In Conversation with RE-MARKINGS
Nibir
K. Ghosh
Robin Lindley is a
Seattle-based writer, artist, attorney, and the features editor of the History
News Network (hnn.us). His articles have appeared in HNN, Re-Markings, Salon, 3rd Act, Crosscut,
Real Change, Documentary, Writer’s Chronicle, BillMoyers.com, ABAJournal (web),
and others. He has worked as a law teacher and attorney for government
agencies. He received his law degree, J.D., from the University of Washington
School of Law. A focus of his writing is the history of conflict, human rights,
medicine, and the arts. He lives in Seattle with his wife Betsy. This
conversation is in continuation of the interview featured in the September 2020
edition of Re-Markings. Beginning with
his views on the most controversial election in US history, Robin Lindley
shares here many facets of his amazingly diverse experience as a historian, a
journalist, a cartoonist, a human rights lawyer, an artist and a human being
deeply rooted to the ideals handed to him as a legacy by his loving parents.
Ghosh: Like a
self-proclaimed dictator, Donald Trump refused to accept the election verdict
as the 'consent of the governed'. Consequently, how do you look at the January
6 outrageous incident at the US Capitol?
Lindley: January 6, 2021 will be remembered as a day of infamy in the
history of the United States of America. For the first time in our history, a
president incited a horrific, deadly attack on the Capitol, the temple of our
democracy. The president riled supporters for weeks, proclaiming that the election
was “stolen,” that he had won by “a landslide.” The reality was, however, that
President-Elect Biden won an overwhelming victory by seven million popular
votes and an Electoral College vote of 306 to 232. A Trump official
acknowledged that the election was the most secure in our history and careful
reviews of votes in all 50 states confirmed the result after finding no
evidence of fraud.
In
the face of the reality of Trump’s loss, right wing media spread his lies. The
attack he launched on the Capitol occurred at the very moment Congress was
certifying the election of Joe Biden, usually a mere formality required by law.
The January 6 riot left at least five people dead, many more injured, and the
august halls of Congress vandalized and defaced. Several rioters were bent on
killing Vice President Mike Pence, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, and other
leaders. And now there are reports that some members of Congress abetted and
aided the attackers. As a former employee of Congress for a couple of years, the
siege of the Capitol was heartbreaking.
Ghosh: What
are your views on Trump’s impeachment?
Lindley: The House of Representatives has
impeached the president for inciting an insurrection. He will now face a Senate
trial on the charges against him. Trump will be remembered as the only
president who attempted to end 240 years of democratic government. He will be
remembered for four years of lies, hate, corruption, and cruelty, enabled by
Republicans who embraced his white nationalist authoritarian agenda. And he
will be remembered as the only president ever impeached twice.
Ghosh: Ralph Ellison in Invisible
Man had used the metaphor of the torch of the Statue of Liberty “lost in
the fog.” With the proverbial change of guard at the White House, can we
presume the fog to have lifted from US democracy?
Lindley: Our American democracy is uniquely resilient and fragile.
Though Trump has tested its limits, it seems democracy has ultimately prevailed.
I am very hopeful about the new administration. In his campaign, Joe Biden
promised to unify and heal the nation, to serve all Americans regardless of
political preference.
May
the healing of our nation begin with the inauguration of President Joe Biden
and Vice President Kamala Harris, and may America stand for tolerance,
fairness, democracy, and justice for all. May we maintain hope at this perilous
time for democracy. As Dr. Martin Luther King assured us, “The arc of the moral
universe is long but it bends toward justice.”
Ghosh: In terms of the new
administration, what changes do you foresee in government policy toward 1.
COVID-19. 2. Terrorism. 3. Black/All Lives Matter. 4. Economy. 5.
Immigration?
At this time, Biden’s appointees
for the new administration reflect competency, deep government experience and
political understanding. The appointees are from diverse backgrounds that
reflect America with a significant addition of women, African American, and Hispanic
citizens. And, for the first time, a Native American, Rep. Deborah Haaland,
will head the Department of Interior with jurisdiction over federal lands and
Indian Affairs. Finally, Biden and his team recognize the urgent need to
address issues of economic inequality; systemic racism; xenophobia; punitive
immigration policies; and advancing civil and human rights. I appreciate the
renewed attention to the common good and improving the lives of all citizens.
It’s encouraging also that Biden has
selected an experienced diplomatic and national security team as the US faces
threats such as the massive Russian cyber attack and acts of terrorism. There’s
sure to be a focus on domestic terrorists, particularly violent white
supremacist militants. Another priority is restoring relations with the rest of
the world and re-kindling our status as a beacon for human rights for the
world.
This promising new administration
represents a sharp contrast to Trump’s politics of division and self-interest. And
the transition will not likely be smooth as the new administration faces
health, economic and national security crises as well as the specter of Trump
and his millions of fierce followers.
Ghosh: Your interest in history
seems very deep-rooted. Did the motivation to be a historian by choice come
from your parents? Kindly share details of your parents and the way they
impacted your outlook to life?
Lindley: I don’t consider myself a
historian, but I am strongly interested in history and human stories from the
past. I have a BA in history and JD (law degree), but lack the credentials of
the academic historians that I often interview. I admire the work of scholars and
others who delve into the past, and speaking with them has been rewarding for me
and I hope for readers.
And thanks for asking about my parents, Dr.
Ghosh. They both had a couple of years of college and loved history. They also
shared their own stories, their brushes with history.
My fascination with history was significantly
influenced by the harrowing Second World War experiences of my father, Marion
William Lindley (1920-1973). He didn’t talk much about the war but, over the
years, I pieced together some of his story. Both of his parents (both teachers
with MAs from Cornell) and his only sibling died by the time he was 20. At the
behest of relatives, he joined the Oregon National Guard in early 1941 and
worked as a clerk typist with the Army Air Corps.
Because my father was already in the Army when
the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941, he was sent with one of the
earliest units to fight in the South Pacific. He should have never served in
combat because of his profound near-sightedness, but he fought in an infantry unit
through prolonged, horrific campaigns in the jungles of New Guinea.
Because the US didn’t have much experience
with combat in the early days of the war, my dad witnessed grave mistakes, such
as American planes bombing and strafing US troops. He was constantly afraid of
losing his glasses in the stifling heat and humidity of New Guinea. He saw
friends maimed and killed. He survived brutal hand-to-hand com-bat. He lost his
teeth to a Japanese rifle butt and his hair to malaria before a severe head
wound ended his combat service.
My dad was haunted by the war for the rest of
his life. He was left with chronic headaches, hearing loss, chronic pain,
recurrences of malaria, and post-traumatic stress disorder with exaggerated
startle reaction, hypervigilance, emotional liability, and other symptoms.
To support our family, my dad worked the
graveyard shift for the extra pay at a physically exhausting, monotonous and
unsatisfying job. We were usually in debt. Nonetheless, he was often funny,
encouraging, and compassionate. Once, when driving through a snowstorm, I
recall him stopping the car and giving his coat to a newspaper vendor who
shivered in shirtsleeves. My dad had a sardonic sense of humor and could be
silly, as when he skipped at our local grocery store in his heavy work boots
and sang, “Here we go gathering nuts in May. . .” He made local newspapers in
1957 when the Army belatedly awarded him a Bronze Star for
gallantry.
