The politics of fiction | Elif Shafak

I'm a storyteller.

That's what I do in life -- telling stories,

writing novels --

and today I would like to tell you a few stories

about the art of storytelling

and also some supernatural creatures

called the djinni.

But before I go there, please allow me to share with you

glimpses of my personal story.

I will do so with the help of words, of course,

but also a geometrical shape, the circle,

so throughout my talk,

you will come across several circles.

I was born in Strasbourg, France

to Turkish parents.

Shortly after, my parents got separated,

and I came to Turkey with my mom.

From then on, I was raised

as a single child by a single mother.

Now in the early 1970s, in Ankara,

that was a bit unusual.

Our neighborhood was full of large families,

where fathers were the heads of households,

so I grew up seeing my mother as a divorcee

in a patriarchal environment.

In fact, I grew up observing

two different kinds of womanhood.

On the one hand was my mother,

a well-educated, secular, modern, westernized, Turkish woman.

On the other hand was my grandmother,

who also took care of me

and was more spiritual, less educated

and definitely less rational.

This was a woman who read coffee grounds to see the future

and melted lead into mysterious shapes

to fend off the evil eye.

Many people visited my grandmother,

people with severe acne on their faces

or warts on their hands.

Each time, my grandmother would utter some words in Arabic,

take a red apple and stab it

with as many rose thorns

as the number of warts she wanted to remove.

Then one by one, she would

encircle these thorns with dark ink.

A week later, the patient would come back

for a follow-up examination.

Now, I'm aware that I should not be saying such things

in front of an audience of scholars and scientists,

but the truth is, of all the people

who visited my grandmother for their skin conditions,

I did not see anyone go back

unhappy or unhealed.

I asked her how she did this. Was it the power of praying?

In response she said, "Yes, praying is effective,

but also beware of the power of circles."

From her, I learned, amongst many other things,

one very precious lesson --

that if you want to destroy something in this life,

be it an acne, a blemish

or the human soul,

all you need to do is to surround it with thick walls.

It will dry up inside.

Now we all live in some kind of a social and cultural circle.

We all do.

We're born into a certain family, nation, class.

But if we have no connection whatsoever

with the worlds beyond the one we take for granted,

then we too run the risk

of drying up inside.

Our imagination might shrink;

our hearts might dwindle,

and our humanness might wither

if we stay for too long

inside our cultural cocoons.

Our friends, neighbors, colleagues, family --

if all the people in our inner circle resemble us,

it means we are surrounded

with our mirror image.

Now one other thing women like my grandma do in Turkey

is to cover mirrors with velvet

or to hang them on the walls with their backs facing out.

It's an old Eastern tradition

based on the knowledge that it's not healthy

for a human being to spend too much time

staring at his own reflection.

Ironically, [living in] communities of the like-minded

is one of the greatest dangers

of today's globalized world.

And it's happening everywhere,

among liberals and conservatives,

agnostics and believers, the rich and the poor,

East and West alike.

We tend to form clusters

based on similarity,

and then we produce stereotypes

about other clusters of people.

In my opinion, one way of transcending

these cultural ghettos

is through the art of storytelling.

Stories cannot demolish frontiers,

but they can punch holes in our mental walls.

And through those holes, we can get a glimpse of the other,

and sometimes even like what we see.

I started writing fiction at the age of eight.

My mother came home one day with a turquoise notebook

and asked me if I'd be interested in keeping a personal journal.

In retrospect, I think she was slightly worried

about my sanity.

I was constantly telling stories at home, which was good,

except I told this to imaginary friends around me,

which was not so good.

I was an introverted child,

to the point of communicating with colored crayons

and apologizing to objects

when I bumped into them,

so my mother thought it might do me good

to write down my day-to-day experiences

and emotions.

What she didn't know was that I thought my life was terribly boring,

and the last thing I wanted to do

was to write about myself.

Instead, I began to write about people other than me

and things that never really happened.

And thus began my life-long passion

for writing fiction.

So from the very beginning, fiction for me

was less of an autobiographical manifestation

than a transcendental journey

into other lives, other possibilities.

And please bear with me:

I'll draw a circle and come back to this point.

Now one other thing happened around this same time.

My mother became a diplomat.

So from this small, superstitious,

middle-class neighborhood of my grandmother,

I was zoomed into this

posh, international school [in Madrid],

where I was the only Turk.

It was here that I had my first encounter

with what I call the "representative foreigner."

In our classroom, there were children from all nationalities,

yet this diversity did not necessarily lead

to a cosmopolitan, egalitarian

classroom democracy.

Instead, it generated an atmosphere

in which each child was seen --

not as an individual on his own,

but as the representative of something larger.

We were like a miniature United Nations, which was fun,

except whenever something negative,

with regards to a nation

or a religion, took place.

The child who represented it was mocked,

ridiculed and bullied endlessly.

And I should know, because during the time I attended that school,

a military takeover happened in my country,

a gunman of my nationality nearly killed the Pope,

and Turkey got zero points in [the] Eurovision Song Contest.

(Laughter)

I skipped school often and dreamed of becoming a sailor

during those days.

