On (Not) Being an Exile in America
May 30, 2006
Of all the events that I participated in and attended, the most intriguing one was the panel on Writers-in-Exile (link to MP3 of event). The panelists included Chris Abani, Ammar Abdulhamid, Greg Palast, Huang Xiang and myself. The discussion, in a way, continued the following day when Brian Lehrer interviewed Chris, Greg and me for the local NPR show.
What struck me the most was how the idea of exile could be romanticized by good intention. Chris Abani, for instance, was repeatedly introduced as a writer "imprisoned and tortured" in Nigeria, his homeland. This led to both admiration for his martyrdom, and angry questioning from a fellow Nigerian, who called into the show to complain about how Chris was portrayed for the public. But who was Chris, in the end? A writer who devotes his talent and energy to storytelling and poetry. Why didn't people ask about his books, his writing? Why did they ask him about his "bone-crushing" experience instead? Where did the halo come from for the Writer-in-Exile? Is America indeed a haven for exiled writers, as Huang Xiang claimed on the panel?
(My own placement on the panel was rather intriguing to myself. I am not an exile; at most I am self-exiled into another language.)
What is the difference between exile and expatriate? Greg Palast gave a good example when he mentioned that Ernest Hemingway, by choosing to live and write in Paris and later participate the Spanish revolution, was an expatriate, while someone who is forced to leave one's native land is an exile. By this definition, I don't think either Chris Abani or I would like to be called exiles, but as Chris commented, the notion of exile was oftentimes drew the public to his life instead of his work. "People always ask me if I wanted to write a memoir about being in prison," he said. "Why? I already wrote a book of poems on that topic, and nobody bothers to read it."
Two thoughts occurred to me while sitting on the panel. Greg Palast, the journalist who reported breaking news but could not get them published in US, told the stories of how he had to leave America (being exiled) for Britain to report for the BBC and other British media. I very much appreciated his presence on the panel, as this is the kind of exile story we don't hear often in America. It is important to know that there is censorship in America, as there is in many other countries; Greg, in fact, is more of an exile than perhaps most of the participants on the panel. (Both Chris Abani and Ammar Abdulhamid, who is from Syria and lives in US now, write in English, and they maintained that they had never lost their natural audience in one way or another.)
And the question of a natural audience led me to ponder whether exile should be a term connected to writers at all. A friend of mine, who is a human rights lawyer working on women's and children's health issues related to human rights abuses, commented after the panel that most real exiles do not get to have their voices heard. Her comment made me think about how when the word "exile" is attached to a writer's name, it is as if the writer attains a more important status.
