INTERVIEW

with AUSTIN CLARKE

by Irene D'Souza

A 17th-century Indian poet wrote, "Go where thou wilt--if thy soul is a stranger to thee, this world is unhomely."

During the Winnipeg International Writers Festival in September 2008, on the evening Giller Award-winning writer Austin Clarke was to read from his new politically charged book More, we sat in a crowded bar to discuss his book as well as his thoughts on the immigrant experience of being at home in Canada. More is a wise and unflinching novel about the West Indian immigrant experience/alienation in Toronto. Although Clarke has lived in Canada since the 1950s, calling it home is a challenge.

What is home to you? When you are in Winnipeg, do you consider Toronto home? And when you say, "I am going back home," what does it mean?
It means something different to me. I have an emotional/ spiritual tie to Barbados because I was born there--as we say, my neighbour's string is buried there. That means a lot to us people who have been historically uprooted from where we were . . . people who have been dislocated when they become immigrants to other countries, particularly white countries. We are accustomed to the changes and the changing attitudes and we become schizophrenic in our affection about a place named home. Home, sometimes, in a moment of clarity, is where I decide I am the happiest, so Toronto does become home when I compare it to certain aspects of my life in Barbados.
When my home is inquired after, by the question or the frivolous remark, where are you from? and I say, Toronto, and then the rejoinder is, I mean before that? That seems to me a direct assault upon my legitimacy.

How do you counter that, as a person who is viewed as not a "regular Canadian," by which we mean white, and therefore not from Toronto?
I have no rejoinder, I just look at the person as not worthy of any further concern. I would not get involved in a conversation with a person like that; it does not mean of course that I do not appreciate the person's prejudice or simplistic understanding.

I suppose one can be flippant and answer from a specific area of the city? But then, I have heard others say, it is just a way of being interested in who you are and not to take offense--
I was just about to say, perhaps we should not be so intolerant of their stupidity and it might just be the means they have of breaking the ice, it may not be insidious or even racist, it may be--see, I am beginning to feel that the ignorance of their racism may just be an atmospheric thing, it may not be as terrible as we would tend to hear. It expresses a very insensitive attitude, it means on one level either their arrogance or their history prevents them from assuming that a Black presence on any street in Canada may be the presence of a Canadian. In other words, they do not even admit the person might have been living in Toronto longer than themselves, might have been born here, etc., and the fact that we Black people do not easily admit to being Canadian means that we do not feel the same comfort of belonging, even in our dealings of the last fifty years, as a European immigrant tends to exude.

I would like to discuss your new book which, coincidentally, is all about fitting in and being at home. Why did you choose the title More?
First of all I should tell you More was not the original title, the original choice was "Where Are the Men?"
To some extent the book is a journey by a woman to find herself and to understand why her life is so unevenly discomforting. In that quest, she has to deal with her lack of success in her relationship with her husband who is that man to her; while knowing nothing about her son, who is going along a certain path. She is not really aware of the cosmetics of his posture--an imitation of Black American rap culture--it confounds and confuses her. She needs more self-assurance, more success, more understanding in her day-to-day life.

It is a very bleak existence; she is very isolated. Would her life have been different had she not moved to this country?
Yes, she would have had an upper-middle-class life, because she went to the best private school in Barbados, which in West Indian terms would mark her as a successful person. She was a member of the elite of her society. She forgets this because of the immediacy of racial prejudice against her here. She would have had much more confidence.
There is a glimmer of that when I made her interested in reading. When she attempts a conversation with Josephine, and takes down the books from Josephine's bookshelf and looks at the titles and the names of the authors, even if it is only superficial, it does say something about her past self. Her present dislocation and disregard breed a lack of confidence, which is an aspect of her yearning for more understanding, etc.

Life is tolerable and complicated for her?
From her somewhat ironical point of view--her tolerance towards her physical neighbours, homeless prostitutes on the street, the complicated life her son is leading and certainly the tolerance towards the pastor.

Yes, the pastor is complicated; I was afraid for her when she was alone with him.
And so is she.

Given all the news from Toronto about gangs and poverty, what is the resolution, how do we as a society come to terms with the fact that some people do not feel at home even though this is their home?
Well, it all depends whether the people who are accused of injecting the feeling amongst Blacks, particularly young Blacks, whether they care if young Blacks are redeemed or redeemable. I would say the situation will remain hopeless until a white boy or a white girl will give a demonstration of their rejection of that behaviour. In other words, when whites begin to feel that they are to some extent responsible for some of the behaviour, it is not only Black mothers who are grieving and who are sorrowful, but all mothers.

The fact that it affects everyone?
Yes.

So, that is one way of resolving the problem, tapping into our universal humanity?
The admission of certain groups, meaning the white group who are not physically and directly touched by this violence, that we are, as the Bible says, "our brothers' keepers."

Certainly the elected members of parliament need to be sensitive about fanning the flames. How can we counter the musings from a Calgary MP who blamed the crime rate squarely on immigrants because it was "not the kid next door who was responsible"?
I would say just two words, he is a fool and he is a racist.

Yet, there is no uproar about his comments and he will probably be reelected--your thoughts?
To make sure he is not reelected, the declaration of the probability of the two attributes I have given to him: he is stupid and he is a racist. He will always get elected because that certain aspect of society never associates or feel that they have to change their attitudes and accept and understand that most mothers are never hoping that their children will become gangsters. . . . What disturbs me is, this conversation we are having now is a conversation I had as long ago as 1955.

What can be done to solve the situation?
Sometimes I am feeling it cannot be solved. Certainly, I feel very strongly that we have not applied the best solutions--the same dialogue, the same language, the same feeling of frustration; it continues.