I also had my first taste

of cultural stereotypes there.

The other children asked me about the movie

"Midnight Express," which I had not seen;

they inquired how many cigarettes a day I smoked,

because they thought all Turks were heavy smokers,

and they wondered at what age

I would start covering my hair.

I came to learn that these were

the three main stereotypes about my country:

politics, cigarettes

and the veil.

After Spain, we went to Jordan, Germany

and Ankara again.

Everywhere I went, I felt like

my imagination was the only suitcase

I could take with me.

Stories gave me a sense of center,

continuity and coherence,

the three big Cs that I otherwise lacked.

In my mid-twenties, I moved to Istanbul,

the city I adore.

I lived in a very vibrant, diverse neighborhood

where I wrote several of my novels.

I was in Istanbul when the earthquake hit

in 1999.

When I ran out of the building at three in the morning,

I saw something that stopped me in my tracks.

There was the local grocer there --

a grumpy, old man who didn't sell alcohol

and didn't speak to marginals.

He was sitting next to a transvestite

with a long black wig

and mascara running down her cheeks.

I watched the man open a pack of cigarettes

with trembling hands

and offer one to her,

and that is the image of the night of the earthquake

in my mind today --

a conservative grocer and a crying transvestite

smoking together on the sidewalk.

In the face of death and destruction,

our mundane differences evaporated,

and we all became one

even if for a few hours.

But I've always believed that stories, too, have a similar effect on us.

I'm not saying that fiction has the magnitude of an earthquake,

but when we are reading a good novel,

we leave our small, cozy apartments behind,

go out into the night alone

and start getting to know people we had never met before

and perhaps had even been biased against.

Shortly after, I went

to a women's college in Boston, then Michigan.

I experienced this, not so much as a geographical shift,

as a linguistic one.

I started writing fiction in English.

I'm not an immigrant, refugee or exile --

they ask me why I do this --

but the commute between languages

gives me the chance to recreate myself.

I love writing in Turkish,

which to me is very poetic and very emotional,

and I love writing in English, which to me

is very mathematical and cerebral.

So I feel connected to each language in a different way.

For me, like millions of other people

around the world today,

English is an acquired language.

When you're a latecomer to a language,

what happens is you live there

with a continuous

and perpetual frustration.

As latecomers, we always want to say more, you know,

crack better jokes, say better things,

but we end up saying less

because there's a gap between the mind and the tongue.

And that gap is very intimidating.

But if we manage not to be frightened by it,

it's also stimulating.

And this is what I discovered in Boston --

that frustration was very stimulating.

At this stage, my grandmother,

who had been watching the course of my life

with increasing anxiety,

started to include in her daily prayers

that I urgently get married

so that I could settle down once and for all.

And because God loves her, I did get married.

(Laughter)

But instead of settling down,

I went to Arizona.

And since my husband is in Istanbul,

I started commuting between Arizona and Istanbul --

the two places on the surface of earth

that couldn't be more different.

I guess one part of me has always been a nomad,

physically and spiritually.

Stories accompany me,

keeping my pieces and memories together,

like an existential glue.

Yet as much as I love stories,

recently, I've also begun to think

that they lose their magic

if and when a story is seen as more than a story.

And this is a subject that I would love

to think about together.

When my first novel written in English came out in America,

I heard an interesting remark from a literary critic.

"I liked your book," he said, "but I wish you had written it differently."

(Laughter)

I asked him what he meant by that.

He said, "Well, look at it. There's so many

Spanish, American, Hispanic characters in it,

but there's only one Turkish character and it's a man."

Now the novel took place on a university campus in Boston,

so to me, it was normal

that there be more international characters in it

than Turkish characters,

but I understood what my critic was looking for.

And I also understood that I

would keep disappointing him.

He wanted to see the manifestation of my identity.

He was looking for a Turkish woman in the book

because I happened to be one.

We often talk about how stories change the world,

but we should also see how the world of identity politics

affects the way stories

are being circulated,

read and reviewed.

Many authors feel this pressure,

but non-Western authors feel it more heavily.

If you're a woman writer from the Muslim world, like me,

then you are expected to write

the stories of Muslim women

and, preferably, the unhappy stories

of unhappy Muslim women.

You're expected to write

informative, poignant and characteristic stories

and leave the experimental and avant-garde

to your Western colleagues.

What I experienced as a child in that school in Madrid

is happening in the literary world today.

Writers are not seen

as creative individuals on their own,

but as the representatives

of their respective cultures:

a few authors from China, a few from Turkey,

a few from Nigeria.

We're all thought to have something very distinctive,

if not peculiar.

The writer and commuter James Baldwin

gave an interview in 1984

in which he was repeatedly asked about his homosexuality.

When the interviewer tried to pigeonhole him

as a gay writer,

Baldwin stopped and said,

"But don't you see? There's nothing in me

that is not in everybody else,

and nothing in everybody else

that is not in me."

When identity politics tries to put labels on us,

it is our freedom of imagination that is in danger.

There's a fuzzy category called

multicultural literature

in which all authors from outside the Western world

are lumped together.

