Rebecca : First, I want to tell you how much I enjoyed Gadji--would you tell our readers how you came to write this story of an American in France, teaching English to refugees from Eastern Europe?
Louise: Gadji budded & grew in my mind during the time I actually spent working with asylum seekers here in France. I was surrounded by people whose suffering in their native countries had driven them into precarious exile. Each of their lives was no less than a novel unto itself.
Before me stood a living library of tempestuous, heartrending stories. I could not let it rest; I felt compelled to lend these voiceless, these dispossessed my own voice, my pen. To the colorful epics of their pasts was added that terrible element of suspense--would they or would they not obtain coveted refugee status: the right to settle in the El Dorado of our prosperous West?
Rebecca: Have you been writing all your life?
Louise: I wrote a little when I was young, but then I got waylaid by more plebeian (although worthy) pursuits, such as raising a family & teaching English as a foreign language! When the nest empties, you have more time.
Rebecca: Now for Writing the Book of Ester which has to do with the mixture of religious (Judaism & Islam) & political stresses both in France & the Middle East. Here your American English teacher encounters Iranian refugees who survived the Iraq/Iran war, & who bring up Biblical parallels for your heroine. Will you tell us about how this story came to you?
Louise: Because I have, indeed, spent many afternoons of my life in French classrooms, my book began as a descriptive piece recounting the end of a teacher's day. The description took off & grew into a novel-length story. A number of people & incidents fired my imagination, among them: l'affaire Gabrielle Russier (this young Frenchwoman's ill-starred liaison with her student added to the upheavals of the late sixties); the dark-complected foreigner shoved into the Seine in Paris a few years ago by right-wing extremists; student riots in Iran protesting the excesses of a fundamentalist regime. Undue social pressure, fear of difference, repression: all these factors of tension were at the basis of a plot that found its coherence thanks to the Old Testament story of Esther.
Rebecca: The line between fleeing oppression for a new life & fleeing one's family for independence, is so thin & inextricable, will you expand on that?
Louise: It seems to me that these two phenomena are not the same at all. Leaving one's family for independence is a normal part of growing up, whereas fleeing a repressive regime is fraught with peril & risk. A new life in a new culture can be disorienting, disappointing, & deeply unsettling. On the other hand, when you leave your family, they usually remain in the background as a safe haven, should you need them. In the case of most refugees, there's no turning back.
Rebecca: What is the hardest thing about teaching English (& French too?) to people with other languages?
Louise: The most difficult thing about teaching your native language (or another one that you know well) is putting yourself in the place of your student & objectifying the language: seeing it with the other person's eyes, realizing that while you know intuitively what is correct & what is not, he or she will see only foreign constructions & sometimes baffling cultural references. It involves the capacity to slip into someone else's skin & to see your own, familiar mode of expression as “other” (one of the constant themes, in fact, of my writing). You have to figure out what needs explaining, what does not, & how to make your explanations (or demonstrations) clear & accessible--in other words, how to build a bridge of communication to the other person.
Rebecca: In what ways do you think things Biblical have become part of how we all think about life?
Louise: I'm not a Bible scholar, but those stories we read in Sunday school were so fascinating! Leaving commentary on the moral & spiritual concerns of the Bible to our clergy, I would simply say that if you want to be a cultured person, to understand our Western heritage, to fully appreciate the classics of English literature, then you have to know the Bible. I credit the exquisite phrasing & cadences of our English Bible translations with giving me, from childhood, a sense of poetry & of the elegant use of language.
As to how the Bible colors our way of thinking, I've discovered that this is largely dependent on the culture where we live. The Bible (& religious practice, in general) is more prevalent in America than in France, a traditionally Catholic country, where laymen were discouraged from reading the Bible for themselves well into the twentieth century. France prides itself on being a secular society. One consequence of this is that the young people I teach in public school are woefully ignorant of any Biblical references that may appear in what we read. This does not mean that Judeo-Christian thought does not penetrate, on another level, the values of society.
Rebecca: Women, in traditional religious texts are, for the most part, merely shadows in the background, Writing the Book of Ester brings women to the foreground, what is there to learn or know from this?
Louise: Although I'm not familiar with other religious texts, it's certain that most traditional societies assign a child-rearing, stay-at-home role to women. Nonetheless, I can't really agree that women are not important in the Bible. Where would the history of the Jewish people be without Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, Miriam, the Pharaoh's daughter, Judith, Ruth, Rahab, & Esther?
Rebecca: As an American in France, you must have had some huge conflicts during Operation Iraqi Freedom, how have you coped with them?
Louise: I didn't run into conflicts at all, either huge or tiny! The French are entirely capable of distinguishing between the American people & American government policy. Although most French people opposed the war, I never heard the least hostile comment about Americans. The closest I got to “conflict”--I'd rather say “lively discussion”--was with an American friend who didn't share my point of view. But talking things over & agreeing to disagree is one of the privileges of living in a democratic society.
Rebecca: Thank you, Louise, your books are a wonderful immersion into another way of life & looking at the world.
Do catch my Review of Louise Domaratius's Writing the Book of Ester -- I hope it makes you go out & buy yourself a copy!
Rebecca Brown
(Published 07/13/03)
Quality Words in Print is proud to announce that Gadji by Louise Domaratius is the winner of the 2003 Benjamin Franklin Award™: The Bill Fisher Award for Best First Book--Fiction. The Benjamin Franklin Awards™ are sponsored by the Publisher's Marketing Association, & celebrate excellence in editorial & design.
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