You use this theme in your book, which held a perfect storm plot; it just followed a trajectory, right?
Yes, it was fatalistic; nothing could be done.

But could Idora (the mother) have done something more for BJ?
If the mother had had the physical and psychological energy, she could have sat down with him . . . But her dilemma is the universal one of the single parent who happens to be the mother. She has to organize her life in such a way that she can superficially give him attention, but she does not have the leisure of the middle class to care for the boy. When she comes home from work she does not even have time to discuss what is in the newspaper with him. I see this every day because of where I live in Toronto, young women--quite a high percentage Black--who feed their children in trams. And you know that in the winter it is a difficult thing because they wake up early, bathe or sponge the child, they themselves cannot spend as much time on their appearance as they would spend if it was not so physically bleak. I know from observation when that kind of parent comes home from work, she is tired and she does not have the strength to raise the child. In those four hours in the evening she has to provide all the subliminal things and the real things; all the love to compensate for their separation because it cannot be a relaxed situation during that period of time.

If you can classify Barbados as a country with a slave mentality, how would you classify the Canadian mentality?
I would say the Canadian mentality is not one that you would expect of brotherhood; it is uneven, and part of that unevenness is its imitation of American sensibility. I have not seen as much in the public behaviour that will contribute to making these young boys feel any close association with Canada regardless of where they live (east or west). I do not see it; it really does not surprise me that the lack of natural closeness is working itself into a cancer on the part of Blacks. I am not saying that Blacks are not to blame for some of this, because I think a very fundamental cause could be the lack of parental guidance and the absence of the Black man from the family. Of course, in the West Indies that did not matter, because of the extended family, and even when the man was present, he was invisible, because the woman was strong enough to take care of the entire family.

So just going back to the youth today, what do you think about the Obama factor? Will it play a role?
It would only play a symbolic role. If they have time to put their guns down for an evening, they ought to see that Obama represents in physical terms the possibility of redemption from laziness, violence, resentment and an ingrained feeling that some of them have of being inferior. These young Black kids are very distressing for people of my age, because they do not realize that when we came to this country, our physical needs were considerably less. Here the schools have computers and all the latest technology; in Barbados we had a blackboard and benches. I always wonder why they assume the posture of rejecting education and the discipline that one must have when one is being educated and the feeling that used to be rampant in the sixties that education is white. That they can't spend time learning because what is it going to get them anyhow, so they would tend to want to be good football or basketball players, not realizing that the competition in that even among Blacks is very intense. They don't seem to realize or be taught that if you are living in a society knowing your history, you have to work twice as hard to be regarded as equal.

And that is still a given for you?
Oh, yes, I am a realist. In my job it is not displayed as openly as it would be if I were working in a factory--I would have to produce 2000 bottles, whereas another person has to produce 50 and get the same salary.

Is this why you challenged the critics who were upset at your Giller prize?
As long as I live I will be aware of all the nuances and idiosyncrasies of life. You reach a stage when you realize that the reality of life is that you are not expected to succeed or to be good even in spite of the evidence and that is something that I will never fail to understand.

What if you were in Barbados--would you have other pressures?
In Barbados we do not have to prove ourselves that way because we are all Black even if we are white. We are all Barbadians and the competition is fierce and fair and when the person comes first we know he is first and nobody would dare say he came first because of favouritism or affirmative action, which does not exist in Barbados. Here in this country people will say it was because of something else. I ignore the negative comments, because the same book won the Trillium and, more importantly, the Commonwealth Prize, where I was competing with everybody in the British Commonwealth.

Who do you write for?
I write for myself, I do not write for people to change their views and if it happens that what I write gives satisfaction, I am glad for that, but that is not my purpose. I am not unaware that there is a functional aspect to my writing. This happens to everybody's writing. Some people will benefit from reading my books. I do not sit down and decide that my book will be instructional; it does not mean that I do not understand the responsibility that might be inflicted upon the Black writer in these times--that he is a role model whether he wants to accept it or not, but you asked me what do I think? So I gave you a personal answer.

What needs to change for all immigrants to reach their potential?
I do not know what needs to change.

Could it be education?
Not education in the traditional sense, but education in the African sense that you are not only getting information from reading books but you are completing aspects of your culture in everyday life, in your relations with other people, the sense of honouring the worth of other people. You are not going to get it by having policemen in schools, by transforming schools into forts; you are going to get it by changing the curriculum and making it equally important for white students to learn about Black life. It goes back to my feeling that whites cannot divide themselves from this society on the basis of race.

Yes, the blatant nature of the division. It was shocking to me that white Torontonians did not sit next to Idora on the subway.
Really! You see it every day in Toronto. I do not know if people are aware of it. I am aware because I have travelled somewhat and I noticed in London, England, there is not that moment of hesitation, perhaps because you are going farther distances and if you don't get that seat you will have to stand, and that is one reason. I hope the other reason is that they have gone beyond that and realize it is only a seat. They might not like the way a person smells or they may not like ideologically the idea of sitting beside a Black person because of their prejudices or idiosyncrasies; it does not always have to be racism; but certainly there is a hesitation. Last week when I took the streetcar from downtown Toronto where I live, in the twenty minutes, I noticed people came in and looked and if there was an Asian or Black, they walked down the subway coach, until they saw seats of all whites--there is a place for them. I do not know whether I made too much about it, I hope I have not, but I just said that peculiarity has caused her to think and ask herself the reason why.

Idora is so aware of it. Even though she has lived here for 30 years, this is not really home for her?
This is not home in that sense for her, but she has to calculate the benefits and comes up with the startling conclusion that this is home. So she is schizophrenic, and that is something that is common among many West Indians.

Thank you.