An Interview with Laila Lalami

Born and raised in Morocco, Laila Lalami is the author of an excellent collection of short stories, Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits. She is the recipient of an Oregon Literary Arts grant and a Fulbright Fellowship, and was short-listed for the Caine Prize for African Writing (the "African Booker") in 2006. She is currently Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the University of California Riverside.

On April 11, Ms. Lalami graciously met with me -- in spite of her busy schedule -- in her office on the UCR campus to discuss Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits (my, but I loved that book!). Between 11 and noon, while she ate her lunch, we talked about her book, and other compelling subjects -- such as the strength, the courage of the individual.



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LL: The story that is told in the opening of the book might seem extraordinary but it really isn't. It's a very ordinary story of human beings who are trying to go from one country to another in order to look for opportunities. People have always done that. People have always migrated. This is a story that is as old as humanity itself.

Perhaps what makes it seem extraordinary is the fact that these people are willing to risk their lives. And because the obstacles between one country and the other have gotten so much bigger, the risks they're willing to take are greater.

Spain and Morocco are very close to one another culturally and physically. The Strait of Gibraltar is not very wide -- only about eight miles at the narrowest point -- so you can actually make the trip very quickly, and that's why people are willing to take their chances. Yes, you are going to risk your life, but it's such a short distance, that you feel you are going to make it to the other side.

And Morocco and Spain have a long and sometimes torturous history that goes back a thousand years. For seven hundred years, Spain was under Moorish rule. And it's a story that I felt compelled to tell.

DM: What was it like growing up for you? What was your childhood like?

LL: I had a very happy childhood, actually. My teens were a different story, but I had a happy childhood for the most part. One of the things that seemed very natural about my upbringing is the fact that I grew up in a book loving family. My father, especially, was a book lover. He was not a man who had a huge amount of education. He was a very modest man, an engineer, but he didn't go to graduate school, and he just loved to read. And so as far back as I can remember, my earliest memories, there were books. It was natural for all of us to open books and to read. It never occurred to me that other kids didn't necessarily grow up with books.

But because Morocco is a poor country, and people are struggling so hard to make a living, oftentimes people value the ways in which you can make money, and books is not one of them. It is a culture in which people worry about getting jobs. And so even though my parents were book lovers, and my dad loved to read, and we all read, there was no question that becoming a writer was the silliest thing. It just wasn't going to happen. Books were something you enjoyed, not something that you sat down to write, something that you could take seriously as an occupation.

And so it was really driven into me when I was little that it was wonderful to read, but that I had to do something sensible. You had to be a doctor, or a lawyer, or a teacher -- something that was going to make you independent. There were two boys and two girls in our family, and we were all raised with the idea that we were going to be independent. We had to go to university, get a degree, and train in something. So even though I grew up in a book loving environment, it wasn't an environment that encouraged art.

DM: I'll talk for a bit since you have to eat your lunch.

LL: Yes I do.

DM: I want to tell you about my father. I love telling his story, because he beat the odds.

My father did not grow up in an environment where reading was important. In fact, his parents didn't care what he did. His father, Patrick, was such a terrible alcoholic, terrible. He used to go to the bar after work and drink every dime he earned.

But my father, in spite of his violent upbringing, wanted to be a good student. He often recalled his Uncle Emory who taught for years at a university in Japan. He remembers his uncle studying German, and he was impressed by that. He thought, "I can go to school, too. I can learn German." And so even though he had this rebellious streak where he would he would cause a raucous with his friends and escape his parents' notice or concern, at the same time he was a reader, a dutiful student.

And when we were growing up, my sister and I, he said, "Now you girls are going to read everyday. Yes, you can play, but you also have to read."

And in so doing, my father passed his love of reading on to me.

LL: And now you're a librarian.

DM: Yes, now I'm a librarian... and you're a writer! Although slowly but surely I'm beginning to think of myself as a writer.

LL: Oh, I think that's great!

DM: Though I find there's a bit of guilt attached to it.

LL: And I understand that. I have a lot of sympathy for that. Because I think the world resents the idea of you calling yourself an artist. What makes you think that you're an artist?

