Elif Shafak talks about her book and gives her thoughts about the age of anxiety, social media, tribalism, and more. This talk is part of Read!Fest 2021.
Overview
This was the first author event I have ever attended! I didn’t know that the talk was open internationally but it turns out there were people from different countries in the call. I think there were also a lot of people who tuned in because they are big fans of her work. I felt slightly out of place, having only read one of her books a few days before the talk. You can read my review of the book here.
The Q&A was hosted by Bridgette See, a freelance writer, editor, producer and researcher. She opened the talk with a poll for the audience about what topic we are most interested to hear about. I was interested to learn more about identity and tribalism as both seemed like weighty concepts. But more than half voted for the power of storytelling instead. Thankfully though, that was just a prompt for Bridgette to kick start the chat. All topics were eventually touched upon.
The hour-long event was split into two parts. In the first part, Bridgette posed Elif a bunch of questions around the theme of her book How to Stay Sane in an Age of Division. In the second part, the audience could submit their questions via the Q&A box in the Zoom call. The talk went smoothly and I personally didn’t experience any hiccups or lapses in call quality. Throughout the call, the chatbox was left open for any of the participants to chime in if they wanted. There were a couple of comments but otherwise it was a relatively quiet chatbox.
Regarding the chat itself, I felt like Elif reiterated a lot of what she wrote in the book, so it felt a little repetitive. But that was probably what she was told to come prepared to chat about. One interesting part of the chat was when both mentioned the difficulties in getting the younger generation, or digital natives, to slow down and read books. As someone who is of that said generation, I personally still enjoy reading and while I thought it was a unique quirk of mine, there are still people around me who read. I think there’s been a slow growth in other forms of long-form content online because of the speed fatigue. As such, I think the book will always have its place in society. Just my two cents!
Before the end of the talk, Bridgette excitedly asked if Elif would share more about her upcoming book. She kindly obliged and gave a short introduction about the themes of The Island of Missing Trees which comes out in August. It was fun to see the host get excited to hear more about the book.
It was a fun experience overall. I loved hearing her thoughts about being a writer and about what inspires her. Regardless, it was nice to hear “live” from an author and be in a room full of people who have read the same book! The last time that happened, I was in literature class. Then again, it’s also possible that some of us used Sparknotes (not this one, the real one). 😉
If you’re interested to take a look at Read!Fest 2021’s other talks, do check them out here.
💜 Thanks so much for reading!
🧠 Q&A with the host
Disclaimer: I took down notes during the talk as much as possible so that I could look back on it in future if I wanted to. Any sections in this post where I reproduce what the speakers said are not verbatim. I didn’t catch everything exactly so some points have been summarised or omitted. All errors are my own.
Bridgette (B): How did you become so attracted and in love with stories?
Elif (E): I started writing fiction in my childhood, but back then I did not know that being a writer was a career. It was because I was a lonely child. I was an only child who grew up with a single mother. Storytelling gave me a much more colourful world to be in. It was only in my early 20s that it came to me that I wanted to become a writer.
B: I read your book and I was moved by the story of your grandmother. How did growing up in this childhood foster these stories?
E: I would say that the word “rupture” characterised my childhood. I grew up in an almost dysfunctional way because I was not born into a typically patriarchal Turkish family. I was born in France and lived with my mother and father. When they split, my father stayed in France and my mother brought me back to Turkey. To her, it was her motherland. But for me, Turkey was a new country. I felt a bit like an insider-outsider. I felt like I was on the edge of that society. I think this is why I pay so much attention to the periphery of society because I empathise a lot with people who are labelled as “other” and pushed to the margins. There are a lot of stories at the periphery and I am no stranger to that feeling.
B: Empathy is so important for every writer. I also remember the part of your book about “shards of glass in your pockets” to convey the feeling of being an immigrant.
E: Yes. As an immigrant, we cannot forget. Maybe you had forgotten, but it doesn’t let you forget. It isn’t always a bad thing. This may be a feeling of melancholy or a sense of loss. But to have multiple belongings can be a source of strength. We all have multitudes as human beings. But in the age we’re living in, it never encourages multiplicity but we’re encouraged to stay in one box. But we’re more fluid than we’re allowed to think.
