{"id":60933,"date":"2022-06-01T16:38:56","date_gmt":"2022-06-01T16:38:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/villa-albertine.org\/magazine\/leila-slimani-when-i-write-i-dont-know-where-im-going\/"},"modified":"2023-08-23T07:53:45","modified_gmt":"2023-08-23T07:53:45","slug":"leila-slimani-when-i-write-i-dont-know-where-im-going","status":"publish","type":"app_magazine_article","link":"https:\/\/villa-albertine.org\/va\/magazine\/leila-slimani-when-i-write-i-dont-know-where-im-going\/","title":{"rendered":"Le\u00efla Slimani: \u201cWhen I Write, I Don’t Know Where I’m Going\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

We are currently living in very uncertain times, crippled by war, a pandemic, a global climate disruption\u2026 In such a context, asking, \u2018Where are we going?\u2019, as we do on the Night of Ideas, might seem dizzying. How can literature remain relevant?<\/strong>
\nIn my view, the role of literature is always the same, and it isn\u2019t contingent on human history. It is at once absolutely essential and absolutely trivial. Nothing is more important than the fight for the individual, for the intimate, for human complexity, for beauty, for the ability to be touched. That being said, what writers do is useless. Writing a novel will not feed a child; it will not warm someone who is cold; it will not heal someone who is dying. Literature always lies there \u2013 in the tension and balance between the absolutely essential, which makes us human beings, and something that is deeply trivial.
\n\u00a0<\/p>\n

So when you sit down at your desk to write, do you try to shut out the sound and fury of the world?<\/strong>
\nNo, I don\u2019t shut it out at all \u2013 on the contrary, it\u2019s always with me. How can one avoid it? Wherever one looks, whatever the period, violence is always lurking somewhere. It\u2019s also found, to various degrees, in books and in their characters. Anyone who loves literature is familiar with the violence of the world. Every writer, whether it is Homer or William Faulkner, is well aware of it, and all authors carry it within themselves. So, no, it is there with me, and even if it sometimes feels, as I\u2019ve just said, trivial, pointless, and almost indecent to be shut away writing books all day long, I also often feel that it might be the only thing in the world that makes any sense \u2013 to keep fighting for knowledge, awareness, emotion, sharing, and emancipation through literature.
\n\u00a0<\/p>\n

When you start on a new book, do you ask yourself where you are heading? Is that something you need to settle beforehand?<\/strong>
\nNo, not at all. I don\u2019t know where I\u2019m going when I write. I\u2019m in the dark throughout the whole process \u2013 in fact, that\u2019s precisely what I like, because I love the realization that everything is gradually getting clearer. It\u2019s like being in a room that\u2019s in total darkness, and as your eyes get used to it you can make out the outlines of the furniture. Writing is a bit like that: I move forward according to narrative twists and surprises. I don\u2019t really have a pre-established plan, although of course I have an initial idea of the characters, their outlines, and their fates. As I write, through the magic of language, they end up having lives of their own and leading me where they want me to go. Their lives are totally their own.
\n\u00a0<\/p>\n

Notions such as hospitality, solidarity, and reciprocity feature strongly in your books and your public stances. How can we best defend them today?<\/strong>
\nThey are, indeed, values that I have always defended, for a very simple reason, namely that I\u2019m an immigrant myself. I left my country to live in another, and although some people offered me hospitality and made me feel welcome, I\u2019ve also experienced rejection and racism, albeit to a lesser extent than others. My homeland, Morocco, is also a land of emigration, a country that a lot of people around me wanted to leave. Why do people leave their homeland? What sparks the obsession with elsewhere? Those are questions that have always intrigued and saddened me. I might add that the concepts of charity, welcome, and hospitality toward those who have less run deep in Morocco and in the Muslim culture. So I have been preoccupied and obsessed with these questions for the last twenty years. But hospitality only makes sense to me if it applies to everyone, whatever the color of their skin. What revolts me today is the feeling that some immigrants are more worthy than others, that there are people who deserve to be called refugees when others are just migrants. To put it clearly, racism, selection and discrimination have even wormed their way into our humanitarian relationship with the world.
\n\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cRegardez-nous danser,\u201d the second book in your trilogy \u201cThe Country of Others,\u201d was recently published in France. It\u2019s a saga based on your own family history, and this latest opus is set in the 1960s-70s, an era we now see as one when all kinds of future were still possible. In your opinion, how did people back then reconcile the personal and the historical?<\/strong>
\nThe book is set in the late 1960s, a period we tend to over-idealize because, both in the West and in what we call the Global South (i.e. countries such as Morocco), it was a time of idealism and hedonism when it seemed as if young people would change the world, revolutionize sexuality and interpersonal relationships, and put an end to war\u2026 But while I was researching that period, I soon realized that it also had some sinister aspects. I should specify that although I did a lot of meticulous work, the hardest thing was then to put those great historic movements to one side. Because novels are essentially about individuals, and most of them are blind as to the present they live in. Our own era and society are mostly beyond our grasp, and we are much more often obsessed with very personal and selfish issues than with the course of history. We\u2019re far more interested in whether we will get a promotion at work, or whether the woman we love will love us in return, than in how we can best be of service to others. I\u2019m not passing judgment when I say that; it\u2019s just what human beings are like, and perhaps it\u2019s also how we manage to cope with the world. To get back to my latest book, it\u2019s about some endearing characters who want to be good people but realize that the world is actually so vast, and the issues they come up against so complex and confusing, that most of the time the truth, and the very notion of good, eludes them.
\n\u00a0<\/p>\n