But I think it comes with time. It took me years to call myself a writer. Writing was something that I continued to do, though as you know, there wasn't any encouragement to write. When I wrote, and my parents saw what I was doing, or read what I wrote, they thought it was charming, but they didn't encourage it. They didn't discourage me, but they didn't encourage it as a career.

So it took me years to call myself a writer because of that upbringing that did not value art as an occupation. And so writing, in a way, becomes something that you do in secret. It's something you do on evenings and weekends and you never talk about it because you're supposed to be a sensible person. And so whenever somebody asked you what you did for a living, you'd have a sensible answer ready. In my case, I said I was a linguist. I worked in the corporate world, and it was very sensible, and I made a lot of money.

I think I only started feeling comfortable with the idea of calling myself a writer after I let go of this other person -- this serious linguist. I mean I literally quit my job! But once I let go of that, then it became easier to say, "I am a writer."

Back then, the first few years before I was published, it was difficult to tell people that I was a writer because the next question is, "What have you published?" And now it's really amusing because I have no qualms about calling myself a writer, and sure enough, you're in the dentist's chair and you say you're a writer, and they say, "Oh really? Is your book at Costco?" Which is just outrageous! Because the implication there is that it's not important what you write, but whether or not you're the kind of writer who's famous. Are you commercial? Do you sell books?

I was really surprised when that happened, but it does happen. That's our culture, and American culture in particular -- very anti-intellectual. It doesn't encourage anything that has to do with thought.

DM: I'm experiencing the same issues. I get these suggestive stares as if to say, "How could you spend your time doing something so luxurious?"

LL: Isn't that terrible? I think that's part of the reason why I never mentioned it, because I would get those same looks like, "You really spend your free time doing that?"

I think, in general, it's also because books are considered something that you have to do. They're not considered fun. I mean look at C-SPAN! Every time they talk about books they're so serious. And books are not always like that! Books are like human beings! They come in every shape and size. There are silly books, bad books, there are books that are fun to read, and books that are tedious to read. There's a variety. But somehow the only image that comes across is that reading a book is this tedious exercise. And so people can't imagine that anyone would want to spend their time writing for twelve hours.

DM: During the time you worked in the corporate world, did you write Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits?

LL: No, not this book. I was working on other things though.

It took me about two years to write Hope. Honestly, the book started out as a short story about Murad crossing in the boat. And then I had all these flashbacks about his life before he got in the boat, and the flashbacks kept getting longer. Then I thought that maybe there was more than one story because it was getting kind of clunky and inelegant. So I began splitting up the stories. And then I grew interested in who else was on the boat and their reasons for wanting to leave. Obviously they're all looking for new opportunities, but there are still very different reasons why they're all in the boat. And so each of these characters gave me their reasons for why they wanted to leave. Earlier drafts of the book include characters that didn't make it into the book. The idea was to go around the whole boat and do each character in turn. And that's the way I did it, so that by the end I had 11 or 12 characters. There were quite a few.

One of them was the boat captain himself, and how he fell into that occupation. It's not something you say to yourself, "Oh gee, I'd like to smuggle people someday." It's something that you fall into. And I was just curious to find out what his own trajectory was.

So that's how it was -- I was exploring the lives of all these individual characters, and then I rewrote it for awhile. And then one summer, after about a year, I realized that all of these lives were big question marks and that there was really no closure for any of them, so I decided to focus on just four characters, and then it all came together.

DM: I was drawn to the woman, Halima, who was trying to get away from her abusive husband. I roared in frustration when the husband used Halima's decision to leave him as the very reason why he beats her -- is it any wonder he beat her, he says. It never ceases to amaze me the way abusers justify their abuse or deny it altogether -- lacking the presence of mind to admit that they were ever wrong.

LL: Well, that's the way it works, right?

DM: Unfortunately, yes! And it just twists me up in knots!

LL: I like Halima a lot. I didn't want to write her as a victim even though she is a victim. I didn't want a character who was just this silent victim. She's somebody who does not take abuse. She does not accept it. She knows it's wrong. She's not even a literate woman. And it doesn't have anything to do with education! A couple weeks ago a woman said, "Oh, she's so Westernized and I was just wondering, are there many women who are like her?"