B: How do we go about this? (Apologies, for this incomplete question,. I don’t seem to remember the context.)
E: My grandmother was not well educated but she supported women’s education. Knowledge is not dependent on your educational qualifications. Let me use an analogy. When you want to dry something out, you want to surround it. In this world, there is something dangerous in that kind of tribalism. We are surrounded by the echoes of our own voice but we don’t learn from echoes. There is something valuable and precious in diversity. If we lose that cosmopolitan heritage, we have lost a lot.
B: You mention in the book that language can be used for good and for bad. It can create polarisation, fear, discrimination.
E: Word can hurt, words can heal. The darkest chapters in human history didn’t start right away with mass violence. they start with words. How we speak about people will snowball. In the EU, the way some people talk about immigrants, they use the word “infesting”, as if they are vermin. With different words, suddenly politics becomes like a war: opponents become “enemies”. That’s why we must be careful with our words and how we say.
B: You also talk about the fragility of democracy.
E: When I used to live in Istanbul, I met someone from the west who said that it is no wonder that I care about women’s rights, it’s because I come from Istanbul. There is a geographical duality in the minds of westerners regarding women’s rights, human rights, etc. In the west, people think that they are already beyond that threshold and that they have achieved those rights. But in 2016, we had Brexit and Trump. More and more people realise that there’s no such thing as solid plans. East or west, we live in liquid times. Progress is not guaranteed, countries may go backwards. Women need to be more alert and aware. When countries tumble, the first rights that will be taken away is women’s rights and minorities rights. as women, we have to be bigger defenders of democracy. (Note: I’m not sure why she said this and she didn’t elaborate further, but I’m interested to know why.)
B: I’d like to talk about your last book, 10 minutes 38 seconds in this strange world
E: I’m a fiction writer. Just as I chase stories, I chase silences. What are the taboos? What are we discouraged from talking about? That’s why minorities play an important in my books. From the unheard to the heard. I find that important. I think literature has the power to re-humanise people who have been de-humanised. Stories make the “other” into a brother. Politics makes us forget something essential about humankind that art and literature help us remember.
B: In you book, you also talk about the need to be an intellectual nomad.
E: We should not have a permanent address. We should be more like migratory birds. We learn more from differences. I don’t like it when writers try to preach, try to teach something. I am also learning. We are all learners and learning is endless. I think we have forgotten to say “I don’t know”. The only time we say that is when children ask us the most impossible questions, then we just say “I don’t know”. But when adults ask us, even if I know nothing, I can just google and appear knowledgeable. We forgot humility to admit that we still need to learn. Questions are sometimes more important than answers. I think we should never be 100% certain. When entering into a proper intellectual exchange, be ready to revise your opinions if someone makes good points.
B: You talk about the fact that we need to listen first in order to be heard?
E: Yes, I also respect people’s demands to be heard. It is an existential need. It is ironic that in the early 2000s, tech optimists especially, thought that by spreading technology, they could democratise the world. In reality, we are now living in an age of anxiety. Almost all of us have an existential angst. For me, it is healthier to be able to talk about these issues rather than oppress them. There is a cacophany of noises and yet we feel voiceless. If we can listen to more people, then more people will stop feeling voiceless.
B: What was your state of mind when you wrote this novel/manifesto?
E: At the time, a lot of publishers, perhaps innocently, posted on social media that writers weren’t as affected by the pandemic. For everyone else, life had changed. But for writers, because we’re generally solitary workers, that somehow things stayed the same. But as writers, we are not disconnected from the world we are living in. There is so much inequality in the world, you find yourself questioning the work you are doing. Is it really that important to find the right synonym for this word? Is finding out how to write this sentence really so important now? There are existential questions too for writers. So, at the time, I wanted to put away what I was writing. Someone once said that literature is analysis after the event. All writing is in retrospect. However, I think that for the time that we are living in, I think we need analysis during the event. This is a little manifesto about anxiety, anger etc. Rather than pretending that they don’t exist. I hope to embrace these emotions and transform them into something more positive.
B: Did you have a reader in mind when writing this? Is it for young people? Or for the older generation?
