Playfulness: Lawrence Hill In Conversation

It was still top secret when we met that beautiful mid-winter afternoon. Lawrence Hill had graciously accepted an interview in the midst of a very busy schedule, thanks to the phenomenal success of The Book of Negroes, and this is why I had hoped to speak with him: Waterloo Region had just chosen his book for our 2009 One Book, One Community program, but no public announcement had yet been made.

Not so secret, of course, was the novel’s immense popularity in other reading programs clear across the country.

Readying our coffees at my home, we chatted about the upcoming Canada Reads program on CBC Radio One. The Book of Negroes would be one of five finalists in the next debate. Lawrence commented on how these debates can swing from heated to vitriolic. An argument in favour of dismissing one book out of hand since its story took readers completely outside of Canada had made Hill, a mere listener at the time, hot under the collar. Without a story set in Canada, the panelist argued, how could a work be called Canadian? This attitude irked Lawrence who had no inkling then that his own book with its shifting settings would net first place in Canada Reads 2009.

My interview questions (pulled to allow for smoother reading) were based in part on studying his web site—lawrencehill.com—another great way to enjoy more from this engaging writer.

On Letters

At fourteen I tried to write proper short stories with a capital “S,” but these felt lifeless and I felt despair. I wrote and tore up, wrote and tore up, banging everything out on a typewriter. Nevertheless, I am very grateful to have grown up before the age of email; the absence of email meant I wrote letters. When I started travelling at fifteen, I wrote a lot of letters—funny, energetic, sloppy, lively—and I realized that my letters were better than my attempts at those capital “S” stories. They had more juice. When I wrote my first novel as a letter, I imagined writing it to a friend, and the energy and juice came first, naturally. I’d rewrite later and clean up, but already it had irony, sarcasm, personality, playfulness, and I felt the writing come to life.

The speed and relaxation of writing this way helped me find my voice. Letters grease the writing process. The key is to be playful first; you’ll create all kinds of surprises for yourself.

On My Parents

I owe everything as a writer to my parents’ influence, specifically, two key influences: first, they formed my personality as a writer. They passed on to me a literary and oral tradition, including the element of entertainment and storytelling. My father was an amazing storyteller. He told stories every day. His deep, mellifluous voice mesmerized me. Some stories were from his black oral tradition. Some were stories of his childhood. Some were great “man versus beast” stories. Some were of his work. Some were completely made up on the spot. But every day there were stories that walked the seditious line of sad and funny, tragic and humourous. And sound effects—he loved to do sound effects. That was the entertainer in him. I think writing enters the body through the ear. When I rewrite I think of the sound, the rhythm, the beat. I read out loud when I rewrite. It’s very revealing and enables me to find the right voice.

The second influence was a legacy of hundreds of books on the African-American story that my parents brought with them from the States when they moved to Canada in 1953. At fourteen, I stopped reading books for young readers and started devouring books on black history. I had an ambivalent sense of self and was doing the “who am I?” search. Reading through these books helped me find myself.

On The Book of Negroes

I wrote The Book of Negroes thinking of my eldest daughter whose middle name is Aminata, with the accent on the last syllable, by the way. Aminata is a common name meaning “peaceful one” in Muslim West Africa, and I heard it often when I worked there as a volunteer. I kept wondering, what if this were my daughter who’d been captured and traded and subjected to the incredible trials of this period in history? And so writing the book became a very emotional journey. There was no doubt, however, that this story would be told in a woman’s voice.

What Aminata lived through was difficult, and it was hard to write. I could have made it difficult to read, but you can’t beat up a reader page after page. Readers need rays of light, and I needed to let those rays into the story; however, you don’t want to trivialize or sugar-coat history. I tried to give reasons for characters to keep on living and for readers to keep on reading.

I did want The Book of Negroes to illustrate the interconnectedness of blacks in the eighteenth century. They did not simply live in discrete areas and develop their own isolated histories; there was great movement within their unique communities and around the world: West Africa, the Carolinas, New York, Nova Scotia, back to Sierra Leone, and England. I feel that the book’s ending is realistic, but I’ve heard from both camps: some who like the ending and some who don’t. I am still very happy with the ending.

On Success

There are two main reasons I think The Book of Negroes has been so successful. First, it’s an historical novel, and some people seem to like meat with their fiction (I call this “faction”), perhaps because readers feel they’re learning something along the way. I have found Canadians are yearning to learn about this piece of history. They are hungry for stories of historical drama. Second, this is a woman’s story, and women make up the largest portion of fiction readers. I’ve heard from many women in book clubs, who seem to find the story appealing.

I have two novels-in-progress that have been underway since before The Book of Negroes, but I feel no pull or expectations from my audience because of this book’s success. And I don’t feel obligated to be an activist. My parents were true activists, and I am active as a citizen, but my work is primarily as an artist. I don’t feel a particular responsibility to activism: I read what interests me and go with my passions. There’s a great essay entitled something like, “Why must a black man always write about politics?” It’s anti-creative and paralyzing to write about something because you feel you have to. My next novel will be completely from my imagination: no research, all fiction—it  will be interesting to see what this next journey does to my writing. Perhaps it will be more playful.

The New Quarterly is one of the sponsors of the Waterloo Regional One Book, One Community program, organizing each year a literary tour to locations suggested by the chosen book. 

The Book of Negroes took us to the Queen’s Bush in Wellesley township, site of an early settlement of free and formerly enslaved African Americans who built churches and schools (many of them staffed by American missionaries) and established a strong and vibrant culture until government land surveys in the 1840s forced them off the land they had laboured so hard to clear and triggered another diaspora. We celebrated and mourned that lost culture by attending to its history and sharing West African food, storytelling, and drumming.

I imagine we’ll see more of Lawrence Hill’s work in the coming years, set wherever his imagination takes him. I, for one, can hardly wait to travel there.