Starry starry night

County author has hometown launch of new book

Author Shani Mootoo had the hometown launch of her latest book, Starry Starry Night, at the Picton Library last Wednesday evening with well over 50 people attending. The launch format was in the form of a thought-provoking conversation with Oeno Gallery owner Carlyn Moulton, who said she became an instant fan of Ms. Mootoo’s writing after reading her first book, Cereus Blooms at Night. “It was a comforting pleasure reading that book, and I’d never forgotten it. Little did I imagine that 30 years later we would meet here in the County,” she said. Ms. Mootoo was born in Ireland and raised in Trinidad. She moved to Canada 40 years ago and has been a County resident for 13 years. She was first a visual artist before she started writing. This is her 10th book, following six novels and three books of poetry. She has been nominated for the Giller Prize four times, and her books have received numerous awards.

Ms. Mootoo said this book has been 35 years in the making. As a practising visual artist, she began to privately chronicle events in her life, in particular her traumatic childhood, as a way of bearing witness to those early times. She shared those writings with her then-mentor, who showed them to a publisher. She was asked to write, as she puts it, “something”, and so began her career as a writer. “Through the past nine books, that early material was revisited and revised here and there, with no intention of it ever being published,” said Ms. Mootoo. But recently, Ms. Mootoo felt that the time was right for this work to be published. She had come to a feeling of peace and realized that her childhood struggles had in fact provided her with the seed that would grow into her becoming a skilled writer. “One of the best things about this book is that although there a lot of difficult themes, it is, in fact, a celebration,” she said. She calls the book “autofiction”. It is based on memory, but linked together with fiction. “I’m a storyteller. I love imagining the gaps between the moments that I could remember. I was not writing a memoir, which often involves the adult commenting on what was remembered. What I was doing was just indulging in the pleasure of writing.”

The book follows the life of Anju from about age four to age 12. She is from a relatively well-off family, living in Trinidad in the 1960s with her grandparents while her parents are away in England. Through the course of the book her parents return to Trinidad and Anju is sent to live with them and her new siblings. The book is written through Anju’s eyes and level of understanding as she becomes older and more aware of the family dynamics. Ms. Moulton noted there was a rhythm and a beat to the prose, which Ms. Mootoo said reflected musicality of the language in Trinidad. The book is filled with small observational details and lyrical descriptions of inner feelings, something that is the hallmark of Ms. Mootoo’s writing.

Ms. Mootoo said there were a number of reasons that she waited more than three decades to publish this book. “I had to write this story before it got lost. There’s no one else around now who knows what happened. If that material were lost, that child would have been lost, and when I die, that child would be gone. That was the feeling I had many, many times. I know that child better than anyone else,” she said. “This was not an easy book to write. It was never intended, when I started, to be a book. But as I wrote other books, I always came back to these pages, and the pages got better and better. I think it took writing the nine books and learning to write those nine books, to be able to write this book.” She also added that it was not a book she wanted to write while her parents were still alive. “There’s a lot in it that perhaps I didn’t want my parents to see. Not because I was ashamed, but I think they tried their best. They did the best they could do. I didn’t want them to know the depth of how their poor decisions affected me as a child and created the adult that I became.”

During the book launch, Ms. Mootoo read several excerpts from the book, and then took questions from the audience. She was surprised and grateful and the number of people who attended. “I couldn’t believe the turnout. I was really moved and I found the conversation engaging. It really made me think, and I like that. I like being made to think on my feet.” Starry Starry Night is available from Books & Company in Picton.