E: I don’t generalise readers. A writer’s job is ot ask questions. I have to respect the diversity of my readers and I believe that the gates of a story should be open to everyone.
B: What do you think about the use of social media today? Do you have anything to say to digital natives?
E: When I gave my first TED talk years ago, I was told to keep my speech to under 19 minutes. More recently when I was preparing to give another TED talk, I was told to keep my talk to under 11 minutes. The world’s attention span is shortened now. Something is changing very quickly, and it says a lot about where we are right now. We live in an age where we have way too much information, less knowledge, even less wisdom. We need slow journalism. For knowledge, we have to slow down and go into the inner garden. For wisdom, we need to bring the mind and the heart together. We often belittle emotions but I don’t believe that emotions are a source of weakness. I was told that men are more rational but that’s nonsense, all humans are emotional creatures. We all have to bring together our rational mind with our human heart. We need a more nuanced way of thinking and we need a longer attention span.
B: As a parent myself, I am finding it increasingly difficult to encourage my teenage son to pick up a book to read.
E: I relate as a parent, yes. The novel was expected to disappear about 20 years ago. The death of the novel, they said. But it didn’t happen that way. I think the faster the world moves, the deeper our need for something different. The deeper our need to connect with nature and the Earth. We just don’t see it. Maybe the pandemic helped us rethink our priorities and values. For me, the most precious things in life are: family, love, sisterhood, and friendship.
B: We will never go back to normal, now it’s the “new normal”. But was there ever a normal to begin with?
E: Last time, normal was never normal for people. There was racial, gender, and digital inequality. We are at a crossroads, we can’t go back, we must go forward. To be a better society, we must be a fairer society. We have to pay better attention to equality and inclusion.
B: What do you regard as the most dangerous emotion?
E: Apathy or numbness. The survivors of genocides or the holocaust. They always ask how humans can do this to each other. I believe that the number of truly evil people is very small. I think that the answer lies in that the opposite of kindness is not wickedness but indifference. If you stop caring about each other because you belong in different tribes, that is dangerous.
🙋Q&A with audience
B: What books do you return to in order to renew your faith in empathy and humanity?
E: What a beautiful question, thank you. Sometimes readers come up to me, and I’m sorry to say that it’s mostly the male readers. They tell me that they want to understand the world more. They read philosophy, politics, psychology, etc. But they don’t read fiction. They say “oh my wife reads fiction, I don’t have time for that.” But that saddens me. We need to read both non-fiction and fiction. We need to cultivate eclectic reading-ness. It is better for our mind and our soul. We learn more if we dare to step outside our comfort zones. Fiction nurtures our empathy. We thus need to read diversely. I usually read whatever speaks to me: novels, graphic novels, poetry, and cookbooks. I don’t have distinction between high-brow or low-brow literature. Any book that speaks to you at the moment is the right book.
B: How did you get this ability to empathise and break down these stories?
E: I try not to lose sight of the fact that fiction is about understanding, connection, and empathy. I cannot lose sight of the fact that if I had been born into a different tribe or family that I might be speaking differently. We are shaped by our stories. We cannot be arrogant when we deal or think about other people, or when criticising ideas or ideology. We just have to try to understand human elements in its complexity.
B: How do you deal with people whose views are so utterly different from you? Or who are clearly not wanting to be moved?
E: This is a difficult question. How do we communicate if we have lost sight of the truth? If there are people who cannot agree on the truth. For example people who believe that the pandemic or the climate emergency is fake. It is difficult but we cannot stop trying. There is a reason why populist demagogues divide societies as they thrive on division. That is why we have to go beyond divisions. That doesn’t mean I shouldn’t be critical or agree with someone who is racist. But I know as an author that people come on a spectrum. I have many readers readers in Turkey who are xenophobic or homophobic. It is because they have grown up in families that tell them things about minorities, or the homophobic narrative is the only one that they know. But some of them tell me that their favourite character in my books are immigrants or LGBT. It has puzzled me but I think when someone is going into an inner garden, I don’t think it’s a coincidence. They are more ready to be open and learn more. Art restores individuality not in a selfish way but to connect people to humanity.
B: Referring to your book “The Bastard of Istanbul”. Do you think that travel, the arts, books, and talking to others can help us question more and unsettle our truths?
