A Word on Words; 4217; Edwidge Danticat

fb and now from nashville public television supposed to be a way of celebrating all things literature and ideas for more than three decades but this is a word on words jobs don't sit ins are welcome once again to award edwards my guest today is edwidge danticat he's widely considered and considered the need to be one the most talented young white is in the united states and is the best selling author of numerous books

including bold on a dime and the mubarak that was a pen faulkner award finalist and one in a restored brought here today to talk about her first fiction in nine years claire of the sea light is a profound event novel set in a small village feeling that fishing village of the world's it's in haiti the haunting portrait of a heartbreaking of heartbreak and healing and widgets my pleasure to have you here with a pleasure to be here with thank you so much for coming to clear the sea light story of a little girl little girl who on our own volition that issues or seven brit that we must talk about where this story came from where in your vivid imagination did you find clear the zealot book claire keen almost as envisioned a goat head of the way she looks on the cover of the book with this he like after i

watched the documentary about an orphanage in haiti and there the situation and he sometimes parents have a really hard time financially basing their children so they will even though they're ally still turn them over to an orphanage in sometimes i'll visit them and as i was watching this someone in the documentary said you know these they don't think they bring the kids here because they're not as attached to them in and for some reason that jolted me because i also didn't work with my parents they are they were abroad and i was raised by another an uncle and so clare came almost as a response to that person and then i started writing the book about how she is to be given away to this woman who has also lost her child and really trying to examine their choice and fiction from the perspective of claire her father who was planning to give her away and the woman who might potentially receive her i thought no juice was interesting character her father and

that the pronunciation guess those benefits and in those years so lost his wife clara's mother and child and he worries about what he's going to do with this little child and against relatively early on the science and the science is going to give her way but but he's going to go to somebody who's going to be caring and loving and he thinks that the seven hundred is one person having lost a child who might be the person but daley was reluctant talk a little bit about notice and little i thought you might somewhere along with that oh man sin that in the middle of the island i think the super

happy ending would've been for them to get together here is claire together but unfortunately and in the society that they live in they come from such different world celeste and bridge of all worlds because she's better off she's got a business senses center from the oud holly party of that of the society and he's among the poorest of the people in this is that yes it's a very poor a fisherman and an undercurrent it's stratified society there was otherwise might never meet she's already crossed the line so much but this almost exchanging of their association through this child reflects a situation that actually exists in haiti were often a lot of poor people were not assumption sometimes turn their children over to orphanages but often to or from them too people who have more means and sometimes the children end up in a situation that we called the static in domestic servitude and

and some children are badly treated others also treated morales is not one clear to go but what exactly one should have a place yes men where she does not want a real yasmine and then you know in her mind you have are envisioning what might happen in fargo and so she mentioned is she runs away hoping that that would change her father's mind and and it's a very i think also the attachment that she fills with tutu her father because the two of them they are really the only two people that they each have in the world and that's what also compels noses this choice because he feels that if anything were to happen to him suddenly as a fisherman with the worst things that could happen and they see things that have happened to friends of his that he worries that if one day he vanishes then her fate will remain you're hanging like she would either end up in the street or in the place that they said this is something he was to decide ahead of time what happens to her to earn trust her

to someone else so that she would have a place to go clear lynn neary a vaudevillian you gave her four names estimated that some are more likely to do with with the french influence there are what she is a young he says over old young woman and but then she vanished this and then i and i think our audience would benefit more from getting the book and reading it and finding out about that in and willard set in america set in so you know in the digital age you know at the outset what the ending was going to be it didn't and part of it i think was my over involvement with the character i really didn't want to decide and my editor kept saying you have to decide what happens to her at the end and my temptation of course was to just keep the cycle going on then because i did and it became so attached to her that i wanted

that i just it was a new image is as equals was clear and wears you wandered in well not exactly convinced me and i think part of that was my my unwillingness to decide but ultimately i did it i learned it gradually as i was writing the book to let her going away to to decide that she was i was hanging on to her and i think part of it too was having having a child around that same age and imagining myself by imagining myself in the father's position imagining myself in a night and day its position that the potential adoptive parents so it i was projecting so much of with my own children into clear into her life so gail is on self willed oh minden and is reluctant to take this on and then part of where the plot is whether she will whether she won't and it goes on the

recovery years that indecision all in the family feud joseph i'd like to tell it to look than help our audience understands or there isn't there is a gap between the time she vanishes in the end during which the story of the year the oatmeal roads at others fishing village there is this period during which the story goes on and use other characters and other themes and other stories to fill the void of or absence and i like desk about some of those carter's maxine yet imagined in the mac senior well off so there was no nuance a young