My father died at age 53. The arc of his life
may serve as an example of how the forces of major historical events can affect
an ordinary person.
Ghosh: In what way did the motivation come from your
mother?
Robin: My funny and curious
mother, Dolle H. Lindley (1915-2009), also piqued my interest in history as
well as in art and reading. She was a talented artist, a pianist, an
advertising manager, and autodidact with a creative spirit. Like my dad, she
had a dark and earthy sense of humor. For a radio comedy show in Spokane in the
1930s, she impersonated her Scandinavian relatives with a broad accent.
My mother also talked about the difficulties
of her impoverished immigrant parents on arriving in America. My mother was
also acutely aware of injustice and economic inequality. Her family and friends
knew deprivation and loss during the Great Depression. She admired FDR and
Ike’s opponent Adlai “The Egghead” Stevenson. She was always a Democrat and she
often repeated her Swedish American father’s view that “da goddam Republicans
have never done any goddam ting for da workers.” My mom always wondered why the
richest among us couldn’t share their wealth with those who had little or
nothing.
My mom helped our family survive dire
financial straits. Her humor and hope sustained us through furniture
repossession; dunning calls from bill collectors; an eviction from our home. And
she never gave up. To improve our lot, she entered contests until the last
years of her life. The big prizes eluded her but hope sprang eternal.
She also encouraged my long-term interest in
the history of medicine that was perhaps sparked by my dad’s medical issues and
the ex-periences of my younger sister Diann (1953-1998) who was develop-mentally
disabled.
By age nine, I decided to be a doctor. I read
a lot of medical history and books about physicians from Galen and Vesalius to
Harvey Cushing. I was especially interested in the brain. I was a fan of a
popular television show, Ben Casey, the tales of a brain surgeon, and
that became my career goal. For an oral report in sixth grade on what I wanted
to be, I read about brain surgery and interviewed Spokane’s two neurosurgeons.
In my class presentation, I shared my big chart of a step-by-step craniotomy
that I had copied from a book called Understanding Surgery. With the aid
of this chart, I described the operation to my class: shaving the patient’s
head, the initial incision, sawing through the skull, revealing the soft, mushy
brain, etc. My teacher was surprised by my ambition and concerned about my
morbid sensibility. But future patients were fortunate: my shortcomings in
mathematics and chemistry classes in high school put to rest my dreams of
medical school.
Ghosh: From the four pictures you recently crafted
and shared with Re-Markings, it
is evident that you are endowed with enormous artistic talent. What invoked
your interest in this area? What do you focus on while creating your drawings?
Lindley: The
four images I shared emerged from nervous, rapid drawing using digital tools on
an iPad. I’m certain events of the day affected these drawings. The image of
tired health care workers certainly was a response to stories of overworked
doctors and nurses who were risking their health to treat COVID-19 patients.
Ghosh: Did you go for any formal training in this
field? Any art role models?
Lindley: I’ve
enjoyed drawing and painting since preschool days. My parents were encouraging,
and my mom, a gifted artist, helped me with drawing. But I was incapable of
pretty pictures. My grade school teachers were concerned about my images of
war, damaged people, natural disasters, fires, accidents. When we made November
calendars in second grade, the other kids drew pilgrims and turkeys for Thanks-giving
Day, but I was the only one who chose to illustrate Veterans Day and I created
a bloody battle scene. My teacher said, “That tells a story, Robin.” I could
hear her eyes roll.
I stopped most drawing and painting by high
school. However, law school was so boring and frustrating that I returned to
the easel and audited life drawing classes. I’ve taken a variety of painting
and drawing courses on and off since then. Many kind teachers have encouraged
and helped me. I also enjoy reading about art and art history, and I’ve interviewed
several artists and art historians. I’ve also made illustrations for
publications.
I feel a special kinship with the
expressionists of the early 20th century, such as Kathe Kollwitz,
Edvard Munch, Otto Dix, Max Beckmann, Paula Modersohn-Becker, and George Grosz.
I also admire the work of other artists who address injustice such as Goya,
Daumier, Ben Shahn, Jacob Lawrence, Picasso, Ralph Steadman, William Kentridge.
A book I refer to often is The
Indignant Eye: The Artist as Social Critic by Ralph E. Shikes (1969). This
study of prints and drawings from the fifteenth century to Picasso chronicles
how artists graphically responded to inhumanity and social injustice.
Ghosh: As an avid reader of literature, who are
the writers/poets who have impressed you most?
Lindley: I
recently re-read the great epics, Homer’s Iliad and the Odyssey. These
tales of anger, love, hate, violence, and seeking home are timeless. I
especially enjoy those who celebrate our human comedy, often with humor and
irony. Some favorites: Voltaire, Swift, Defoe, Shakespeare, Twain, Kafka, Ralph
Ellison, Garcia Marquez, Miguel Asturias, Luisa Valenzuela, Oe Kenzaburo, R. K.
Narayan, Raymond Carver, Rushdie, Chekhov, Bulgakov, Gogol, Ambrose Bierce,
Richard Wright, Kurt Vonnegut,Jr., Joseph Heller, Toni Morrison, Charles
Johnson, Sinan Antoon, Albert Camus, Agota Kristof, Michael Ondaatje, George Orwell, Flann
O’Brien, Emmanuel Dongala, Ivan Klima, Nathanael West, Gunter Grass, Ismael
Reed, Isabel Allende, Luis Alberto Urrea, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Carlos Fuentes, E.
B. White, W. G. Sebald, and Olga Tokarczuk.
Rather than add a list of poets, I commend
to your attention the powerful anthology Against Forgetting: Twentieth
Century Poetry of Witness, edi-ted by distinguished poet and human rights
advocate Carolyn Forche. This collection features poets from 140 countries who
respond to conditions of extremity and calamity. I also recommend her moving
memoir on her experience in El Salvador as civil war loomed, What You Have
Heard is True. In an interview with Professor Forche we discussed her life
in a war-torn land where fear was palpable as right-wing death squads patrolled
the streets and the countryside.
Ghosh:
Any interest in creative
writing – story, poem, novel etc.?
Lindley: I have written some stories and
poems, and enjoy these forms very much, but no widespread publication. After my
feeble efforts at creative writing, I appreciate the effort, talent and
brilliance of accomplished writers of all stripes.
Ghosh: Do you believe that art can transform lives?
Lindley: Picasso said that “Art is the lie that reveals the truth.” Art can
introduce us to the lives of strangers and create empathy and understanding of
our interconnected world. Art can comfort and disturb. Art can touch people
emotionally and prompt social and political change. Think of Harriet Beecher
Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a story of slavery and oppression. The
book shocked readers, and created sympathy for abolitionism. Some readers saw
the book as a cause of the Civil War. And Upton Sinclair’s vivid novel on the
horrific conditions in the meatpacking industry, The Jungle, led to
consumer protection laws.
In terms of visual art, Picasso’s
monumental painting Guernica, his graphic view of the 1937 Nazi
Luftwaffe aerial bombing of civilians in this Basque village, powerfully
imagined the horror of war and the threat of fascism with a visceral immediacy
that thousands of words could not express. He didn’t depict Stuka dive bombers
or the enemy. Instead, he shared the perspective of innocent civilians who
suffered the strafing and bombing, the mechanized massacre. The painting
captures the terror of a brutal attack on unwitting humans and animals. A
mother holding her dead child beseeches the broken sky. The figures are
twisted. Faces emerge with shocked expressions and mouths seem to cry out
against the wanton destruction: why?