E: For people with strong opinions about a group of people, when I ask them if they know anyone in that group, most of the time they say no. So cultural encounters are important. It is important to have friends of different backgrounds. I am also worried about these restrictions causing these xenophobic tendencies.
B: What do you think about post-truth?
E: The biggest defenders of truth were fiction writers. I am troubled that digital technologies are being used to dislodge truths. For example, in the last French elections, there was a doctored video of Macron’s visit to a fish factory (Note: I can’t find that video so I’m unable to verify this example). Regardless of your opinions of Macron, my point is that we should be worried about the loss of truth because it is becoming easier to doctor truth and create fake realities. It thus becomes more difficult for us to sustain our democracies.
B: Absolutely, I think there’s a need for better media literacy. My son often comes up and shows me things that he’s seen online. I will ask and challenge him on where he got his sources because the young seem to just take everything and believe what they see online.
E: Yes. Algorithms trick us into thinking that what we’re seeing is neutral. When we read newspapers we know that there is some editorial lens so we are aware. On the other hand, we think there is no editorial choice behind online world when that is not true. We need digital literacy.
B: How can we amplify the voices of minorities or the “others”?
E: We need to listen. Stories bring us together but untold stories keep us apart. I believe that if you are really connected to a place/culture/story, you can write about it. I don’t like identity politics in fiction. You can write whatever you want. Research the story and feel it in our hearts, when it comes to art and literature.
B: I like hearing your thoughts on this. For example, in media if a straight actor taking on the role of a gay man, it is controversial. Even in the arts this identity politics is being perpetrated. It makes people afraid to say that they want to step into the shoes of another and learn what that is like.
E: To be clear, there is one more layer that I pay attention to. I think many minorities are not represented proportionately in the arts so I want to see more of them in the mainstream. We can do both! Visibility is important. Most importantly I think we should keep the doors of art and literature open to dare to tell each others stories.
B: (Note: I’m sorry, I lost the context for this question but I thought her response was an interesting look at what it is like living in a patriarchal society so I’m leaving this question in.)
E: What happens in patriarchal societies is that women are not respected. I’ve been put on trial and investigated. It is not easy and it affects you. It is much harder for younger writers. Patriarchal societies only respect women when we are older because they are de-feminised or de-sexualised. It is much harder than women are younger. There are inter-sectional layers of discrimination. I’m no stranger to that feeling. But I love the art of storytelling. I’m also a big believer in sisterhood and connecting like this.
B: Who were your role models?
E: I don’t see myself as a brave person. I’m just a curious person. I want to be able to ask questions. I want to live in a society or a world where we are not in need of heroes. Human beings are flawed. Let us never treat anyone as they are superior to us. We are all learning. I don’t over-romanticise people in my life. We don’t necessarily only learn from positive experience. I like to learn from diverse people or backgrounds. I also learn a lot from books.
B: You talk about creative pessimism vs conscious optimism in your book.
E: I like to joke that optimism is not in my DNA. Pessimism is easier. Pessimism pulls us down, it creates anger or apathy. If nothing is changing, then why bother? I think we need a good balance of pessimism and optimism. Optimism has a sense of complacency. There’s an Italian thinker who said you need the “pessimism of the intellect so you can be sharp and alert” and you need the “optimism of the heart and the will”. We’ve entered an age where this is difficult.
B: Yes, it’s not easy.
E: Optimism comes from other human beings. Their struggle gives me hope. Hope is contagious. In that regard I think there are a lot of positive things. Creativity is contagious. Surround yourself with people who think in a constructive way. We need to feel those positive emotions.
B: What is your next book that you’re working on?
E: It’s called The Island of Missing Trees. It’s a love story, about forbidden love. It’s about war, migration, inter-generational memory, and victory. I wrote it because of a desire to tell a very difficult story from the perspective of a tree. It’s about roots, being uprooted and rerooted.
📌 Read!Fest 2021 Updates | Watch this space!
This is the first programme that I’ve attended at Read!Fest 2021. Here are all the posts that I’ve made about this year’s edition of the festival.
- Reboot | Read!Fest 2021 (20 June 2021)
- How to Stay Sane in an Age of Division – Book Review (26 June 2021)