A writer’s responsibility is as personal as criminal liability. I, however, have made a clear decision to write militant literature.
Luis Sepúlveda, in Letteratura nei tempi inquieti: Scrivere, immaginare, cambiare il mondo
Writing springs from many sources: passion, pain, and a vivid imagination. And there is a form of writing that stems purely from the need to denounce injustice and the desire for change: militant writing.
In “Beloved”, Toni Morrison paints a profound, intimate and collective portrait of what was the most inhumane and cruel existence a human being could endure: slavery. What interested Morrison was exploring the inner life inspired by the enslaved woman Margaret Garner (1833–1858) – how a woman who had lived in slavery her whole life might have lived, experienced and felt, and who, after her escape and facing the risk of capture, had killed one of her daughters and attempted to kill her remaining children. Who might this woman have been? How would she have lived? What drives a mother to kill her own child? And what lies behind such an act? Madness, love, collective history?
Regarding Garner’s story, Rebecca Carroll of the New York Times wrote:
“Garner’s story has gone down in history as being both sensational and unique. It brought to the fore a question that remained unanswered in the homes and hearts of white people in pre-Civil War America: was slavery a fate worse than death? Garner, with a knife in his hand, provided an answer that was impossible to ignore.”
And it is this answer that Morrison explores, because it is impossible to ignore what the experience of slavery was like for the slaves themselves. We must look at these moments in history – those that happened before and those that are happening today – to question ourselves as individuals and as a society. Slavery happened to people who were denied everything, even the most basic human feelings, such as love or even a name of their own.
“Risky, thought Paul D (a former slave), very risky. For a used-to-be-slave woman to love anything that much was dangerous, especially if it was her children she had settled to love. The best thing, he knew, was to love just a little bit; everything, just a little bit, so when they broke its back, or shoved it in a croaker sack, well, maybe you’d have a little love left over for the next one (in Beloved).”
The issues raised by Toni Morrison’s novel remain relevant today. The slave owner held all the power over the benefits of slave labour. So why did he need to treat the slave with such inhumanity? What is it in human nature that drives a person to want to dominate to such an extent and to commit such atrocities? How does one convince an entire society that another human being is worth no more than livestock? And, on the other hand: what are those other people made of who played a part in the abolition of slavery? And at what point does a reality that was accepted by everyone become unacceptable? It is only on the day that we have the capacity to answer these questions that we will be able to bring about structural change in our society and prevent all other forms of slavery. Because they have not yet come to an end.
In her book “Q”, Joumada Haddad tells the individual stories of four women from the same family who have lived through the various conflicts that have affected – or continue to affect – the Middle East, from the Armenian genocide of the early 20th century through to the Israeli-Palestinian and Lebanese-Syrian conflicts.
“The truth is that people need to be shaken up more,” says Haddad’s narrator. “Shaken out of their sickening indifference. It is not the three-year-old child who was massacred who should apologise for bursting the bubble of comfort enjoyed by those who remain unharmed. It is those people who should apologise to her, and to all the innocent victims, for allowing the massacre to take place. (…) We would do better to focus on the big question: how can we evolve from being merely human to being truly humanitarian (in Q)?”
In “Who Killed My Father”, Édouard Louis uses the story of his own father to denounce the ineffectiveness, ignorance and violence of the French social and political system. “The history of your body accuses political history,” says Louis of his father.
Politics is not innocent. Citizens are not abstract entities. Every decision taken has consequences. These three works, like so many others, show us that behind every conflict lies personal suffering, a fate from which there is no escape. Behind the numbers lies a face, a name and an individual story. But that story is also the story of humanity, which finds it so difficult to reinvent itself and to question itself. The writing of Morrison, Haddad and Louis is very harsh; it is difficult to read. None of their characters has been spared suffering. But it is important to remember that Sethe is not merely inspired by the life of the enslaved woman Margaret Garner, she is every enslaved person; just as Haddad’s four queens were inspired by the stories of the women in her family and her own life; just as Louis recounted the story of his own father and his own history. And it is these stories that highlight the urgency of continuing to write, read and discuss, because we have not yet managed to make a dent in a narrative that perpetuates and exacerbates inequalities, ignores the impact of policies on individual lives and stubbornly refuses to hold policymakers to account. And, above all, because we have not yet managed to create a society in which every person can live well and in peace, in dignified conditions and in harmony with themselves, others and the environment.
