Michelle Lapierre-Dallaire enters the café where we have arranged to meet with a large bag under her arm, from which the small head of a chihuahua emerges. When an employee tells her that dogs are not allowed in the establishment, she responds gently: “It’s a service dog. »
Makita — “yes, like the tool company” — undergoes training and has a mandate to soothe and comfort people who, like the writer, live with post-traumatic stress.
In his first novel, Were there limits if yes I crossed them but it was out of love ok (La Mèche, 2021), Michelle Lapierre-Dallaire delved without compromise into her traumatic memories and delivered an incisive testimony on the ordeals that marked her childhood and her life as a young adult, marked by sexual violence. A hard-hitting autofiction, where sentences of great poetry were launched like real punches against preconceived ideas.
His second story, I ask you to close your eyes and imagine a quiet place, is part of the same trend. Beyond the singular title — “in France [l’autrice est publiée chez Nouvel Attila]they wanted to change the title of my first book to Without limits. Well let’s see, it looks like the title of a podcast by Mike Ward” — the novel offers an incursion into the psyche of the writer through her exploration of her queer identity, her relationship to the body and the male gaze, as well as her close relationship with her mother.
The revolt of writing
Michelle Lapierre-Dallaire anchors her writing in the body to push her thoughts to the smallest limits, unearthing the intertwined roots of her desires, her fantasies, her aversions and her fears, refusing to separate them and conceal the pain and the paradoxes of truth. “The line between fascination and nausea is thin, and I keep crossing it. I try to identify what excites me, just as I want to know what repels me. Often, excitement and disgust coexist, intertwine, merge viscerally. My sexual desire does not take root in fertile soil from which I could reap enjoyment. It is born in manure carried in sweat in full sun. My sexual desire stinks and repels,” she writes.
“When I write, I look for the limit, but I can’t find it,” she says, reflecting. What hurts in life? It’s mostly the things we don’t say. The imposed silence, the secrets, never did anything good. I think we need to delve into taboos so that they no longer exist. »
One might believe that it seeks to shock, to banally shake sleeping or privileged minds. However, under the pen of Michelle Lapierre-Dallaire, the shock phrases rather take the form of revolts, of seizures of power.
“For me, what is fascinating is to imagine a childhood or a life where there is no violence; what is shocking is to understand that what I experienced, I cannot talk about it without people reacting. For me, violence is my daily life, it’s my language. A person from my extended family, to whom I told that I had few relatives to talk to, replied that she had chosen not to know the details, that that was her limit. I don’t have that privilege. Writing is therefore an act of revolt, to force people to hear. If someone doesn’t want to buy the book, that’s okay, but they can’t tell me it doesn’t have a reason to exist. Every day, I receive messages from readers who tell me that my first novel changed their lives. »
Fusion and compassion
Michelle Lapierre-Dallaire’s writing is certainly marked by violence, devastating, and sometimes intolerable authenticity. But she is also more and more calm, anchored, open to the outside and, above all, luminous and filled with compassion, particularly towards herself, as well as towards her mother, to whom she delivers, despite her faults. , a true declaration of love.
“I believe it is because of my mother that I am able to show compassion. She taught me that people do the best they can with what they have. Let’s think about Maslow’s pyramid. At the bottom, we find all the primary needs, while the top allows the achievement of fulfillment and accomplishment. My mother was always surviving, working, she didn’t have access to the emotional and intellectual resources to build something else. »
By probing the desire and the feeling of fusion which bind her to the one who gave her life, the writer also gradually constructs on paper the bases of her queer identity, acquiring a fragility which allows her to offer the most most touching and evocative of his story. “I am revisiting my entire relationship with consent, in the eyes of others. I have to completely reinvent my definition of what makes me attractive, it’s a big learning experience. »
As we read, we understand that Michelle Lapierre-Dallaire’s choices are dictated by this need to regain control of her body and her sexuality. For her, sexual violence and writing are two continua that intertwine. She also draws powerful parallels between her desire to write and the three years she did sex work.
“Ultimately, I sometimes feel more naked when I write than when someone pays me for sex. In sex work, I decide everything, and everything is done with my consent. I have perfect control of the image that I am going to project. However, it is much more difficult to share my interiority, my ideas and my intelligence than to share my body. Then, it’s super thankless. You are asked to produce more and more, at mediocre wages, in conditions of great vulnerability. » And, she writes: “just as we constantly put the sex worker in her place as a whore, we always put the sex worker author in her place as a whore author who writes autofiction. »
Michelle Lapierre-Dallaire is aware of being part of a lineage… That of Nelly Arcan, Marie-Sissi Labrèche and Virginie Despentes. And like them, she seeks to push the boundaries of literature, to loudly defend those who are silenced, to tell the story of what is possible in all its extremes and to expose the truth of the female experience. Very unfortunate he who underestimates it…