Ghosh: What occasioned
your passion for journalism? When did you join the celebrated History News
Network?
Lindley: I’ve always admired
reporters and have been a news addict. There’s a saying that journalism is the
first draft of history. I remember reports from Edward R. Murrow, Walter
Cronkite, and Huntley and Brinkley from the early days of television. And then
I read the great reporters such as Martha Gellhorn, Ernie Pyle, David
Halberstam, and many more. Murrow’s harrowing 1960 documentary Harvest of
Shame on the plight of impoverished, nomadic farm workers in the US still
stands out for me.
Bill Moyers has served as an inspiration. I
admire his thought-provoking, in-depth interviews of major writers, thinkers
and artists. His book on his bus trip across America in the mid-1970s sparked
my own Greyhound ‘round the US’ tour in our bicentennial year.
I especially admire Moyers’s interviews that
are fueled by his deep knowledge of history, a passion for justice, a profound
concern for others, a love of language, and an appreciation for the ethical
underpinnings of the issues he tackles. His research and erudition
provide context and analysis that is missing in much of what passes for journalism
now. And he dares to imagine that members of his audience are willing to
think and to learn.
Journalist Molly Ivins, who suggested that
Moyers run for president in 2008, said: “He opens minds—he doesn’t scare
people. He includes people in, not out. And he sees through the dark
search for political ad-vantage to the clear ground of the Founders. He
listens and he respects others.”
His continuing work embodies
these values and motivates my own search and desire to share what I learn with
others.
Ghosh: The range and variety of the
interviews you have done for History News Network is nothing short of
phenomenal. What led you to this arena of journalism?
Lindley: Thanks for that kind comment, Dr.
Ghosh. Curiosity is the greatest driver. Also, I enjoy connecting with people I
admire and learn-ing about their work.
The tireless editor and founder of HNN, Rick
Shenkman, never gave me assignments. He let me choose subjects and run with them.
He’s a generous editor and kind friend. My focus on interviewing also was
influenced by my reading of oral history and great interviews by the likes of Bill
Moyers, Studs Terkel, Terry Gross, Walter Isaacson and others.
Ghosh: How do you decide on the
personalities and authors you select for your interviews?
Lindley: I select people I’m interested in. I
may read a review or see a reference to a book or author or hear an author interviewed
on television or radio. With author interviews, I read their books and try to
learn what I can about the writer. After an interview, I always send a draft of
my article to the subject for any revisions so that my articles reflect all comments
accurately.
It’s a privilege for me to meet—even if only by phone or
email—these bright and devoted people and then share their words and wisdom
with others.
Ghosh: What inferences can one draw from your
various conversations on ‘trauma narratives’?
Lindley: Whether in literature or for
therapy, these narratives serve similar purposes by addressing trauma that
would be otherwise ignored. From these narratives we can learn about the nature
and origins of trauma as well as the varied courses survivors take to heal and
thrive. These stories often depict heroic resilience after terrible physical
and emotional injury.
University of Washington Professor of
Journalism Doug Underwood talked with me about trauma and literature, and his
book Chronicling Trauma. “Understanding
trauma is how we can understand world politics and diplomacy and everything
else. Psychiatrists now will tell you that the whole human experience is about
how well we adjust to trauma. It’s traumatic to be born. It’s traumatic to be a
mother giving birth…. As we become aware of the nature of trauma, it can make
us more empathetic and more aware of the hard experiences of life, and it
brings us together in ways that we share because we all experience trauma at
one level or another…. Trauma is unavoidable in our lives and, therefore, would
we not be better off if we acknowledged that?”
He added, “I believe that studying
trauma – as hard as
it’s been and it’s not always easy to read trauma narratives – has made me a
better person…. And I think it does make us better people even though it’s a
hard process.”
Professor Susie Linfield
wrote about political violence and photography in her book The Cruel
Radiance: Photography and Violence. I asked her about trauma and how
photographs have been used to promote social change and human rights. She
discussed how photographs of suffering and deprivation, especially of the
innocent, can reach viewers at an emotional level and prompt changes in
attitudes and, at times, lead to action. She explained:
One of the earliest
uses of photographs to promote human rights . . . was in the movement that
developed in England and the US in the 1890s and early twentieth century [to
expose] King Leopold’s colonization and brutalization of the Congo…. Photographs
of Black Africans—often mutilated, with their hands and feet hacked
off—circulated in the West in the context of this anti-colonial organizing. Of
course, that movement wasn’t perfect; it had elements of condescension and
racism. But nonetheless, those photographs were important in establishing
a human connection between whites in the US and Britain and the colonized
Congolese, and in asserting that a thread of common humanity unites us…. A
universal im-pulse has to be behind any politics of human rights, and the
denial of that kind of universal humanity is at the heart of the worst violence
of the twentieth century.
I also talked about
trauma and art with Professor Hillary Chute, an expert on comics and graphic
nonfiction and author of Disaster Drawn. “I’m interested in how trauma inspires hybrid
work that is hyper-aware of how it communicates…. The combination of the words and
images allows meaning to be created in their interaction, or even in their
disjunct. And all the work in Disaster Drawn is motivated by
collective violence and its aftermath. . . For the painter and printmaker
Francisco Goya, it was the Spanish War of Independence that began in 1808
against the French, part of the Napoleonic Wars. His Disasters of War series
of etchings was conceived of in 1808, the year the Spanish pueblo rose
up against their occupiers—a violent action met with great violence in return.
For cartoonist Keiji Nakazawa, it was the US dropping of the atomic bomb on his
home city in 1945 during World War II that inspired his comics. For Art
Spiegelman, it was his Polish-Jewish parents’ survival—or inability,
ultimately, to survive—Nazi death camps also during World War II.”
Ghosh: In his poem
“Strange Meeting” Wilfred Owen remarks: “I mean the truth untold/ The pity of war, the pity
war distilled.” In your view what lessons do war narratives impart to those who
care to read them?
Robin Lindley: Some lessons from stories of
war, perhaps: The randomness of injury and death. The chaos. The absurdity.
The guilt. The waste. The fear. The insanity. The mistakes. The carnage. The
lasting wounds. The preparation and disposal of the dead.
We should all learn
about the reality of war and how people suffer in war and afterward so that we can
respond with knowledge and under-standing whenever our nation calls upon its
armed services to fight and sacrifice. Our recent forever wars in the Middle
East have been wasteful in lives and resources at a terrible cost to our
military and to the people we have attacked and to all who have suffered and
died.
I appreciate
award-winning author Chris Hedges’ view of modern war. "War
is brutal and impersonal. It mocks the fantasy of individual heroism and the
absurdity of utopian goals like democracy. In an instant, industrial
warfare can kill dozens, even hundreds of people, who never see their
attackers. The power of these industrial weapons is indiscriminate and
staggering…. The wounds, for those who survive, result in terrible burns,
blindness, amputation, and lifelong pain and trauma. No
one returns the same from such warfare. And once these weapons are employed all
talk of human rights is a farce."
