Few writers have had such a profound impact on Quebec literature in such a short time as Caroline Dawson. Even if no one was unaware that cancer was gaining ground, the disbelief in the face of her death, at the age of 44, is no less total, as she remained entirely on the side of life, until the end.
“Right now, besides cancer, I am really privileged. I feel really lucky. » These sentences were spoken by Caroline Dawson in December 2021, a few months after she learned, in August 2021, that a 25-centimeter goliath – the nickname she had given to her tumor – was lodged inside her. These sentences, as astonishing as they are beautiful, say a lot about this stubborn refusal of the bitterness with which she welcomed the illness into her life, at the time when her career as a writer was taking off.
Published in November 2020 by Éditions du Stir-Mage, his novel Where I hide belongs to this exceptional category of books which rally the hearts of the literary world as well as the general public. Immigration had certainly already been the subject of several Quebec fictions, but the daily life of a refugee family had rarely been described with such clarity, tenderness, sharpness and acuity in moving detail.
PHOTO ALAIN ROBERGE, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
Caroline Dawson, in January 2023
“I wrote this book because I wanted my mother to become a real character in Quebec literature,” she confided in November 2023, “and it was not obvious that we would find women there.” Latin American housekeepers. I wanted to do him this honor: you will become a character and you will exist in people’s heads, forever. »
Anger and gratitude
Born in Chile in 1979, Caroline Dawson landed in Quebec at the age of 7, with her two brothers and their parents, who were suddenly thrown to the bottom of the socio-economic ladder, that of poorly insulated apartments, odd jobs for which no one others do not want more or less explicit humiliations.
Caroline Dawson believed that the true nature of humanity lies more in solidarity than in its opposite, but did not spare those because of whom the existence of so many immigrants remains weighed down by sacrifice and suffering. .
“It was a slightly complicated book to write, because there is both anger and gratitude in me,” she explained in an interview, in December 2021, reacting to the criticism of her novel published on social networks by Prime Minister François Legault (“A beautiful story of a family who did not have it easy”, which could appear simplistic).
I can’t be angry, because I still arrived here as a refugee, we were still welcomed. But I think reading [François] Legault is ideological. He wanted to see a great immigrant story.
Caroline Dawson, regarding the criticism of Where I hide of the Quebec Prime Minister
“My book is not just that,” she added in November 2023. “My book talks about things that you could improve and that you don’t. »
Enthusiastic readers
Written in an uncompromising language, but which she wanted to be simple so that her mother, who learned French upon arriving in Quebec, could read it without difficulty, Where I hide will have benefited from the enthusiasm of several famous admirers.
Grateful to each of her readers, Caroline Dawson made it a point of honor to recall that a column by Simon Boulerice had blown the wings of her novel, just like the fiery defense of the playwright Michel Marc Bouchard in the Combat des livres of The more, the more we read!in May 2021.
Where I hide was also crowned in 2022 with the Literary Prize for college students, a particularly significant award for this CEGEP sociology professor, who had a lot of hope in young people.
According to the wishes of Caroline Dawson, her family invited on Monday all those who admired her, from far or near, to offer a donation to the Cégep Édouard-Montpetit Foundation, for the creation of a scholarship which will provide financial assistance to young first-generation migrant women.
“I have the impression that they are much less confined than us, that they are going to get rid of a lot of structures which may have already been useful, but which have become oppressive,” she observed in February 2023, about the generation of her children, Bérénice and Paul, to whom she addresses in her collection of poems, What are you (Triptych).
When I see at my son’s school how they talk about the issue of gender, it’s obvious that there are things that are settled for them. It may be putting a lot on their shoulders, but I think they’re the ones who will save the furniture.
Caroline Dawson, in February 2023, about her children’s generation
A faith towards the world
“I was seven years old the first time I decided not to kill myself. » This is the first sentence of the prologue of Where I hidein which Caroline Dawson describes thinking about throwing herself out of a window after learning that her family would soon be leaving Chile, never to return.
“Only, I didn’t jump,” she writes about this “first act of faith towards the world”. “Not out of apathy, not out of laziness. Faced with the call of nothingness, I made the first choice that counted. »
Caroline Dawson never stopped renewing this choice, despite the shadow of illness. And although it is always risky to try to determine the reasons why a person manages not to let themselves be overcome by bitterness in the face of a reality as implacable and cruel as cancer, it seems undeniable that Caroline Dawson found a part of his faith towards the world in books. Her daughter is named Bérénice, like Ducharme’s Bérénice; it is difficult to imagine a deeper declaration of love offered to our literature.
The mark she leaves on this literature has not finished growing, but already appears immense. Last month, at the Quebec Book Fair, during a round table on class defectors, authors Benoit Jodoin, Michel Lacroix and Jean-Philippe Pleau noted with emotion that each of their recent books testifies to its debt to Where I hide and its creator.
An incredible force
It will be tempting in the coming days to describe her as a fighter, to praise her courage, all qualities that she will have undeniably embodied. But as a woman of words, Caroline Dawson knew what was false, or at least truncated, in this vocabulary. Chemotherapy had weakened her and the disease inevitably undermined her, regardless of what her smile, intact and sunny, might suggest.
“Cancer is my reality, and my job as a sociologist is to describe reality. It annoys me when we don’t face reality,” she emphasized about these ready-made formulas and these expressions – the famous resilience – which, by dint of being used, no longer seem to mean anything. either.
But in the face of illness, Caroline Dawson nevertheless displayed incredible strength. Rather than shutting herself away, she will have made valuable efforts to continue to support her work. It was in her bed that she gave her two final interviews to The Pressin November 2023, at the microphone of the podcast series Just between you and methen last February with columnist Chantal Guy, on the occasion of the publication of her youth album Going from afar (Editions de la Bagnole).
Listen to our episode of Just between you and me with Caroline Dawson
Read the text by Chantal Guy “Because she comes from far away”
She will also have redirected at each opportunity the light which she benefited from on other authors, by publishing her generous reading comments on social networks and by presenting columns on the ICI Première program. There will always be culture.
His all-too-brief work was entirely focused on hope: that which allows refugees to face another day, that which books contain, that which springs from the eyes of children. If Caroline Dawson was courageous, it was by standing up to this world where the winners too often seem to achieve their goals by denying others their dignity.
“The structures annoy me, but I love the people,” she said in November 2023. “There are so many extraordinary people. You see it when you are in the hospital, that there are nurses who do much more than they should. Often I say to myself: “You don’t know me, why do you treat me with such kindness and concern?” There are many people in my life who have made a difference. That’s hope. »