For more than 30 years, Lawrence Hill has patiently built a body of work that dissects the history and reality of black people in North America, and advocates for the development of a positive racial identity.
After achieving enormous critical and popular success with Aminata (Full Moon, 2011), winner of the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, The blood. Essence of life (Full Moon, 2014) and The undocumented (Pleine Lune, 2016), the Canadian writer makes his first foray into children’s literature with Beatrice and Harry Fang, a magical adventure story of beautiful complexity.
Even if it is aimed at an adolescent audience, Lawrence Hill does not distort or alter his thoughts and his mission, approaching, through the story of a young girl who wakes up alone in an unknown forest, devoid of any form of memory and awareness of identity, notions of justice, belonging, the quest for oneself and healing.
“Sooner or later, a child of color will encounter the attitudes and prejudices that highlight what sets them apart from the majority. I also believe that it is a deeply Canadian myth to think that children do not notice differences. I wrote this book because it corresponds to my literary obsessions, but also to help young people think of more acceptable, peaceful and loving ways of integrating into society and overcoming the challenges they face. necessarily meet. With the character of Béatrice, who was violently removed from her environment, I also bear witness to the compulsory migration of black people through the slave trade. »
The power of imagination
Left alone in the forest, in a cabin containing only a few provisions, guides and survival equipment, young Béatrice quickly, in exchange for the promise of never being devoured, befriends Harry, a crocodile. of 700 pounds with a strong tongue. Together, they embark on a journey that they hope will bring Beatrice back to a home and family of which she has no memories.
For the novelist, the writing exercise proved exhilarating. “Magical realism has always fascinated me. Fantasy allows us to relax, to fall into our story without worrying too much about details or realism. It opens up a myriad of possibilities. »
The author thus cultivates the pleasure of language with great bursts of invented expressions and puns, each more delightful than the last. The reader is therefore introduced to “decroquestation”, which consists of saving the lives of small mammals swallowed whole by a crocodile, to “palavering” sessions and to the art of insults of more than five syllables such as “odoriferous” or “attitudinal”.
“The more pretentious the words, the more they amuse me. And as I learned a little French and Spanish, it also instilled in me a desire to play more with English. I was really impressed by the way Stanley Péan managed to find the right words, to translate into French words that don’t even exist in English. »
To write this story and juggle language in this way, the author had to feel completely free. “I had to put myself in the mind of a father – I have five children – who tells a story at the edge of the bed. I needed this intimacy to put my heart, my values and my love into this character. I was completely myself. »
Lawrence Hill was also inspired by a story he invented while caring for his youngest daughter, Béatrice, in which a little girl fought night after night with a crocodile, a fight which she always won hands down. “This story came back to my mind when I was going through a difficult time — I was accompanying my mother through a process of medical assistance in dying — and when I was suffering from blank page syndrome. I was able to have fun and immerse myself in beauty and hope. »
The soul before the crime
There is hope in spades in this contemporary tale, notably thanks to the character of Béatrice, who, with her confidence, her tenacity and her audacity, has everything of a superheroine, even if her path is strewn with hatred, hasty judgments and violence.
“When I was younger, I had a lot of trouble accepting myself. So I wanted to create a solid character, capable of standing upright and not being destabilized by hatred in front of people who would even want to perpetrate a kind of genocide. Béatrice is so strong that she creates a relationship with a predator, because I believe that when we are in a minority position, we often have to learn to create deep bonds with people who, initially, would have wished us harm. »
Through the friendship between Beatrice and Harry Fang, on which several dark secrets will be revealed, Lawrence Hill also explores the theme of restorative justice, a process which encourages offenders to assume the consequences of their actions by repairing the wrongs or the damage caused by a crime.
“For about twenty years, I have volunteered in Canadian prisons, usually to attend book clubs. These experiences allowed me to understand the importance of discovering the soul of an incarcerated person before becoming interested in the reasons behind their imprisonment. I wanted the reader to also know a little about Fang Harry’s soul before the terrible violence that explains his presence in the forest is revealed. I deeply believe that it is by creating links beyond hatred that we can allow criminals to reintegrate into society, and peace to establish itself. »