I spoke with several writers and artists about the lessons
from recent wars and what they saw and learned. They found no glory, no
triumph. Award-winning
photojournalist Peter Van Agtmael if he thought his graphic combat
pictures would prompt people to question war. “I think so. People end up
at war through ignorance more than anything else….You don't necessarily change what's going on,
but I do want the photographs to resonate and I take the long view with all of
this.”
Michael Kamber,
another award-winning photographer, stressed that civilians bore the brunt of
the war in Iraq. “The vast majority of casualties I photographed in the war
were civilians. That was the war and that’s what Americans don’t seem to
understand…. There were no frontlines. There were no armies facing us. This was
a guerilla war from beginning to end and it was fought among civilians. That’s
where the insurgents were. They were dug in and hiding amongst civilian
populations. That’s where the killing happened, and the civilians were wiped
out in huge numbers. There was a terrible cost.”
Kamber’s photography
reveals the human cost of war. “At times, I covered five or six car bombings
in one day. These happened in civilian places, and the next morning the Iraqis
have to go to work. They have to eat and go shopping and get their kids to
school. They have no choice except to go down the same road where bombs went
off the day before. I probably photographed hundreds of American and Iraqi
casualties. You’d come on a car bomb scene where 20 or 30 people were killed.
There’s grieving families and body parts and the wounded. It’s not like in the
movies where there’s a clean gunshot wound. It’s people blown into small
pieces. Sometimes large pieces. And it was every single day.”
I also interviewed
acclaimed psychiatrist, expert on mass trauma, and author Dr. Robert J. Lifton
on his memoir Witness to an Extreme Century. He sees recent wars as “atrocity-producing
situations” that are “so structured that very ordinary people who are in no way
particularly bad can engage in atrocities and that can be the case because of
the way the environment is structured. In terms of Vietnam, body counts,
free fire zones, and search and destroy missions were military policy that made
killing civilians all too easy. The kinds of experiences of soldiers,
especially angry grief they suffered [as] buddies were killed when they were
unable to engage the enemy, [are] likely to occur in counterinsurgency wars
where it’s hard to distinguish combatants from civilians.” An old saying that
probably originated in antiquity is “When war is declared, truth is the first
casualty.” I appreciate those who have shared the reality of war and hope their
experiences will inform those who create and execute our policies.
Ghosh: In the light of your
remark, “I could not help but be troubled by unfairness, violence, suffering,”
how do you manage to come to terms with such situations in your role as a human
rights spokesman?
Lindley: What can an individual do in
the face of genocide and terrible crimes against humanity? I think we have an
obligation to speak out and do something when we see unfairness, brutality, and
evil. What’s perplexing now is that I never thought we’d see Nazi and KKK
rallies in 21st century America. I’ve always disliked bullies and
didn’t understand how Americans could support a thuggish racist as president.
It’s disconcerting.
I hope to add to
the conversation by sharing voices of historians and others who speak truth to
power and value tolerance, justice, and democracy. And may the new administration
under President Joe Biden restore our position in the world as a force for
human rights.
In a 2008
interview, human rights advocate and then a future UN Ambassador Samantha
Power discussed the US role in dealing with human rights abuses. At that time,
in the waning days of the Bush administration, the US was seen as an
international pariah in the wake of the bloody and wasteful Iraq war. Power’s
words are again timely. “The United States has to get its own house in order and
recover its regard for the principles that have made it a beacon for the world.
To me, the regard for human rights makes America singular. If we’re just a
country that pursues our national interest as defined in the short term, that
won’t be good for our national interest in the long term…. We have to begin
integrating a concern for human consequences at every stage of policy and be
curious about what the effects of our policies are. And we’re not that curious
sometimes.”
Ghosh: Could you please
share your experiences as former chair and board member of the World Peace
through Law section of the Washington State Bar Association? What were the
issues and concerns that you liked to address?
Lindley: As section chair, I
coordinated monthly continuing education programs for lawyers and recruited
more women and people of color to the section.
The section was
established in the 1980s when nuclear arms control was a major issue. We
continued to consider international treaties and also focused on human rights
and international law at a time (2005-2006) when US troops and officials were
accused of war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. Experts presented engrossing
programs on the law of war, forensic pathology and war crimes investigation,
torture, human trafficking, truth and reconciliation commissions, presidential
power, health and human rights. A couple of local lawyers spoke their work with
the International Criminal Tribunals for Yugoslavia and Rwanda. I learned a lot
in this role and was pleasantly surprised by how many Seattle-area attorneys,
professors, and other experts had worked with these complex international
issues.
Ghosh: What are your views on
American imperialistic ambitions of being at the top of the international power
game?
Lindley: We have serious problems at
home, and our experiences with imperialism and nation building have been
fraught and costly, especially in terms of human lives, both Americans and
those who live in the targets of our ambitions.
Renowned
author Stephen Kinzer talked with me about his book The True Flag
on the US imperialism during the Spanish American and Philippine American Wars (1898-1901).
He stressed that “Violent intervention in other countries always produces
unintended consequences.” He explained, “We tend to forget episodes
that don’t show us in the way that we like to think that we are. The Philippine
War falls in that category. We left hundreds of thousands of Filipinos dead in
a horrifically brutal campaign. We had our first torture scandal. We had
serious war crimes committed as a matter of official military policy. And yet
very few Americans are even aware that this war ever happened. Actually, it’s
been a huge scar on the minds of Filipinos and it’s well known in East Asia,
but because it doesn’t fit into our narrative of what we do in the world, we’ve
allowed it to fall out of our history books and our con-sciousness.”
Kinzer added, “What I find even more puzzling is
that we don’t seem to learn from these experiences. There doesn’t seem to be
any limit to the number of times we can crash into another country violently
and have it come out terribly…. The more we crash into other countries,
the more we weaken ourselves. This is the lesson our interventions teach us.”
Ghosh: In this context, could you
please mention your conversation with Professor Daniel Immerwahr?
Lindley:
I interviewed Professor Daniel Immerwahr on his
ground-breaking book How to Hide an Empire on the history of US
territories and possessions beyond the 48 contiguous states. He stressed how
racism affected our colonization of other lands: “Racism
didn’t only shape people’s lives within the country. It also shaped the country
itself, determining the placement of the borders and, within those borders,
which places would count as ‘American’ and which as ‘foreign.’ There’s a long
history of US leaders seeking to control which people are ‘in’ and which are ‘out’
of the country. Unfortunately, they’ve largely succeeded in writing Puerto
Ricans, Filipinos, and Hawaiians out of U.S. history.”
And Professor Immerwahr shared the unlikely story of bird
poop and US imperial expansion. “It was in search of guano that the United
States started annexing islands overseas—ultimately nearly a hundred of them in
the Pacific and Caribbean. These were uninhabited, but someone needed to be
there to mine the guano. Guano companies came to rely on non-white laborers,
essentially marooning them on these rainless, godforsaken islands with
instructions to pick, shovel, and blast loose as much guano as possible.
Unsurprisingly, guano workers mutinied. One such uprising, on Navassa Island in
1889, led to the killing of five white overseers and, ultimately, a Supreme
Court case. It was where the Court first considered whether overseas expansion
was consistent with the Constitution. It ruled that it was, thus laying the
legal foundation for em-pire.” The US empire building brought prosperity to
some at a terrible price for others.