I never forget my first multicultural reading,

in Harvard Square about 10 years ago.

We were three writers, one from the Philippines,

one Turkish and one Indonesian --

like a joke, you know.

(Laughter)

And the reason why we were brought together

was not because we shared an artistic style

or a literary taste.

It was only because of our passports.

Multicultural writers are expected to tell real stories,

not so much the imaginary.

A function is attributed to fiction.

In this way, not only the writers themselves,

but also their fictional characters

become the representatives of something larger.

But I must quickly add

that this tendency to see a story

as more than a story

does not solely come from the West.

It comes from everywhere.

And I experienced this firsthand

when I was put on trial in 2005

for the words my fictional characters uttered in a novel.

I had intended to write

a constructive, multi-layered novel

about an Armenian and a Turkish family

through the eyes of women.

My micro story became a macro issue

when I was prosecuted.

Some people criticized, others praised me

for writing about the Turkish-Armenian conflict.

But there were times when I wanted to remind both sides

that this was fiction.

It was just a story.

And when I say, "just a story,"

I'm not trying to belittle my work.

I want to love and celebrate fiction

for what it is,

not as a means to an end.

Writers are entitled to their political opinions,

and there are good political novels out there,

but the language of fiction

is not the language of daily politics.

Chekhov said,

"The solution to a problem

and the correct way of posing the question

are two completely separate things.

And only the latter is an artist's responsibility."

Identity politics divides us. Fiction connects.

One is interested in sweeping generalizations.

The other, in nuances.

One draws boundaries.

The other recognizes no frontiers.

Identity politics is made of solid bricks.

Fiction is flowing water.

In the Ottoman times, there were itinerant storytellers called "meddah."

They would go to coffee houses,

where they would tell a story in front of an audience,

often improvising.

With each new person in the story,

the meddah would change his voice,

impersonating that character.

Everybody could go and listen, you know --

ordinary people, even the sultan, Muslims and non-Muslims.

Stories cut across all boundaries,

like "The Tales of Nasreddin Hodja,"

which were very popular throughout the Middle East,

North Africa, the Balkans and Asia.

Today, stories continue

to transcend borders.

When Palestinian and Israeli politicians talk,

they usually don't listen to each other,

but a Palestinian reader

still reads a novel by a Jewish author,

and vice versa, connecting and empathizing

with the narrator.

Literature has to take us beyond.

If it cannot take us there,

it is not good literature.

Books have saved the introverted,

timid child that I was -- that I once was.

But I'm also aware of the danger

of fetishizing them.

When the poet and mystic, Rumi,

met his spiritual companion, Shams of Tabriz,

one of the first things the latter did

was to toss Rumi's books into water

and watch the letters dissolve.

The Sufis say, "Knowledge that takes you not beyond yourself

is far worse than ignorance."

The problem with today's cultural ghettos

is not lack of knowledge --

we know a lot about each other, or so we think --

but knowledge that takes us not beyond ourselves:

it makes us elitist,

distant and disconnected.

There's a metaphor which I love:

living like a drawing compass.

As you know, one leg of the compass is static, rooted in a place.

Meanwhile, the other leg

draws a wide circle, constantly moving.

Like that, my fiction as well.

One part of it is rooted in Istanbul,

with strong Turkish roots,

but the other part travels the world,

connecting to different cultures.

In that sense, I like to think of my fiction

as both local and universal,

both from here and everywhere.

Now those of you who have been to Istanbul

have probably seen Topkapi Palace,

which was the residence of Ottoman sultans

for more than 400 years.

In the palace, just outside the quarters

of the favorite concubines,

there's an area called The Gathering Place of the Djinn.

It's between buildings.

I'm intrigued by this concept.

We usually distrust those areas

that fall in between things.

We see them as the domain

of supernatural creatures like the djinn,

who are made of smokeless fire

and are the symbol of elusiveness.

But my point is perhaps

that elusive space

is what writers and artists need most.

When I write fiction

I cherish elusiveness and changeability.

I like not knowing what will happen 10 pages later.

I like it when my characters surprise me.

I might write about

a Muslim woman in one novel,

and perhaps it will be a very happy story,

and in my next book, I might write

about a handsome, gay professor in Norway.

As long as it comes from our hearts,

we can write about anything and everything.

Audre Lorde once said,

"The white fathers taught us to say,

'I think, therefore I am.'"

She suggested, "I feel, therefore I am free."

I think it was a wonderful paradigm shift.

And yet, why is it that,

in creative writing courses today,

the very first thing we teach students is

"write what you know"?

Perhaps that's not the right way to start at all.

Imaginative literature is not necessarily about

writing who we are or what we know

or what our identity is about.

We should teach young people and ourselves

to expand our hearts

and write what we can feel.

We should get out of our cultural ghetto

and go visit the next one and the next.

In the end, stories move like whirling dervishes,

drawing circles beyond circles.

They connect all humanity,

regardless of identity politics,

and that is the good news.

And I would like to finish with an old Sufi poem:

"Come, let us be friends for once;

let us make life easy on us;

let us be lovers and loved ones;

the earth shall be left to no one."

Thank you.

(Applause)