It has nothing to do with being Westernized! Liberation isn't going to come from the West. It has nothing to do with that. You can be illiterate and still know that it is not right for your husband to hit you, and you are not going to live with a man who hits you. It has nothing to do with education. And there are plenty of educated women who put up with abuse. So does that mean that the West has failed there?

DM: You're talking about universal values.

LL: Exactly! I wanted to write about a woman who is very ordinary, but who isn't a silent victim of abuse. I just felt that personally I couldn't write about a character like that because I wouldn't be silent. It would be very hard for me to write about character who is silent.

Now the irony is that a lot of people in the U.S., when they read that story, see Halima as a woman who will not accept abuse. But when I was in Morocco last year, I was taken to task by a few people who wanted to know why I would write about an abused woman. They saw only that she was abused and not the fact that she spoke up for herself.

And I explained to them that each one of us approaches a book with an agenda of our own, with our own experiences, our own view of the world. So for somebody who lives in the West, this character is not quiet. They see that she's trying to do something about it. But in another culture, they're so used to seeing their women treated as stereotypes, that the slightest whiff of a stereotype will upset them.

To give you another example, the movie Paradise Now is about suicide bombers, and a lot of people who were Arab loved it, but there were also a lot of Arab people who hated it. And the Arabs who didn't like it were saying, "Of course, sure, it figures, the movie that gets nominated for an Oscar has to be about suicide bombers. Can't we just have a movie about normal people? Why does it always have to be about suicide bombers?"

But a lot of people also said, "Suicide bombers are part of our reality and it's nice, for a change, to see a movie that actually made them complex characters." So it depends on who's interpreting this piece of art. Particularly with books, the images that we create are so individualistic. They're images we create in our minds and on the page, and no two images are going to be alike, simply for the reason that the images we create in our heads are not images you can show anybody else. It's a very personal reaction with the art form. And so I think for that particular art form it becomes very clear that the reader's past experiences, what they've gone through in life, previous books they have read -- all of this comes into play. If you've never read a book about the Arab world, you're not going to have the same response as a specialist in the field.

So I tried to explain to my audience that I didn't intend to write a stereotype and that there are other clues in the text, but you really can't control how other people are going to respond to your work.

DM: You brought to mind something earlier in our conversation that I've pondered and now believe to be true -- that the best literature transcends culture and time. The literature that was celebrated in 500 B.C. continues to be read and understood today because these books address issues that speak to our human nature that doesn't change -- no matter how many years pass, and no matter whether you lived in Ur, or Constantinople, or in our case, present day Southern California.

Consider Beowulf, for instance. This is literature dating back to 600 A.D. [transcribed around 1000 A.D.], and it tells the story of a man who unflinchingly faced great evil while everyone else hid in their beds. But more than this, the subplots, the diversions in the text, address the subtle ways in which it inhabits our lives -- and that is certainly one of the reasons why we continue to read Beowulf today.

LL: These are books that not defined by ethnicity or religion -- though religion and ethnicity are part of their makeup -- but they're above it as well. The characters in Hope are Moroccan and they are Muslim, but neither of these defines and encompasses them. That's why I think you react the way that you do -- because you're able to connect to them as individuals and not as exemplars of a particular culture.

DM: Well, I think that part of the reason I respond as I do is because you've tapped into those issues that speak to these universal truths and struggles.

LL: Although from the writer's perspective, I do think that you arrive at the universal truths as a byproduct. It cannot be the goal in writing. I think if you try to write something for the purpose of making it universal, you will end up with something that is vague and caters to an idealized audience. I don't think that's the way to do it.

Take a book like The Great Gatsby that is as different from my upbringing as you can imagine. But Fitzgerald didn't sit there and think, "Gee, I wonder what people in other cultures are going to think of this. Maybe I should take this out of this story because it will make it easier for people to relate, etc."

No. He just wrote a very specific story about specific individuals in a very specific town and in a very specific age. And it is that specificity that survives.

So I think that the universality of the text is something that arises naturally when you write about individuals.

DM: Because it speaks to that which is deeply human in all of us.

LL: When you drill down to the level of the individual, as a byproduct of that, you will find yourself in the realm of the universal.

DM: Beautiful!

[laughter]

Let's shift gears a bit, shall we? What are you working on now?