Ghosh: What impact can
political cartoons have in molding public opinion through media journalism?
Lindley: Editorial cartoonists and
caricaturists have a gift for taking complex issues and creating a visual scene
that presents a point of view, usually with humor. Cartoons can bring clarity
and understanding in an instant, in ways that scholarly treatises and articles
cannot. They may simplify to a fault but the comic snapshot can be powerful and
moving.
Consider the
special contributions of the prominent cartoonists such as Gary Trudeau
(“Doonesbury”), Bill Mauldin, Oliphant, Herblock, David Horsey, David Levine,
Ted Rall, and Ann Talnaes, among others. And then you have the recent
innovations in graphic novels and histories such as Maus by Art
Spiegelman, and a graphic history of the Civil War, Battle Lines, by
historian Ari Kalman.
I asked Professor Hillary
Chute why graphic novels are popular now. “In my view, the trauma of
World War Two, in which conventional forms of expression came to seem
inadequate to express human atrocity, and the highly televisual and
photographed Vietnam War that followed, allowed the hand-drawn form of comics
to reinvent cultures of expression. In 1972 both Keiji Nakazawa, a Japanese
Hiroshima survivor, and Art Spiegelman, a Polish-Jewish immigrant to the United
States whose parents both survived Auschwitz, created some of the very first
mea-ningful nonfiction comics from different parts of the globe: Tokyo and San
Francisco…. Something was
happening in the 1970s to those who were directly affected by the war: they
were finding new—and in this case, older—forms to register the violence that
had devastated their families. And their work took off.”
It seems I’ve tapped
into a vein of darkness. I must say that each of the people I’ve interviewed has
left me with hope even when discussing the darkest themes in history. For example, medical
historian Frank Snowden finds hope in the history of cruel epidemics in this
age of COVID-19. “If I thought that the
history of infectious diseases was exclusively a study of disaster and
despair, I would long ago have abandoned the subject as unbearably depressing.
Fortunately, however, along with the dark sides of human nature, epidemics also
demonstrate our brighter and more hopeful qualities. One can see that again and
again in the heroism of physicians, nurses, and caregivers; in the dedication
and ingenuity of medical scientists; and in the slow, but steady advance of the
science of public health and hygiene. That history fills me with the hope
that we will, in the end, survive COVID-19, and with that experience behind us,
we will resolve to organize our society in such a way that we are not again
scourged by a deadly pandemic.”
I’d like to conclude
with the words of Professor Susie Linfield, the journalism professor: “I hope that
readers will go to the history books and the testimonies and the newspapers and
magazines, and that they will delve more deeply into the complicated realities
that photographs can only suggest. Which is to say: I hope that we
will all become historians—at least sometimes—and, equally important,
citizens.”
Ghosh: Thanks Robin for
sharing your views so generously.
Lindley: Thanks
for the opportunity to share, Nibir.
Published in RE-MARKINGS Vol 20 No.1 March 2021. pp.14-28. 20th Birth Anniversary Special Number.
Copyright Re-Markings 2021.
Comments on the Interview
Robin: I was blown
away by the depth and breadth of your interview. Not only is it a wonderful
evoking narrative about you-your parents, your civilized sensibilities and
understandings, it serves also as a flowing and dynamic intellectual history of
the modern era.
Send this to
everybody.
Jhh
Professor Jeffrey
H. Hartje
Emeritus
Sturm
College of Law
University
of Denver
Hi
Robin, I finally found some time to read this fascinating interview. What a
tragic story about your father and the head injury he suffered in combat during
WWII. He sounds like a terrific man who left the world all too soon. Your
mother’s story is also so rich and interesting. I enjoyed reading about your
early interest in medicine, particularly in brain surgery. . . Curiosity is
indeed the great driver of journalism!
I
felt like I really got to know you in this piece, as if we were chatting over
drinks in your living room. Keep up the great work - in your interviews and in
your advocacy for human rights.
Cheers,
Kevin
Kevin
Davis (Author of The Brain Defense and Editor, American Bar Association
Journal)
v
‘Learn the narrative of the other’: A Conversation with Joanna Chen
Nibir K. Ghosh
Joanna Chen
is a British-born writer, poet and translator, currently living in the Ela
Valley of Israel. Her poetry, essays and literary translations have been
published in Guernica, Mantis, Narratively and Waxwing,
and Re-Markings, among many others. She teaches literary translation at
The Helicon School of Poetry in Tel Aviv. A former journalist, her work has
appeared in international publications such as Newsweek, The
Daily Beast and Marie Claire. Her full-length literary
translations include Less Like a Dove (Shearsman Books), Frayed
Light (Wesleyan University Press) and My Wild
Garden (Pantheon-Random House). She writes a column for The
Los Angeles Review of Books. She states: “Poetry and prose are intertwined
in my writing, as is literary translation, which enriches every single word I
write. Writing has always been my preferred medium of expression, the best way
for me to explain myself to the world.” Joanna loves the outdoors and is
always happy to spread the word about poetry and poetry in translation!
Discover more at www.joannachen.com.
Ghosh: Greetings from the
city of the Taj! Our acquaintance began with the publication of your poems in
the Re-Markings’ special number, A World Assembly of Poets. How
did you feel being a part of such creative diversity?
Joanna Chen: I welcome creative diversity
and am always interested in what other people are writing and creating around
the world.
Ghosh: Did you experience any kind
of cultural lag in moving to a new place?
Joanna Chen: I was 16 when I arrived in
Israel. For many years, I suffered because I didn’t speak either Hebrew or
Arabic and the culture felt alien to me. It took me a while to acclimatize –
perhaps I’m still acclimatizing now.
Ghosh: When did you start to write
poetry and what inspired you to write?
Joanna Chen: I was always scribbling in
the margins of school notebooks and writing snippets of poetry on pieces of
paper for as long as I can remember. I was inspired by particular moments – oak
leaves moving in the breeze outside the classroom window, the sound of foot-steps
coming up the stairs – and I often got into trouble at school for not paying
attention in class.
Ghosh: Who would you consider your
mentors in poetic composition? Name a few poets who attracted your admiration
in your formative years.
Joanna Chen: Adrienne Rich for her
honesty and daring; Jane Hirshfield for her delicacy and precision, who is also
a wonderful literary translator; Wendell Berry for never failing to remind me
of the immediate beauty in nature; the Bronte sisters, whose home I visited
many times in the North of England, where I lived; Ethelbert Miller has been an
inspiration and a dear friend to me for a number of years. A literary activist,
he's constantly encouraging writers to push forward. He taught me the
importance of sharing – work, resources, ideas.
Ghosh: Referring to the lines from
Adrienne Rich’s poem, “Diving into the Wreck” – “the thing I
came for:/ the wreck and not the story of the wreck/ the thing itself
and not the myth” – you state: “This is why I write poetry.” Are you suggesting
that your concern is with lived reality rather than imaginary stories or myths
about reality? Please elaborate.
Joanna Chen: Exactly. As a former
journalist, I’m deeply cemented in the here and now, and the fact that what we
write about people is not a story: it’s real life.
Ghosh: In popular perception Israel
is “a pressure cooker of constant changes, political, ideological, social and
familial intensity and density, permeated with an anxiety about claustrophobic
suffocation.” What is your view?
