Fiction is a “medium that must always allow itself…the possibility of expressing intimate and inconvenient truths,” acclaimed London-born author Zadie Smith once said. She recently stopped by Lincoln Park’s Francis W. Parker School as part of this autumn’s Chicago Humanities Festival to talk about her latest offering, The Fraud, a novel set in Victorian England, based on the real-life clash of classes from the Tichborne Trials.
In conversation with Nigerian-American writer and Northwestern University English professor Chris Abani, in front of a packed and enthusiastic audience, Smith read three chapters from her new book. The trio of short scenes featured her protagonists, Scottish housekeeper and abolitionist Mrs. Eliza Touchet and formerly enslaved Jamaican man Andrew Bogle. Smith herself is Jamaican on her mother’s side (her father was a white, working class World War 2 veteran), and often writes about culture and colonialism, topics that can be “quiet yet poisonous and traitorous.” This is her first work of historical fiction, set among the “terrible trade” of slavery (apparently, in our current idiocracy, it needs to be reiterated that enslavement was NOT a good thing). She also talked about the “weight of class,” along with the “weight of history,” in and around the British capital, both of the speakers’ home towns, then and now.
Abani and Smith share similar backgrounds. “I come from two lines of peasants,” Smith said, noting her common English surname (as a youngster, she changed her first name from Sadie to the more exotic Zadie), and the fact that both parents grew up under the same capitalism. The pair chatted about their “English before British” identities, and how citizenship is actually not identity. They owned up to their particular Britishness as well, noting that they are suspicious of being sentimental, while simultaneously being sentimental.
Smith also outlined her research for this project, including revisiting the hot scribe of the day, Charles Dickens, who was considered somewhat of a radical for writing about the plight of the poor. She also recalled other mass movements back then, and how the ghost of empire haunts that period as a “truth one can work with.”
“I’m drawn to transgressive figures,” Smith said, and likes to place the irrational in the middle of politics and injustice too. Smith likes to use dark, subtle humor with horror underneath, deploying revenge “like Quentin Tarantino,” she said.
They talked about Smith’s use of diction, her word and phrase choices. She observed that the speech of Black people can be similar to Irish vocal patterns. Her husband Nick Laird is a Northern Irish novelist and poet, and she remembers deferring to him in communication emergencies, like speaking to some workers at their house, instead of simply code-switching. She purposefully chooses “open language” for her novels so that all of her family members can comfortably read her work.
Following the 45-minute discussion, audience members asked questions, such as how did she specifically interact with the British literary canon of the period to prepare for her novel? “I visited all of their graves, but didn’t re-read any of their books,” she replied. She welcomed the fact that this plot was already written. “That was out of my hands,” she said, “since all of it was true. What a relief.” Both remarked on how the act of empire, the “linguistics of conquest,” is “purely transactional,” and it’s important to clock the different takes from the diaspora.
Smith added that she’s pleased to see the 50th anniversary of hip-hop, and appreciates the fact that she was able to witness the birth and growth of an art form. Her recommendations included the working class museum in Liverpool, and New Yorker staff writer Hua Hsu’s Stay True, “an incredible memoir.” When asked about the inclusion of humor in her work, she said that she could only ever remember one childhood joke for situations like this talk-back:
“I am a fairy. My name is Nuff.”
“Fairy Nuff.”
And with that bit of magic dusted over the crowd, we faded into the late summer night, with the book signing line snaking long throughout the corridor. I felt lucky to live in a city where we can still freely enjoy books, robust literary discussions and plumb the history of empire and racism. Fair enough.
Check out upcoming Chicago Humanities Festival programs, including:
Around the World in 80 Trees with Jonathan Drori on 10/7
Airplane! Behind-the-Scenes of a Comedy Classic on 10/21
The Science and Morality of Climate Change on 10/21
Latino Photojournalists Sebastian Hidalgo and Luis C. Garza on 10/28
Farah Jasmine Griffin on Book Bans and Black Literature on 10/28
Actor Henry Winkler interviewed about his memoir by Barry co-star D’Arcy Carden on 11/4
Pulitzer Prize-Winning Poet Tracy K. Smith on 11/5
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