Those years, the late 1960s and early 1970s, are also associated with the women\u2019s liberation movement, and female characters are at the heart of your novels. But there is a discourse that tends to oppose the West, where women have supposedly been progressively liberated (although there is still a way to go), to the Global South, specifically to countries of Muslim culture where, after a golden age, the status of women has regressed. What is your view on that subject?<\/strong>
\nIt\u2019s absolutely false. The period described as a \u2018golden age\u2019 of women\u2019s liberation actually concerned very few women \u2013 members of the first generation of independent women who had middle-class backgrounds and access to higher education. It is true that some women experienced a kind of liberation that was new to countries such as Morocco, because they could not only study, but could wear skirts, go out at night\u2026 Then the movement spread to working-class and rural communities and began to take different forms. For a young woman in a small town in central Morocco, liberation obviously didn\u2019t mean smoking cigarettes on caf\u00e9 terraces, but simply going to school. So what is regarded in the West as symbolic of women\u2019s liberation might be less visible, but emancipation in a broader sense was nonetheless there. Moreover, middle-class women like A\u00efcha, the character in my latest novel, may have accessed higher education, but society still required them to do all the things their mothers had done, namely shopping, housework, cooking, child care\u2026 The fight we are still engaged in today is a fight to ease the burden, to share the household chores more equitably. So another result of the so-called golden age was that those women became crushed under the weight of their demands.
\n\u00a0<\/p>\n

More generally, the issue that comes to mind when reading your book is how the so-called minorities \u2013 French descendants of colonized countries \u2013 are viewed in France today. The issues of identity, integration, and the place of Islam have been debated for decades and are brought to the fore again in every election. Do you see any evolution on those issues?<\/strong>
\nTo be frank, racism continues to be a real problem in France. I have lived here for twenty years, and for all that time the same subjects have been discussed: national identity, immigration, former President Nicolas Sarkozy\u2019s speeches about Africans never making history, the irrational fear of the replacement of the French population by Muslims, whether girls and women should be allowed to wear the veil. I\u2019m sorry, but I can\u2019t think of a better word to describe those debates than \u201cracist.\u201d And to be honest, I\u2019m sick of it. What sense does it make to refer to us \u2013 immigrants from the Maghreb, for example \u2013 as a \u201cminority\u201d? We\u2019re not a minority, we\u2019re French. What\u2019s truly astounding is to harp on about the values of a Republic that is supposedly blind to differences, to affirm that we are citizens above all else and should not define ourselves by our religion or the color of our skin, only to refer to us as \u201cvisible minorities,\u201d people of I-don\u2019t-know-what origin! French society, where 30 percent of people now vote for far-right parties, should take a long, hard look at this racism, which is generally described as latent but is becoming increasingly overt. We have to acknowledge the problem of racism, rejection of others, and hatred for a section of French society. It could also stem from a lack of awareness of history and geography, a lack of interest in other people\u2019s history, in what those people have contributed, contribute today, and will continue to contribute to this country. The truth is that I no longer want to tread carefully, to look for explanations or excuses, because the result of all that is that a lot of people around me, who came to France to make a life for themselves, have now decided to leave. There was an article in the New York Times on the subject recently, and I can confirm that it\u2019s true. People of my generation, in their early 40s, are packing their bags and going back to Morocco because they can no longer endure the prevailing discourse.
\n\u00a0<\/p>\n

You said at the beginning of our interview that literature was both essential and trivial. There are nonetheless reasons to hope, with a form of decompartmentalization in recent years, a greater interest in Francophone literature from outside France. The latest Prix Goncourt \u2013 the most prestigious literary prize in France, and one that you were awarded in 2016 \u2013 went to Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, a Senegalese author. Don\u2019t you think that helps to broaden people\u2019s horizons and bring these issues into the public arena?<\/strong>
\nYes, of course, and that is exactly what we endeavor to do, whether it\u2019s him, or me, or others, in our work. But the main problem is that we\u2019re only preaching to the converted. There\u2019s no point being naive. When I win the Prix Goncourt, or when Mohamed Mbougar Sarr wins the Prix Goncourt, we\u2019re immediately subjected to torrents of abuse from people telling us we only received it because we are black or Arab, and that we can never represent France. You know, if it did any good to tell racists that racism is wrong, we wouldn\u2019t be in the situation we\u2019re in now. It needs a much more in-depth approach, and maybe even a more aggressive one. I see writers in the United States today, such as Ta-Nehisi Coates, whose discourse is very forceful, very sharp. Maybe we do tend to beat about the bush in Europe. We\u2019re afraid to tell it how it is in case we permanently antagonize other people. I think we should be more upfront in this fight.
\n\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Le\u00efla Slimani is a French-Moroccan writer. In 2016, she received the Goncourt Prize for her novel <\/em>Chanson douce and has been an Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters since 2017. Her novels tackle questions of immigration, racism, identity, and defend the women’s rights. She has also been a representative of the International Organization of La Francophonie since 2017.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":60931,"menu_order":0,"template":"","app_discipline":[213,233],"app_city_tax":[217],"app_magazine_category":[248],"class_list":["post-60933","app_magazine_article","type-app_magazine_article","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","app_discipline-literature","app_discipline-social-sciences-and-humanities","app_city_tax-nyc","app_magazine_category-portraits"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nLe\u00efla Slimani: \u201cWhen I Write, I Don't Know Where I'm Going\u201d - Villa Albertine<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/villa-albertine.org\/va\/magazine\/leila-slimani-when-i-write-i-dont-know-where-im-going\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Le\u00efla Slimani: \u201cWhen I Write, I Don't Know Where I'm Going\u201d - Villa Albertine\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"We are currently living in very uncertain times, crippled by war, a pandemic, a global climate disruption\u2026 In such a context, asking, \u2018Where are we going?\u2019, as we do on the Night of Ideas, might seem dizzying. 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