Joanna Chen: That and so much more.
Ghosh: Who are the emerging Israeli
poets to look out for? What are the emerging themes?
Joanna Chen: Tehila Hakimi is a wonderful
writer of prose and poetry who writes about the role of women and their place
in society. I just finished translating a wonderful novella of hers called Company.
Yonatan Berg is another fine poet and prose writer. He has written extensively
on growing up on a Jewish settlement, on serving in a combat unit in the
Israeli army, and how all this affected him.
Ghosh: What is your take on the process
of Americanization in Israeli life and literature?
Joanna Chen: I don’t see this is any
different from any other country really.
Ghosh: What subjects do you consider
closer to your heart in your poetic compositions? Why do you consider them
important to share them publicly?
Joanna Chen: I want to share my work as
much as I want to read and discuss the work of other people. We do not live in
a bubble and in order to write I think it essential to read.
Ghosh: What kind of challenges have
you encountered as a woman writer in Israel? Was it easy to find writing
colleagues and outlets to publish?
Joanna Chen: I write in English. There’s
a small but thriving community of English writers in this country. As for
finding places to publish, I publish my work outside of Israel, mostly in the U.S.
Ghosh: What is your vision about
the future of poetry in Israel and elsewhere?
Joanna Chen: I think poetry is on the
rise. People are less inclined to say today – oh, I wasn’t good at poetry in
school – or – I don’t really understand poetry. It’s become more accessible,
and today especially I believe more people are turning to poetry as a way of
taking refuge from what is happening in the world.
Ghosh: Do you believe
that poetry can transform lives? What is your take on writers using words as
weapons?
Joanna Chen: I believe that poetry can
move people but we must be our own change, do you know what I mean? A poem
itself doesn’t change the world, but it can make people think, it can offer a
new perspective. As for words as weapons, let us hope we are all a little more
resilient than that.
Ghosh: What got you interested in
the art of translation?
Joanna Chen: Literary translation is a
wonderful bridge to other cultures. You asked about cultural diversity earlier.
This is it! For me, literary translation is a way of holding each word up to
the light and turning it around, to see new perspectives and meanings. It’s a
way of delving down deeply to the roots of words – their social, cultural,
political and religious implications. Just as reading is an essential part of
writing, so is literary translation. When I’m translating a poem, I am honing
my own writing as well.
Ghosh: You teach literary
translation at The Helicon School of Poetry in Tel Aviv. Please enumerate the
nature of your work as a translation teacher. What are the various translation
projects that you have worked at? What methods do you follow to ensure that
good poetry is not lost in translation?
Joanna Chen: Let me put it this way. I
share my love for words with my students, I encourage them to explore writing
in other languages and to translate into their native language. One of my
students has published the poetry of Jericho Brown in translation; another has
translated Ocean Vuong.
We work first on a literal translation of a given
poem, we research the background of that poet to make sure we understand the
cultural context. Then we do the real magic – the transforming of the poem into
the target language, and then we look to see: What did we gain and what did we
lose?
Ghosh: What
motivated you to learn both Hebrew and Arabic after you migrated to Israel?
When did you begin to think you could use your knowledge of these languages in
translating poetry into English?
Joanna Chen: The answer is simple: You
can't live in a country without speaking the language of everyone else who
lives here, right? One of the problems immigrants face, particularly older
ones, is a lack of proficiency in the language of the country they find
themselves in. It's debilitating, it sets you apart. You can never fully
integrate unless you are able to grasp the language, and that's not always
possible.
It was just as
important to learn Arabic as well. In my journalism days, it was crucial to be
able to walk into a Palestinian home and say hello to everyone in Arabic, it
shows respect.
One day, while
driving up to Jerusalem, I was listening to a song in Hebrew on the radio and I
suddenly realized I knew all the words by heart, and I also understood the
deeper meaning of the lyrics. I had taken a course that year in literary
translation given by poet Linda Zisquit, and absolutely loved it. I realized I
might turn my knowledge into a profession. I began translating poetry,
and now translate prose as well, although I believe there is always poetry in
prose, there is always the lyricism and rhythm of that source language. It's a
bit like music, listen-ing for the voice and the tone.
Ghosh: What motivated you to the choice of
translating Less Like a Dove by Agi Mishol and Frayed
Light by Yonatan Berg. Do these two poets have anything in
common in terms of their poetic concerns? Also, what attracted you to
translating Meir Shalev’s My Wild Garden: Notes from a Writer's Eden?
Joanna Chen: Agi Mishol's poetry spoke to
me immediately with its clear images and accessible language that I was sure
would resonate for the English-speaking community as well. Her writing is
steeped in the multiple layers of the Hebrew language. Similarly,
Yonatan Berg's writing taps into the flexibility of Hebrew, its ability to
convey past and present simultaneously. Both poets dig down deep into their own
lives and that of the culture they were born into, with all its flaws and all
its beauty. As for Meir Shalev’s My Wild Garden: Notes from a Writer's Eden, I
must say that though a prose
writer, Meir Shalev’s work is often lyric, verging on the poetic, in this
particular book I translated.
Ghosh: What skills did you acquire
as a student of the creative writing program at Bar Ilan University?
Joanna Chen: The Shaindy Rudoff Creative Writing Program at Bar Ilan
University is a marvellous place to hone your craft and exercise your creative
muscles. It provides an excellent toolbox for writers of all genres and also a
warm and nurturing community that I still enjoy today.
Ghosh: What are your priorities as a journalist? Did you
ever have to face a situation where you felt constricted to be silent about
something that mattered to you as a person?
Joanna Chen: Don’t expect to necessarily agree with people you’re
interviewing! You can’t change the world but you can enter into people’s lives
for a brief time and try to understand them.
Ghosh: You begin the poem “The Art of Journalism” by saying, “It
takes three years and I’ll tell you why.” Kindly shed light on the layers of
experience that a trainee journalist has to contend with in acquiring the art
of reporting.
Joanna Chen: A bureau chief at Newsweek told me that three
years is the maximum to stay in any given location: the first year you’re in
shock when you see a child wandering the streets, shoeless; the second year you
know the ropes, you know how to speak to that child so she won’t run away from you;
the third year you’re so accustomed to it all you don’t even see the child
anymore.
Ghosh: Your poignant essay, “When Poetry is a Crime,” written in
protest against the Arab poet Tareen Datour’s arrest and captivity, showcases
your conviction to speak out against repressive measures employed by the State
to curb dissent. Do you ever find yourself at the receiving end on account of
your courageous stand at the level of your community or nation?
Joanna Chen: I’m not courageous. I wrote that piece in order to
highlight Dareen Tatour’s personal plight. I wrote it because I believe that
every-one has the right to free speech even if her opinions may not always
mirror my own.
Ghosh: According to Margaret Atwood, “Women are still expected
to be better than men, morally that is, even by women, even by some branches of
the women's movement; and if you are not an angel, if you happen to have human
failings, as most of us do, especially if you display any kind of strength or
power, creative or otherwise, then you are not merely human, you're worse than
human.” What are your views in the context of Atwood’s contention?
Joanna Chen: Let’s just get on with our
lives and do the best we can.
