucouyant (Arsenal Pulp Press) is one of two first novels on the shortlist for this year’s Governor General’s Award for English-language Fiction; the other is Heather O’Neill’s Lullabies for Little Criminals, which won Canada Reads last year. The awards will be given out on November 27. This year’s Canada Reads shortlist is being announced the following day.