LL: I just finished a new novel. It took me four years to write and it nearly killed me. We're going on five years now, and it's just ridiculous. It's called The Outsider, and it's about a young man in Casa Blanca who discovers who he really is. And it's set in very contemporary times. But in the novel, he's trying to figure out who he is, which is why it's called The Outsider. And there's different identities that he's attracted to, and there's the corrupt liberal father and the sort of Islamic fundamentalist pseudo-father. So there's all sorts of things he's trying to figure out. I think, ultimately, that it's about a generation of Arab men that you see on TV a lot -- always angry, and liable to burn a flag or two. And it's about the roots of anger, and how we got to be where we are -- this generation anyway -- in Morocco and probably in other parts of the Arab world as well.

DM: What have you been reading lately?

LL: I just finished reading Stewart O'Nan's new book, Last Night at the Lobster. It's very clever, because it's all set in one day, really, at a Red Lobster that is going to close. The character is as ordinary as you could possibly find, but what O'Nan is trying to do is wrestle the extraordinary out of it.

As far as writers I like, I think my taste tends to run more eclectic than other writers. I read a lot of literature in translation, literature from other parts of the world. My absolute favorite writer is J.M. Coetzee. I just adore him. He speaks to me on so many levels. And I like South African writers in general. There are a lot of Arab writers who write in English and I like quite a few of them -- Ahdaf Soueif who wrote a book called In the Eye of the Sun. She also wrote The Map of Love which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and whenever I mention that book, people recognize her, but I think her earlier work is better. Maybe she'll come up with another book soon.

I also love many Moroccan writers -- such as Leila Abouzeid. I like this Libyan writer named Hisham Matar who wrote a book called In the Country of Men.

DM: I no longer read as much fiction. Not the way I used to. Indeed, I've made a shift towards nonfiction -- especially biography, because I want to write about lives other than my own.

LL: Oh really?

DM: I think so.

LL: Wow, that's really tough.

DM: I know, but I don't have a choice. I'm not a fiction writer. Aside from the fact that I love writing biography. I've found my writerly passion. I can sit for hours on end and read and write about these lives I'm interested in.

LL: Wow. Who are you writing about?

DM: I'm researching and writing about the life of a musician who studied with the great voice teacher Mathilde Marchesi -- who was herself a student of Manuel Garcia the younger -- in Paris. Marchesi's student, Nellie Melba, was one of the world's greatest opera singers [pictured right].

LL: I think that's great.

DM: Well, we were talking earlier about the individual. This is a shift that's taking place in my understanding of the world, which makes this interview quite timely. I believe in the power of the individual to change history, but I'm beginning to realize that only individuals with great courage can do it.

LL: Oh yes! Definitely!

DM: Yes, and I am interested in seeking out those individuals. You explore the individual through fiction, but I can see that I will have to explore it through nonfiction.

Let's go back for a moment to the character who left her husband. Alright then, you're going to leave your abusive partner. Whether you have a job or not, and whether you have children or not, the decision is guaranteed to frighten you. But then you do it anyway. It's the person who makes the decision to go forward that interests me.

LL: Change is not easy.

DM: No it isn't.

LL: I think our brains are wired to resist change. Because our brains will have to make new connections, but I think that with practice you can do it. You can train yourself to face change, with the understanding that it isn't going to be easy.

DM: Then again there are those who do decide to live with whatever comes their way and never raise their voices in protest.

LL: Look at Eliot Spitzer's wife. Liberation in the West! The way he made her stand up there on that podium. I mean there's no way that she would have willingly gone out there. He made her go out there with him. And I will never forget the look on that poor woman's face. She looked like the whole world had collapsed around her. And this was a lawyer -- she was the top lawyer at her firm. She was extremely talented and she gave all of that up to raise their kids, and to be the first wife of the governor, and then he dishonors her.

DM: I completely agree with you. Liberation starts within.


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Visit Laila Lalami's blog at http://www.lailalalami.com/blog

Librarians Have Good Taste

Jean Preston, according to all of the newspaper accounts, was a modest woman. They say she travelled by bus, bought her clothes from catalogs, and ate frozen dinners. But this librarian seems to also have known a thing or two about the finer things of life. Here's what they found in her house after she passed away:

Two panels of the San Marcos altarpiece by none other than Fra Angelico. The two panels, one of which you see to the left, sold at auction for approximately $3.5 million. Her dad bought them back in the sixties when she commented on how much she liked them. Original purchase price? Less than $500.