Ghosh: “Fire, charred buses, men
lined up against a wall, roadblocks, guns at intersections, shards of glass on
the street, the fear on people’s faces, the funerals revisited on the 8 o’clock
news” – these images from one single poem of yours reflect the gloom that we
are prone to see all around us. How do you manage to create a balance between
what is and what really ought to be?
Joanna Chen: The world isn’t a kind
place. But there are kind and courageous and daring people who live and breathe
in it and that makes life worth something, right? I write about subjects that
are meaningful to me. I hope someone reads my writing and says, yes, I feel
that way too.
Ghosh: How would you respond to a
statement that Thomas Paine had once made: “The whole
religious complexion of the modern world is due to the absence from Jerusalem
of a lunatic asylum”?
Joanna Chen: The whole
world is a bit of a lunatic asylum actually!
Ghosh: In terms of the
Arab-Israel conflict, if you were to be appointed an ambassador of peace, what
measures would you suggest as a poet of humanity and citizen of Israel?
Joanna Chen: There’s no easy solution but
I can say this: learn the narrative of the other. You don’t have to agree with
this narrative, but at least accept there is another narrative, another way of
looking at the world.
Ghosh: You have been writing a
regular column for The Los Angeles Review of Books.
What are some of the major events, themes and issues that you have enjoyed
addressing?
Joanna Chen: I write a lot about literary
translation as a bridge to other cultures and other people. I interview writers
whose words speak to me. I most recently interviewed the Irish writer Colum
McCann on his book Apeirogon, about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict,
because no Arab langu-age or Hebrew language publishers will publish the
book.
Ghosh: As a writer, poet and
journalist how do you view the cataclysmic changes brought about by the
COVID-19 pandemic on a global scale?
Joanna Chen: People are reading more.
People are discovering the positive side to keeping close to home. On the other
hand, this is an incredibly challenging time in which many have lost jobs and
are struggling to make ends meet.
Ghosh: In this age of
digitization and social media explosion, do you consider it ironical that,
though interest in reading has waned, the publication industry has registered a
huge growth?
Joanna Chen: On the contrary, people are
reading more and more today. Poetry too!
Ghosh: Names of cities and
places, near and distant, frequently make their appearance in your poems and
prose narratives. Are you fond of travelling to “faery lands forlorn” like John
Keats or do you feel the urge to visit places where all is not well in terms of
ideals like liberty, equality, fraternity and the like?
Joanna Chen: The only place I’m traveling
to this year is Dublin, where my beautiful eldest daughter and granddaughter
live. COVID-19 has shut the door to everywhere else. Because of my love for
them, Dublin has become second home to me.
Ghosh: Mutuality of political
interest has created close ties between Israel and India. In case you happen to
visit India someday, what would figure in your list of preferences?
Joanna Chen: I would love to visit India one
day. I’d love to learn about the many layers of language that exist in India
and am so curious about the social structure of this huge country.
Ghosh: What message would you
like to give to young upcoming poets and journalists worldwide?
Joanna Chen: Look close to home when you
write. Right in front of your nose there is so much going on. And on the other
side of the world there is someone who would love to read it.
Ghosh: Thanks, Joanna. It was real
pleasure talking to you.
·
Dr. Nibir K. Ghosh, former Head, Department of English Studies
& Research, Agra College, Agra, is UGC Emeritus Professor. He has been a
Senior Fulbright Fellow at the University of Washington, Seattle, USA during
2003-04. An eminent scholar and critic of
American, British and Post-colonial literatures, he is Author/Editor of 15
widely acclaimed books and has published
over 175 articles and scholarly essays on various political, socio-cultural and
feminist issues in national and international publications. His most recent
work is Mirror from the Indus: Essays, Tributes and Memoirs
(2020).
Published in RE-MARKINGS Vol 20 No.1 March 2021. pp.36-43. 20th Birth Anniversary Special Number.
Copyright Re-Markings 2021.
v
A Conversation with Manoranjan Byapari
Anuradha Sen
A few years ago, the venue of the Patna Literature
Festival was abuzz … a rickshaw puller from Bengal was to address the august
gathering! Interesting snippets of information were doing the rounds and
arousing audience curiosity and excitement. Manoranjan Byapari, it was said,
had requested the organisers to book a plane ticket for him from Kolkata, ‘only
one way,’ he said. He had seen the world for long from the ground level, he
wanted to have a glimpse of that world ‘…once from above.’ A flair for
significant metaphors!
That day Manoranjan Byapari kept the audience enthralled
for two hours! And I had been wondering how he would communicate, con-sidering his
mother tongue was Bengali. However, he was a wonderful communicator and an
entertainer, and in workable Hindi he had the audience chuckling and clapping
throughout. He spoke about various things – his difficult life and the life of
the poor and the oppressed in general, the need for social change, the
simmering rage of the Dalit writer such that only a Dalit could write about
their life not any other writer, howsoever sympathetic to their condition they
might be. In this context, even while acknowledging the contribution of writers
like Munshi Premchand, Byapari felt one cannot really write the Dalit story on
a full belly and from the sanctuary of a cushioned existence. He ex-pressed his
disappointment, for instance, on the ending of Premchand’s famous short story “Kafan,” where the chamar father- son duo
are seen drinking liquor with the money meant to buy the kafan, for
their deceased wife/mother. Byapari sees this as the age-old upper caste
prejudice in type-casting all lower caste and passing judgement on them. Byapari
said, being a Dalit who has felt the pangs of raw hunger and privation, he
would have ended the story differently – he would have shown the father son
opting for a good square meal of lovely white rice with the precious money. In
an interesting ex-change at the venue, when I spoke to Alok Rai (grandson of
Munshi Premchand and retired head of the English Department at Delhi
University) and asked him what he thought about Byapari’s critique, Rai smiled
and came up with a blasé rejoinder: ‘maybe there should be another story called
“Phir se Kafan.”
I was invited to be in conversation with Manoranjan
Byapari on the 27th of August 2017 by ‘Kalam,’ an initiative of the
Prabha Khaitan Foun-dation and a Kolkata based organisation which hosts a
literary event at Patna every month. An author is invited for interaction with
a select group of interested book lovers.
My interaction with Byapari was a life altering
experience; during my conversation I was transported from the comfort zone of
my life of privilege and security into a hitherto untraversed world of life
lived at the margins. Byapari was a man who had lived life at the edge – a life
of privation and hunger, oppression, and neglect, of crime, violence, and punishment.
The trials and tribulations of a Bangladesi refugee, a Chandal, the lowest in
the caste hierarchy … real lived experiences, anecdotes, of exile, jail, police
beatings, in refugee camps, in different locations all over the country. Here
are some snippets of that rather long conversation.
A.S.: Tell us your life
story…
M.B.: I don’t know
when I was born, probably 1950. I came from Barisal in Bangladesh when I was
about 3 years old. Mine is a life story of hardship and privation. We survived
on dole for seven years at the Bankura Shiromanipur Refugee camp. One day the
government stopped the dole and sent all the refugees to the Dandakaranya. There,
I collected firewood from forests to help my family make a living. As a hungry
ticketless traveller, I travelled all over in search of work –Darjeeling,
Assam, Uttar Pradesh etc. As a child I worked as a cowherd, a tea stall boy, a
washer of dishes and later as a cook, labourer, munshi, a rickshaw puller, a
crematorium guard and as a forest chowkidar in Naxal infested Chattisgarh. I
came in close touch with Shankar Guha Neogi, the legendary labour leader in the
tribal belts of Madhya Pradesh. His murder by contract killers left an
indelible imprint on my mind. He was champion of the oppressed and ignored
people of this society. I had a close brush with death at least thrice in my
life. But all this and more I have narrated in detail in my auto-biography Itibritte Chandal Jeevan which was
published in 2012.
