 Among our six honorees this year is Dr Lakshmi Persaud, award-winning novelist (five novels), writer and teacher. Dr Persaud will be conferred with the DLitt and will address graduates of the Faculty of Social Sciences at the ceremony on the morning of October 25. She shared some thoughts with editor, Vaneisa Baksh.
VB: “I feel compelled to write by the things that disturb me,” is one explanation you’ve offered for your drive (five novels in just about a dozen years is quite prolific). Would you say that it is your way of seeking to resolve or understand the nature of the disturbing things? Do you think it has led to writing that might disturb the reader?
LP: The things that trouble me greatly are the grave injustices done to the weak by the confident and powerful, especially when they cleverly present themselves as upright men with panache, and get away with it because the onlookers, the citizens, are short-sighted, lack integrity and courage, so no one dares to ask questions.
Writing about anything compels the writer to find out more about what has happened, why it happened, what factors were responsible for or influenced the situation with which she is engaged. This writing, to my knowledge, has not “disturbed the reader,” as you’ve suggested could happen.
Instead, readers fall into three categories. For example, my novel: “For the Love of my Name” is an allegory of a Caribbean region, the majority of whose citizens chose for partisan reasons, to support an illegal, authoritarian regime which damaged the economy almost irretrievably.
A few reviewers marvelled at the courage of the writer and one even suggested that such writing showed that the Caribbean had matured, had come of age. Readers who supported the perpetrators of the regime dismissed the novel by a powerful silence. Thirdly, those who were indifferent saw it entirely as a work of fiction and commented on the author’s style of writing.
VB: The difference in the movement of time between the developed world and developing countries is a significant one, especially in terms of the demands it makes on family life, on mastery of technology, and the way humans communicate. What has it been like for you—as a woman, born in 1939, living for over 30 years in the latter environment before spending another 30 years or so in the former? How does one cope with this pace and its demands?
LP: One copes because one must, for to do less is to retreat and reduce participation in the wider society. The pressure to cope well, surrounded me—my three young children, who were told daily that their mother would put everything right soon.
Your learning curve is almost perpendicular. Within a short time (we arrived in the UK in August and school opened in early September), you have to understand the dual education system—private and state; you have to find out by any means which schools are considered good and which not as good.
You have to learn rapidly where to shop for fresh vegetables and spices, where the shops that offer good value for money can be found. You have to learn how to cook a variety of dishes with only a very few vegetables, as most of the tropical vegetables and fruits were absent from Mill-Hill shops in the ’70s. Things have since vastly improved, with London’s population now representing a miniature of world culture, so creating the demand for a greater variety, and better quality consumer goods.
Punctuality is the norm for trains, buses, the theatre, for government and private functions. If it so happens that it is announced that the train will be five minutes late, travellers behave as if they were told it would be very late.
The importance of time to Londoners is not only seen by this, but by what you are surrounded by. Travellers are using their laptops on trains, or in the back of cars, professionals are engaging with their clients by their mobile phones. You get the feeling that the time available anywhere must be used well, for living is streamlined here, and there is a different balance between their world of perpetual aspiration and that of entertainment.
The particulars you’ve mentioned in your question, one can master in a short time, but by far the most difficult in the ’70s was human relationship. The culture is different, expectations are different. You may at times be embarrassed, by the simplest of things. I heard a pleasant looking West Indian woman, greeting those in the waiting room loud and clear with: “Good morning” when she entered the Mill-Hill Medical Practice. Maybe that was just her manner; she was brought up this way to greet those before her with a simple “good morning.” But here, everyone turned slowly towards the morning sound as a moving spotlight that suddenly stilled, framing her. Their eyes appeared to have projected themselves forward. Why? To use an English expression: “It is just not done.”
However, the most difficult to cope with, is the racism which your young children will face in school and not understand why it exists. My recent novel “Daughters of Empire” [2012] shows how one mother coped with all that was thrown at her.
VB: As a writer, one is often classified and asked to define oneself within certain parameters: as a woman, as a feminist; as a Caribbean woman; as a Caribbean Indian woman, as an immigrant; and so on, how do you feel about these attempts at classification?
LP: At birth, when I was still in a cradle, and later, swung to sleep in a hammock, the first aroma of food, the first taste of solids and the first sounds I heard of the spoken word would have had their origins in India. I accompanied my mother to ceremonies: weddings and pujas and Kathas, the plays of the epic Ramayana, performed in an open Savannah. She took me at dawn to the river to bathe—kartic kay nahan; Shivratree, I described in the novel “Butterfly in the Wind”—I prepared the deyas for Divali, and so from birth, begins the effortless absorbing of the culture of one’s family.
I grew up in a multicultural Trinidad, comprising also of varying shades of African and European culture; later, as I travelled to countries far and wide and studied in the UK, I absorbed a variety of thinking, beliefs, ways of doing things—the culture of the people.
It is understandable that one’s perception and attitudes will be formed by one’s experiences, so influencing one’s writing, hence the reason for the classification. However, writers prefer not to be classified. Toni Morrison would not like to be classified as an African American woman writer. She sees herself as a writer who writes what she wishes to write. When Salman Rushdie, on a BBC TV interview, many years ago said he observed that she does not write about white people, she replied, “Why should I?”
Writers do not like classification; to them it means being put into a closed compartment, a man-made box. They are aware that it is not only gender, place of birth, race, place to which one has emigrated that influence us, which is what the classification you’ve identified is saying.
I shall refer to the above as Influences A.
There are many other influences which help to form one’s attitudes or perceptions of things. For example, travel, family background, education, the time of birth and the age of the writer when writing, one’s personality, one’s motivation, i.e. why does one write? Is the writer living in a country that is well-to-do or very poor, democratic or authoritarian; what is the attitude to life of those close to the writer? I shall refer to these as Influences B.
We are each unique individuals as our DNA and thumbprints show. This is why classification should be used with care, being aware of its weaknesses will greatly assist the reviewer and reader.
With influences A which is what classification is based on, one may know where the writer is coming from, but we do not know where he is going, because B kicks in.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s insightful observation helps to explain why one must be alert to the very many factors that influence attitudes: “The meaning of things lies not in themselves, but in our attitudes to them.”
So when a writer is classified, he/she needs only to smile and think: C’est La Vie.
VB: What does this honorary degree mean to you?
LP: This is an honour which I never expected would be conferred on me. It has left me with the feeling that I must now try even harder at all times, irrespective of what my task is, or where I am, to offer my very best graciously. It must be my default position.
I am also intensely aware that I have been greatly helped by my parents and family and by the excellent early education I received at the Tunapuna Government Primary School, and later at St Augustine Girls’ High School and St Joseph’s Convent in Port of Spain. I have also had the good fortune to have had intelligent, knowledgeable, articulate reviewers with insight and at times with courage, to swim against the tide.
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