One of the great pleasures of this writing life of mine has been meeting writers from all over the world who I would never have met before. Often, this happens via the blog. But recently, I met a very talented actor in London, Jonathan Chambers, and he told me about his mother, Diana McCaulay. Diana is from Jamaica and she has written a novel, Dog-Heart, which portrays the realities of life on the streets of Kingston and the seemingly uncrossable gulf between the classes. This is a novel with grit, humour, heart and pathos. It is both heart-breaking and uplifting at the same time, and beautifully written. But this is not for the faint of heart. To be honest, the cover made me think this was a story for the Young Adult category. Although adolescents would gain a lot from reading it, this is very much an adult tale.
Diana has had an interesting and varied career and is very well-known in Jamaica for her activism. I was thrilled that she was happy to come here for a chat, and when you read her answers you’ll see that we have been grappling with the same questions in our writing and our lives:
I see from your bio that you have held many jobs, from race/track steward to insurance executive. How did you come to writing?
Actually, I came to writing first – I declared I wanted to be a writer very early, certainly before I was seven, when I had my first stories published by a local newspaper. I have written all my life, but mostly in secret. My father encouraged my reading and writing when I was a child – he gave me books to read and talked to me seriously about them, read my early efforts at prose. But as I edged into my teens, he told me that I should give up on this as the only suitable subject for great literature was war – and women could not go to war. I believed him. I kept writing, but never for publication. Then in 1994, I sent out a short story and it won a local short story prize and I decided to try and write on deadline – so I applied to be a newspaper columnist. I wrote a weekly opinion column until 2002 and when the newspaper discontinued my column, I decided it was long past time to forget what my father had told me and to finally do what I had always wanted to do – write novels.
Dog-Heart portrays what I suppose is the worst of Jamaican society in a very real way. Was there one particular incident you experienced that spurred you on to write the book, or was it a lifetime of observations?
Yes, in fact for a period of about seven years I was involved with a family of boys, and as portrayed in the novel, I thought the answer was a good education and paid for their schooling. This experience led me to really think about a timeless question – what is our responsibility to help others? What form should that help take? Can we do more harm than good? Can we ever reach across gaps of race, class and life experiences to truly understand each other? As I was thinking about this, I attended a writers’ workshop where we were asked to write a piece from the point of view of someone who was a different sex, age, race, class and economic background to ourselves. That piece eventually became the first chapter of Dog-Heart.
I am very much interested in the way the arts, and writing in particular, can be used to help bring about social change. You are also a noted environmental activist. Do you see an interplay between your art and your activism, or do you tend to keep them separate?
I too am interested in the way arts can bring about social change, but Jamaica does not have a strong literary culture. We are much more drawn to music and the performing and visual arts. I wanted to write a novel that was relevant for Jamaicans, that was about their lives, their obstacles, their hopes. I hope I did that, and I hope Dog-Heart will influence more people to read. (I know, I know – I dream in colour!) I do try to keep my writing life and my environmental activism separate – they are certainly separate in time, because I write very early in the morning and then I go to work – but I also do quite a bit of environmental writing. My next book is another novel – it’s due out in July this year – but after that I want to write about my environmental journey – what it means to speak for natural resources in a developing country, where so many people do not have enough, not one day of their lives.
Thanks again, Diana. And all the best to you! I can’t wait to read your next book. Do remember, please, to let us know when it’s out and available.
All the best to you as well, Sue. I really enjoyed A Clash of Innocents… (of course, I had to leave in that plug. SG)
Interesting interview! In many ways I think Jamaica is like Botswana where books and reading take a back seat music and performing arts.
I’d love to read this book especially since I have a complex realtionship with the concept of charity and can’t quite work out my thoughts without past emotions pushing their way through. Is it available as an ebook? Or on Amazon?