A.S.: How did you
become a writer?
M.B.: Mine
is a strange story. I learnt my letters at age twenty-four in one of my
sojourns in jail. (With a chuckle he added) Jail for me those days was a haven
and a respite as there at least I did not have to worry about getting a square
meal and a warm bed. My experience in jail proved life altering. I came across
an inmate who claimed to have gone mad after reading Sarat Chandra
Chattopadhya’s novel Charitraheen. I was surprised. One kind inmate
seeing me distressed and feeling hopeless suggested that if I became literate,
the tasks assigned by the authorities wouldn’t be as exacting as those assigned
to illiterate inmates. Also, there was the added incentive of my jail term
getting shortened. He taught me my letters on the jail floor with sticks and
later with chalk. Then I read and read, whatever I could get.
Many years later while reading a novel, waiting for
passengers in front of a girl’s college at Kolkata, an elderly lady with a
young student got on my rickshaw. She evinced surprize to see me reading, and I
surprised her further by asking her the meaning of the Bengali word ‘jijibisha’
which in Bengali means, ‘will to live.’ It was my lucky day! The lady who had
boarded my rickshaw was none other than the famous writer-activist Mahashweta
Debi herself! She was taken aback to see that it was her novel Aghigarbha, that I had been reading. She
then asked me if I had ever written anything, and she encouraged me to write
for her magazine Bartika, a Bengali
quarterly – a forum for peasants, agricultural workers and urban proletariat. My article was very well received upon
publication. Seeing this I wrote four more sto-ries and sent it to four
different magazines. Thus began my journey as a writer.
A.S.: Who are the
writers and personalities who influenced you?
M.B.: I have read
some Hindi and Bengali writers, as well as some translated Russian works. From
Mahashweta Debi I learnt the ex-pression of unrelenting rage. Srilal Shukla I
admire for his portrayal of powerful characters. Jajabar’s use of language
influenced me. My heart has expanded after reading Samaresh Basu and I find
Shankar Guha Neogi’s leadership qualities inspiring. The Adivasis have taught
me simplicity and honesty.
A.S.: Do you feel that
a Dalit alone can narrate the Dalit experience? What about the efforts of
writers like Munshi Premchand?
M.B.: While
I acknowledge the efforts of these writers who took up our cause, I feel it is
impossible for them to actually narrate the experience of hunger, oppression,
deprivation and the consequent simmering rage of the Dalit. They cannot
empathise, they can only sympathise. Besides, I have read the works of the
greatest writers whose language and mindsets are tainted with the age-old caste
prejudices. How will they know about the pangs of hunger I have experienced …
when one’s entrails curl up into hard knots of pain and one’s vision gets
blurred and hazy? How will they know about the struggle for survival in an
unjust, discriminatory society such as ours when they come from the privileged
‘bhadralok’ class?
A.S.: You have been
awarded the highest literary award of West Bengal, the Paschim Banga Academy
award. How much literary value is embedded in your writing?
M.B.: I wish to convey through
my writing the oppression Dalits are subjected to. I wish to tell their untold
stories, to make them visible to society. I should not be judged according to
preconceived literary para-meters. I am not a scholar, I merely tell my story,
my lived experience is not fiction.
A.S.: Why did you feel the need to write your
autobiographical novel?
M.B.: I had a strong
urge to document my life-story in print, or else it would be lost with me. That
I survived is a wonder. Thrice I have come back from the jaws of death. Police
thrashings, starvation, jail, physical and mental torture, homelessness, and a fugitive’s
life, I have borne it all. My writings represent all those like me who continue
to live in such inhuman conditions. People need to be made aware.
A.S.: What is Professor Meenakshi Mukherji’s role in
your life?
M.B.: I am eternally
grateful to her. She wrote an article in The
Economic and Political Weekly (2007)
where she referred extensively to my work. The article was titled “Is there
Dalit Writing in Bangla?” I became known in both national and international
forums as one of the first Dalit voices coming out of Bengal.
A.S.: What do you hope to achieve through writing?
M.B.: I give
vent to the seething rage of my people through my writings. My stories are
actual lived experiences but they depict the social realities of our times. I
hope my writings will make people aware of the gross injustice, discrimination,
neglect the marginalised in this democratic country professing equality for
all, are subjected to. I am very hopeful that social change will come with
justice. That is my firm hope and belief. I write with purpose. I am hopeful of
a new society which can provide justice, food, clothing, and medical service
for all. My literary characters resemble me.
A.S.: With 10 novels
and 100 articles that you have published, I hope your days of hardship have
ended?
M.B.: My struggle has
not ended. I still work as a cook in a school. It’s a hand to mouth existence.
An injury from old police beating incapa-citates me. As I raise my voice
against the present regime, I get no state aid as do people who kow-tow to the
powers that be. I am lauded at Literature Festivals and am a frequent invitee
to Presidency College and Jadavpur University. Students and scholars write
their thesis on me. For them I have become a ‘topic’, a ‘discourse,’ for them I
am no longer a human being with needs. My lot remains the same where I still
have to worry about my next meal.
A.S.: What about the
royalties from the books that are sold?
M.B.: In my
autobiography I have written about the murky world of the publishing industry.
Since mine is not part of mainstream fashionable literature, the big publishing
houses are not interested. I had to pay Rs.16000, to get my book of short
stories published. I was given 498 copies which I was required to sell myself.
The print and paper quality are terrible. I was later told that I had been
grossly overcharged and fleeced. The presentation and packaging of my
autobiography is not attractive. There are proofreading errors, the narration
is not organised into chapters. All these factors adversely affect sales. Such
books are summarily dismissed by the elite readers and critics as the output of
the ‘chhotolok’ (lower caste).
A.S.: Perhaps if you
wrote humorous or entertaining books it would gain more popularity. You are
gifted with a unique sense of humour…
M.B.: I have often
thought so myself. But whenever I tried, it was the angst of the underprivileged
which gushed out. That is what life has made me; I guess I cannot really
change.
A.S.: Meeting with you
has been a life altering experience and a trek into an unknown, untraversed
world. Hope that your works get trans-lated so that more people can read the
Dalit story, and slowly social change will surely come? Already you are an
entity in literary circuits. Alka Saraogi, the Hindi novelist, has created a
character resembling you in her novel Sesh
Kadambari. Joydeep Ghosh has
screened his documentary film, Subaltern Ego, on your life. In the international film circuit, he is also
shooting a feature film based on a story penned by you. There is hope yet,
Dalits have moved from the margins to the centre, at least in literary
fashions. Wish you the absolute best in all your endeavours!
M.B.: Thank You.
· Dr. Anuradha Sen is Associate Professor in the Department of English at A.N. College, Patna.
Published in RE-MARKINGS Vol 20 No.1 March 2021. pp.95-99.
20th Birth Anniversary Special Number.
Copyright Re-Markings 2021.
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