Chile is on fire while Caroline Dawson fights another fire, that of cancer. The day she received me, the news was not very good either for her native country or for her health. But her loved ones in Chile were able to find shelter and her morale is strong. “It happened exactly where we lived, it burned,” she said. It’s climate change, no one says it, but it’s clear that it is. Temperatures of 40 oC in Chile, we don’t see that. »
I hadn’t yet had the opportunity to interview Caroline Dawson, but I wanted to meet her, feeling like I’d known her forever, after reading Where I hide And What are you, who touched me deeply. We grew up in the same neighborhoods, we have the same cultural references, with this difference that she sheds light on from another perspective – that of the little immigrant girl who arrived here at age 7 – a world that I know well, that she practically goes through the X-rays, where we feel her indignation at inequalities emerging at a very young age. Few writers have succeeded in portraying the reality of being an immigrant as well as life in Hochelaga and Centre-Sud, which were already harsh places for natives at the time.
The pretext for this meeting, apart from my admiration, is a new book, for children this time: Going from afarin collaboration with the illustrator Maurèen Pavoine.
There is no doubt that young Caroline would have liked to have had this kind of book when she arrived in Quebec.
She was not sure at first whether to accept the invitation from editor Jade Bérubé, but she wrote it for her children and for all little ones, so that they could understand in a sensitive (and amusing) way what what it means, to leave far away and settle somewhere else forever. “I told Jade that if I did a book about it, I wanted it to be funny, because children like to laugh. I have the impression that there are books that we buy to do ourselves good, we parents, to have a clear conscience, especially books that talk about immigration and refugees, and that children sometimes find them fatally flat. »
Very respectful of the illustrator’s work, she had only one request: that the character of the mother have long hair, “because that [lui] I miss it a lot,” she confides, speaking to me from her bed, as was the case when she spoke with my colleague Dominic Tardif for his podcast show, which I invite you to listen to.
Listen to the podcast Just between you and me with Caroline Dawson
Caroline Dawson is undergoing immunotherapy treatment which tires her much less than chemotherapy. But, once again, the prognosis is not reassuring. “We’ve had very bad news three times, this is the fourth time I’ve been killed, and when I tell my boyfriend that, he laughs a little. I would say I’m fine, I haven’t lost any weight, my head is fine, my pain hasn’t increased. Even though tests show it’s more serious this time, I take it with a grain of salt. What do you want me to do ? I’m stuck in this, but I don’t want to continue living differently. »
It’s more difficult for her parents, she adds, who help her a lot and who worry like all loving parents. “My children, they are elsewhere. I feel like I’m living for the first time like my children live, in the present moment. When I’m with them, I don’t think about anything else. I used to be a parent who answered emails while we played at the park, that’s not the case anymore. »
Understanding through the senses
In Going from afar, as a family packs their bags on the eve of a trip, a mother who looks like Caroline tells her children about the first time she took a plane, and it wasn’t for vacation or tourism. His fears, vomit in mid-air, astonishment at the first snow, learning a new language…
I think that children understand what immigration is through very concrete things and sensations. For example, you don’t know at first how to dress for winter or that moving all the time has consequences: you have to make new friends.
Caroline Dawson
His own children were his first critics, very moved when they discovered the final result. Going from afar was even read in his daughter’s class and opened a rich discussion about the themes of the book. “It made me really happy, because they laughed a lot. »
And it must have been very far from the excesses in the debates on immigration. “We are in a momentum, the political class is talking about it and sending it back to everyone and everyone has an opinion,” notes Caroline. But I think there are political ways to get immigrants to help us and that would be happy for everyone. »
She saw the exhausted nurses running left and right at the hospital. She also notices this increasingly two-tiered education system, while she and I were entitled to a good education at the local public school. What I found particularly brilliant in his books is to bring together the fate of immigrants and the shortcomings of a society towards all those who struggle, regardless of their origins. This awareness of social classes when you grow up in a poor environment, where you lose the taste for dreaming, quite simply because you have had no role models, from generation to generation. ” It’s exactly that. Some people can’t see the horizon of possibilities because it was never there for anyone. »
This comes, according to her, from her father who was a socialist and who lectured her. “I went to friends’ houses, there was nothing to eat, they weren’t happy homes, and when I came back home, it wasn’t that. My parents were tired, but I think they had an important concern about making sure their children were happy. »
This is precisely why his parents one day took a plane and left Chile: so that their children could flourish. Uprooting yourself for this reason is, in my opinion, the greatest proof of love. And I want to say thank you to Caroline Dawson’s parents for giving Quebec such a magnificent human being, who has the talent to write the books that we needed. Little or big readers.
Going from afar
The car
32 pages (in bookstores February 14)