But just like those infomercial ads, "Wait, there's more."

She also had a painting by Dante Gabriel Rossetti and another by Edward Burne-Jones. Estimated worth of the pair: $2 million.

Don't worry though, as a librarian, she also valued books. She had a rare edition of Chaucer's works, worth about $150,000.

All told, she had approximately $8 million worth of valuables in her home. Not bad for a retired librarian living on a pension.

Today, I want to direct your attention to our very own teen librarian Alicia Doktor-Dorst's recently published editorial in The Press Enterprise entitled, Beyond the Books: Modern libraries woo teen patrons with games, technology, 'Third Space' and more.

Good job, Alicia!

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Deb Caletti is one of my favorite YA writers! And so naturally, I am delighted to have her as a visitor on the blog this evening!

I began as an admirer of Deb's work, having picked up a copy of Wild Roses on display in the teen area of our library a couple years ago. Well then I fell head over heels for the book and wanted to read everything else of hers that was currently print: The Queen of Everything; Honey, Baby, Sweetheart; and more recently, The Nature of Jade.

Having devoured all of her books, it crossed my mind that maybe, just maybe...she would be willing to work with me on a piece for the library's burgeoning Readers and Writers page. Fortunately she said yes, and over the course of that interview we became friends. (Incidentally, the American Library Association's Public Libraries journal recently posted our full interview in PDF format on their website -- scroll down to pg. 25.)

Deb's latest novel, The Fortunes of Indigo Skye, is another gem -- this time about a girl named Indigo who, seemingly out of nowhere, is handed an extremely large sum of money -- a charming moral tale. I loved the way "Little Willow" summarized it in her Amazon review. She writes that Indigo "would rather be poor and happy than wealthy and miserable. [She] has a great set of values and a great sense of self. Those are her true fortunes."

I asked Deb if she'd take a moment out of her busy schedule to meet me for another interview -- this time over here at The Librarian's Own Grove. Please help me welcome her!

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DM: Deb, you've included Nancy Pearl in the acknowledgments page of your latest novel. I know the two of you have a lovely connection.

DC: Nancy Pearl is so down to earth, you wouldn't believe. I was so nervous the first time I met her, but she was telling ME what a fan she was, and giving me book suggestions, and talking about books with the easy love and enthusiasm you'd feel with a fellow book lover you'd known forever. She's just great. I really LIKE her.

DM: Well, I'm sure you have a lot of fans, and for good reason, too. The Fortunes of Indigo Skye is another winner. I couldn't put it down!

DC: Thank you! I'm happy that you liked it!

DM: Would you share with our readers what this book is about? In your words, that is. I've already given a little piece of it away.

DC: Indigo is about a waitress with this great family and a hunky, refrigerator-delivery-guy boyfriend. She loves her life and her work, but it all changes when a customer leaves a really big tip. A really, really big tip. This book is about what feeds us, and it's a "money doesn't buy happiness" tale. It's not a new message, but one we seem to have forgotten.

DM: Perhaps it's not a new message, but the way you tell it is refreshing. As I was reading the book, I recognized myself in it. We do tend to think that money can fix our troubles. I appreciated the reminder.

DC: I wouldn't mind having more of it, either -- it would fix some troubles. Still, after a brief spell in the company of those that have a lot, there seems to be so much missing.

DM: Although I haven't had many opportunities to spend time with people who have lots of money at their disposal, I remember one woman who placed what seemed like tremendous pressure on me to pretend that I was used to staying in glorious hotels. But I was only sixteen, and on occasion, my jaw would just drop. I remember in particular a chandelier that caught my fancy. By the end of the trip, I think she wanted to clobber me.

DC: It's stressful, isn't it, to be anything else than who we are?

DM: Oh my yes. You can say that again! Was there a particular moment like this that might have served as a catalyst for this book? I realize there aren't always clear cut reasons why we write -- some of us write because we can't help ourselves.