woman becomes pregnant then maxine is going to cure this fits a boy off to miami and dumb the girl has a baby maybe content there comes a time when max two new goals and says abdominal a beautiful girl gonna bring jasmine witty and maxing false is what family next year's monolith human fans for not laugh when i read it i thought seven x junior so he brings jasmine oh maxine you talk about what you have a new mac senior in real life it leaning back and real life and i think

i ate you're a schoolteacher in haiti who has like that i didn't know his intimate life so you're sort of collapsing many different people together and that question you know what family is a question that still often ask when you go into certain levels of haitian society people wanna know so where your origins we're in where you fit in with there isn't and so max here is a complex character to end that at the same time that he has those sensibilities of people of his class he's also trying to you know raise a whole new generation of people warm less aware of class were able to interact in and he has certain rules at his school that nobody else has that the you know the children shouldn't be here tonight is he's also trying to create amado society while he's try walk in his personal life is sort of less clear as it is as with a lot of people who were trying to lead unit sometimes their personal ideals don't match their their public ideals but not seen your god bless him he's trying

to he's trying and buys a doting father also something the nominating process going on that comes a moment when the rose is inflicted by gangs where the company when i comes from actually actual actual experience there is there at the knee but good work i grew up where my uncle was out was in haiti had young men that we knew that milk was certainly knew after living in labored for fifty years we've known all all our lives who suddenly started joining the use of these gangs and then there was that steve living side by side with with people who you knew as sweet young boys who were suddenly and this other kind of life in and in two thousand for when i write a little bit about it in my book brother i'm dying my my uncle was

basically driven out of the neighborhood by the gangs after the un came in and tried to shoot them out there was a shootout between the gangs and the un in and they shot from the roof of my own course the church and so i i could have been in that position because i went i would visit they are now in the book was this young man who lives in the neighborhood who tries to get the rest of the world to understand the game and it's called god is who gets in and in a way i think my own cool with that in that position because he was a minister and the neighbor heard and sometimes he would hear the we would have some of the gang members come and and speak to some of the kids at his school some of them were deportees from the united states he had them sent to english classes and tried to mend some of the gaps like bernard was they were trying to do with his radio show he will honor it you know bernard sort of depicted what we

know and what i would have to say i know superficially about how that whole environment works and in fine young boys see your mom aunts and all the violence they caught in a trap quite often lose a lot of this and i think it's not something it's something that is that you can see in certain neighborhoods here in the united states and in other places around the world because in place i think when you have young men who've been progress something like if you go to school some things will come out a certain way and realize that there are very few opportunities for them i think you know then than the temptation to go the other way down another path is is there and some of them take it for those you just joining us i'm talking with us and we conduct not a lovable clear lucy lunt i said that the

opening of our program that you're recognized as one the most talented young writers in this country and you do write so beautifully i'm not sure you know where that come from hell how did it how to develop the sort of using words and i want to say the audience some in you get it if you know if you read the story you get it but how do you how did you get from oh thank you thank you so much i always feel like when that question comes up i said if we if writers on a swimmer us that question will just say i have no idea because you'll be also are a writer and you know that sometimes their stories on our cable cords so beautiful or think you butt but sometimes you can have that those moments of astonishment when you always feel like you're receiving something our glory of a note taker but i think part of the origin of love of the stories for me is the fact that i was

told stories as a child in and we have a very powerful storytelling cultural is lady yes all history that that's also very connected to the way the origins receives the story so you have a grandmother know the person telling the story in and i remember sitting there as a top captivated and there they were would read your face just to surf scene where you wanted the story to go so i felt like the storytellers these oral storytellers or my very first teachers and storytelling and in this you know the pace that what you take what you leave out and then the way they think perceive and receive a story out and that they've given it to me and then once you receive this turtle was like your story and all of those lessons i think comes to la and in the way that i learned to write a story you know many of our viewers are somewhat familiar with it would have madison smartt bell against three occasions to talk about about his book on the history of the country now

emerged from a new deal briefly with history and humility and mozart's sister now to talk about that a little bit how much how much of the history of it has been part of her life as a writer for all that bit you know that the history of haiti we linger and in madison has been a wonderful job with his trilogy about the haitian revolution avengers brings the characters so vividly to life but at that period has appeared we linger a lot because in a way that the great revolution that nate at the first black republic is when we were at our greatest you know even then afterwards the world turned against at because it was slavery elsewhere and see it was isolated and had to pay it in independence day so the history is very present another story of josephine napoleon sister to me was always intriguing because that the town that view is fiddler was a fictional town that's based in part in lille gun room i have my mother is

