Grand Openings, Grand Voices

Family sagas. Oppressive environments. Bodies ill at ease or out of place or raging against their surroundings. These were but a few of the recurring themes at Grand Openings, the official opening event of the 21st Vancouver International Writers and Readers Festival.

The seven very different writers who appeared at Grand Openings made for, as one patron remarked, a "very multicultural evening." Though this was certainly not yer mama's staid, ‘official-government-policy multiculturalism' (sorry Trudeau.) Rather, the stories of the evening encompassed a truly diverse and international range of voice and experience that often spoke to what it means to be Other, to be alienated from one's family or one's birthplace, to be the immigrant struggling in an often hostile environment, or to be the victimized body on the receiving end of a bully's taunts.

Rawi Hage (left, with fan) read from his novel Cockroach, which was recently nominated for a Governor General award. The unnamed immigrant narrator transported us to wintry Montreal. The excerpt was gritty and urban, raw and sexual, and pulled no punches on the immigrant experience, with the narrator intimating that maybe some immigrants want to better their lives, but "I want to better my death."

Poet and short story writer Lorna Goodison, who read in a confident, lilting and lyrical voice (and charmingly referred to ubiquitous Artistic Director Hal Wake as "Prince Hal"), shared moving passages from her memoir From Harvey River: A Memoir of My Mother and Her People, and not-so-moving recollections of the "cows horseshit flies mosquitoes" of Harvey River that her uncle longed to escape.   

Nadeem Aslam (below) and Jonathan Raban invoked the post-9/11 global reality from very different perspectives. Aslam read from The Wasted Vigil, which poetically depicts war-ravaged Afghanistan.  His description of an "impaled library" (one of the characters has nailed all of the house's books to the ceiling) was so evocative, I literally can't get the image out of my head.

Jonathan Raban, reading from Surveillance, treated the audience to terminally angry, HIV-positive Tad Zachary's savage eviscerations of post-9/11 life in anxiety-ridden middle-class America, and the cheers he received in return suggests he did indeed touch a very current nerve.

George Pelecanos, a late substitution for Ursula K. LeGuin, did not disappoint with the captivating excerpt he read from The Turnaround. His language is simple and spare, but used perfectly to create a portrait of racial tension in 1970's America.

Donna Morrissey, ribald and warm, was like every Newfoundland expat I've ever encountered capable of the saltiest, filthiest, most musical dialogue imaginable. To listen to her performative reading of What They Wanted was indeed a treat. One never wants to conflate narrator with author, even in fiction drawn from real-life, but I truly wanted to sit down and share a pint with this woman.

Shane Koyczan warmed up the crowd for a bit of a poetic detour with his punchy "speech on the war against terror written using Steven Segal movie titles" poem, which he claimed would be retired that evening. He then read from Stickboy, which recalled a shocking incident of childhood bullying.

In short, Grand Openings set the stage for the 60+ events to follow in this festival. Such literary stars as Joseph Boyden, Nino Ricci, Daphne Marlatt and Austin Clarke will appear, and (gratuitous plug) CBC personalities such as Mark Forsythe (event 63), Sheryl MacKay (event 64), and Paul Grant (events 59 and 67) will host. If you live in the area, go! Listen! Be entertained and challenged, and buy books! You can thank me later.