DC: Well, I think there were many personal events that influenced the book. The feel of Indigo and her family is much like mine with my own kids. We have Ron the Buddha on our lawn, and I've been scolded by my wonderful daughter for my love of Axe deodorant. Uh huh - I wear it sometimes, and she's caught me. We have a kitchen clock that has been 6:40 forever (I think it's 10:20 in the Skye house, though), and I did lose my own muffler in the middle of the street, but it was in my kids' school parking lot. But on a larger scale -- my whole need to write this particular book came about from this time when I was suddenly in the company of the wealthy. As a previously struggling writer and single mom who (like Naomi Skye) was sure car problems were around every corner and whose every appliance was breaking down, being around money was a revelation -- a disappointing revelation.

Overall though, I think Indigo is breezier and more fun than my other books -- especially in comparison to the one that's coming next, The Secret Life of Prince Charming.

DM: What can we look forward to in your next book?

DC: The Secret Life of Prince Charming just got sent in, and it will likely see print next year around this time. It is about a girl who discovers that her father (whom she only recently reconnected with) has taken an object from all the women he's been with. Through a series of events, she and her little sister end up collaborating with their barely known half sister to return the objects, meeting and talking with all the women about love and relationships. It's dark mostly because Dad is a flaming narcissist, and she really, really wants to love him. But it's also hopefully funny and tender as she navigates what it means to love wisely.

DM: These are the trials and tribulations that make up our lives, are they not? Whether they're money troubles or relationship difficulties...

DC: That's true. I remember something an old neighbor told me once, and it seemed the simplest and wisest thing. He said that life was like a pie with different sections -- health, money, love, family, work, etc. The idea that all the pieces of the pie would be in terrific working order at the same time was just plain unlikely. Something was always going to be amiss. It's true. It sucks, but it's true.

DM: Deb, that's why I love both you and your books! I'll just take that image of the pie with me into the rest of my life, thank you very much!

DC: Anytime! It does help, doesn't it?

DM: Listen, I know you're busy, what with your book tour and all, and so you need to be on your way. But thanks so very much for stopping by and sharing! Hopefully people will feel motivated to read the book! All of your books!

DC: Thank you so much, too. I really appreciate it!

Virginia Lee Corbin (left), famous child actress, who closed an engagement in the city last week, and Virginia Lee Williamson, who entertained in honor of her mother, Mrs. Joseph Charles Gustaveson, on Seventh East Street. (1921)

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I have received a lot of enthusiatic responses to my blogs on the Williamsons. Thanks so much to all of you kind and generous readers! There's another one in the works, so stay tuned!

I wish I'd noticed earlier on, and for the purposes of my last post (in re this family), that the photo on the right was one of Virginia when she was about fifteen -- nine years before she took a courageous leap in the direction of a career as an actress in Hollywood (you go girl!).

I feel close to the Williamsons, and in an unexpected way -- like I could sit down with them and share stories about their lives that even they had forgotten. And so discovering this photo of Virginia -- well, it would be a lot like discovering one of my French grandmother when she was a child. That's a pretty strong comparison, but it's true.

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The Williamsons left an excellent paper trail, but bits and pieces of the story are clearly still missing. For example, I've run across articles referring to a Mrs. Ida McCune Donovan. Excuse me, did you say Mrs. Donovan? In some instances, "Mrs. Donovan" practically glares off the page -- as though it doesn't belong there -- and in other cases she's impatiently scratched it out and scribbled "Williamson" above. Once upon a time, Mme. Inez McCune Williamson married a Mr. Donovan? Traces of her secret past?

What a librarian looks like

Sure, when you picture a librarian, you usually think of the bun, the glasses, yadda yadda. But that's not what Giuseppe Arcimboldo saw when he thought of librarians. He imagined them being made out of, what else, books. This sixteenth century Italian painter, though employed as a royal court portraitist for his day job, painted highly amusing portraits of people made out of such things as roots, vegetables, and flowers. Arcimboldo, though his work was always well regarded, received renewed attention three centuries after he died when surrealists like Salvador Dali discovered his work.

Change URL?

Just wanted to let everyone know that I'm seriously considering changing this blog's URL from riversidelibrary.blogspot.com to librariansowngrove.blogspot.com. I've wanted to do this for sometime. It makes better sense for the title and the URL to match. If you're strongly opposed to this change, and you feel like dropping me an e-mail telling me so, by all means.