from where my grandmother lived all her life and we visited her in the summers when i was little so that town also had this more of first the the first time you know queen and a callin out who ruled over with it there were a few places that was ruled by a female indigenous woman and then but most of the swerve the story of josephine far apart and wanting to build a castle there and only didn't because her husband eventually died in they had to return to france so i waited so you know the strains of history attack to have to also have in the story because also to create a fictional town even detect the backstory you know you have to know and i thought this is the history of my town you know and i'll put her there and josephine there why not she was and she was there at in some party as you are running what is your regimen of this vote was nine years in

coming as bees fiction you write every day i used to write every day when i when i was a single woman living alone i that was my i was like a nun about my writing it i felt like i am rode around the clock it was really my my obsession and then now have too small to small children so i write around their schedule i right but i prefer writing at night that would be my ideal time you know just to write at night because a i feel like at night you can just let the world dissolve and just pretty much to them and it's easier to imagine another world but now i write for my well mike children are in school lower and i don't write every day because you know every day's not the same you know with with small children is does it ever happen for you as a dozen know for the summit many writers on the sound and the worst just don't come the

news is not sitting on your show whispering in your ear the theory these billboards in prison albert had to go so long with ocean and it's all right as long as you get sometimes hits me but i i tried not to acknowledge it i said you know so if it's not coming all read on to argue other things there's also plenty here to fill the time so on to other things in and eventually at the most surprising time it comes because sometimes even if you're not sitting there it's pretty feminine role of a book that maybe i'm stuck because i need to work something out to continue so i just out of a i'll read mostly to identify with you guys would do different as merkozy read read books that are set of similar to what you're trying to do and see how others have done it in and sometimes in the middle of a sentence of somebody else's book really watching a movie then you you might find the solution to continue and to have problems with your teacher

no i love my editor us it's i think with all the editors we love jansen says the year when i so when i get my sons and i get my ten page letter from my editor i do them that love in your right now over time though i don't leave me you know joan didion has that book after henry which is was one of the books that she arrived after losing her editor in it it can become especially after you've worked with an editor for such a long time it's such an important relationship because after you've been working for me with a book for years it's just so close that you do need a cold eye but someone who also knows you're working knows what you're trying to accomplish well i mean maybe we could share just this little secret with the audience claire does survive when she's

as and have you saved her from the rubble no i hadn't been i hadn't thought about that i i have this feeling that once i'm done with the book i want to be like i wanna feel like i can walk away and i'm always eager to then start on another book so i'm not just still obsessed with with that book so for now claire is is where shias who knows ten years twenty years from now but that i am where i am done with clara for them but i just think that if you under similar to our viewers if you read this book you go into it and you look at the book jacket and yossi earn something what the story's about what you do but you don't get a sense of that's a story until watcher inside in addition the characters and suddenly human emotion takes hold and poor jew and that that story and so you're and you're there you're

sweating out the danes room sweaty out the danger this wedding out the loneliness that knows this must feel you sweating out in decision that affects dale the fabric then as she tries to make this decision about shark tank his job or will i not that she's quite a character get no strong woman like that owen meany strong women like that and it's so she's also a woman who carries her secrets so well and i think that that sort of that the complexity and she really want certain things and she had sent with so many regrets and but she is she's relieved determined and the things that she wants to do whether good or bad and i think she's a very complex character for that reason people have told me who read the book early on they said you know in terms of the adoption element of the story they said if she had to eleven up a case that you know there's something the nsa wouldn't pass maneuver she had one alive and that's quite a

life and i and i also think of this to us you know when she she is our she's putting herself very much on the line by even entertaining this notion of taking on another child and she she questions herself as a kind of model whether she's able to be a good parent again because she lost the opportunity with her own child i you know you get the sense of noses picture knowing that she lost a child in an accident and that there is a void in her life he thinks claire might fill that void for her what is it that she still thinks the court a loss that she is reluctant to take it on and i think it's it's like every parent especially parents i know who've lost children be you do you worry that this is not if you ever if that were to happen again you wouldn't survive it and i think that's what she's wrestling with

us citizen is also sort of a sense on gather that she's going to the job she lost exactly is worried about whether you can never replace the you know we have just about a minute left and pliers but i know you were you talked well i'm working all in on the young adult book right now in its it's all i can say that it's set in miami and it's about twins and i'm enjoying it tremendously and it's good to have that balance of a feeling like you're moving forward even as the same set of your current baby launched into the world and how far into a blog about a hundred pages into it so i'm entering what they call the muddy middle which is where you say where do i go next but it's also an exciting place to be thought oh no doubt you can swim through the money but they'd been hundreds published so we've gone back in the studio that

would be a pleasure thank you so much we run out diamond and john simpler for word on words keep reading it's been nice fb fb