Jaipur Literature Festival -- Nonfiction

JLF at Boulder

September 15-17, 2017

“When I look back, I am so impressed again with the life-giving power of literature. If I were a young person today, trying to gain a sense of myself in the world, I would do that again by reading, just as I did when I was young.” -- Maya Angelou.

One need not be 'young' and trying to gain a sense of themself in the world. I think we all experience days when our sense of self has abandoned us. We wake up and look at the same day ahead of us that we lived through yesterday and the day before -- the same responsibilities, the same dishes to wash, the same route to work, the same "how are you," and the same "fine," when we're not so sure we're fine at all. 

That's when Maya Angelou is right all over again. Literature, whatever our choice, takes us out of ourself. Helps us see the world from a different perspective, offers us alternatives, requires nothing more from us than we are willing to give. It gives us a soft place to land when we need one.

And there is a whole world of literature out there.

The Jaipur Free Literature Festival, the world's largest free literature festival, began in Jaipur, India in 2006. In 2014 it expanded to London. And this will be its third year in Boulder, Colorado. Mark September 15 through 17 on your calendar and come to Colorado.

The primary venue will be the Boulder Public Library which stands at the foot of the Flat Iron Mountains.

Admission is free, but you do need to preregister. If you'd rather stay in Denver, Boulder is less than an hour away along a scenic drive complete with wildlife.

Food at the festival is reasonably priced and easily available -- not to mention that there's a Lucile's Creole Cafe in Boulder open from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. (8 a.m. on Saturdays and Sundays.)

My favorite place in the library to meet friends

The library is spacious and beautiful with plenty of venues for the various panels. There is ample opportunity to ask questions following the panel discussions and the presenters, who are from all over the world, are gracious and accessible between sessions.

A major concept that I came away with from one of last year's panels was the difference between immigrants and refugees. The panel was especially focused on the Vietnam War and featured Viet Thanh Nguyen, author of The Sympathizer last year's Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction. And Andrew Lam, a PBS correspondent and Vietnamese refugee.

It was from them that I came to understand that an immigrant to this country, or indeed to whatever country, planned to come here. They did research. They sold whatever they had in their old country and saved their money to invest in their new country. They dreamed of the possibilities. They chose to come.

A refugee, on the other hand, ended up wherever they ended up because they could no longer expect to survive in their old country. They very often were not allowed to bring anything with them, other than what they might sneak out of their old country. There would be little or no preparation, no dreams, just get out as best they could to whatever country would let them in. They truly have to "depend on the kindness of strangers."

Come to the Jaipur Literature Festival in Boulder, touch the world, and let the world touch you through its many and varied literary traditions.

The Sympathizer -- a review

image from atlantaima.org

The Jaipur Literature Festival is coming to Boulder in September. I will be there -- you betcha!

I decided to read some of the presenters who will be at the JLF in Boulder. Viet Thanh Nguyen, whose debut novel The Sympathizer won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Best Fiction will be one of the presenters. During Terry Gross' interview with him on NPR, he was thoughtful, articulate, and thought provoking. He discussed his experiences in the Vietnamese community in California.

He told of his parents warning him and his brother not to open their door to unknown Vietnamese because they were afraid of home invasions by Vietnamese gangs. Ms. Gross asked why people who had fled war torn Vietnam would engage in violence here against their fellow countrymen. His eye-opening explanation was that they did come from that same war torn Vietnam. A country that taught them to stash their money and valuables in their homes. A country that taught them not to trust the police who, in Vietnam, were too often as likely to harm them as the 'criminals.' A country caught in a generation-long civil war that taught Vietnamese to attack Vietnamese.

That concept can be applied to why anyone victimizes someone like themselves. Not  because they necessarily share a background of civil war, but because they do share a common background and know their victim's habits and fears. That familiarity gives the criminal an advantage they would not have with someone whose circumstances they knew less well.

Past debut novels that won Pulitzers include Gone with the Wind and To Kill a Mockingbird, two of my all-time favorites.

I was ready for a good read.

It's in first person. I don't particularly like first person. But Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible is in first person. (Read my April 13, 2015 review)  Not just first person, but first person from five points of view. An unusual structure for a novel. An amazingly difficult bit of literary art to successfully pull off. Which the author did. Admirably. It is a great read.

So I willing overlooked The Sympathizer's first person narrative. It could be good.

Nguyen doesn't use standard punctuation. Anathema to an old English Major. But Cormac McCarthy doesn't use standard punctuation. When I started his Border Trilogy (All the Pretty Horses, The Crossing, and Cities of the Plain. See my December 3, 2014 review.) I was particularly distressed about McCarthy's failure to use quote marks and attributions in the dialogue. I was afraid I wouldn't be able to follow who was saying what. But he wrote his characters' speech patterns so skillfully that I had no problem.

Failure to use standard punctuation need not be a deal breaker.

Stories whose plots unfold slowly featuring main characters who lack charisma don't necessarily put me off. (See my recent review of the movie The Lady in the Van.)

So I believed that if I read assiduously for as long as it might take, the book would get better.

After reading off and on for a week I'd only gotten to page 180 -- more off than on. But I felt I should give it a chance. I take the stand that stopping a book you've started is immoral. It is judgmental, ungracious, and downright disdainful of a fellow writer who has worked long and hard and done the best they could.

Then a writer friend Sabrina Fish shared a question from The Writer's Circle -- "You wake up stranded on an island with the main character of the last book you read. How does that work out for you?"

And you know what? I stopped reading The Sympathizer. I could not face the prospect of being stranded in a plodding plot with Nguyen's main character in first person. Never knowing if it was dialogue or the main character's thoughts or the author's thoughts.

Quick! Quick! Choose another JLF presenter. Done.

I chose William Dalrymple's White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in 18th-century India. Mr. Dalrymple is a Scottish historian. Even his footnotes are interesting.

Jaipur Literature Festival in Boulder

You'll be seeing this logo several times in the next few months. The Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF) will be in Boulder, Colorado, for the second year this September 23-25.

Begun in 2006, JLF is held annually in January in Jaipur, a city of more than three million people in Northern India. The Diggi Palace (now a hotel) and its gardens in the heart of the city serve as venues for what Wikipedia describes as the largest free literary festival in the world.

In 2014 the JLF expanded to London. It will continue for its third year this May in the Southbank Centre.

Last year, JLF came to the United States. Not to New York City or Los Angeles, but Boulder, Colorado. In the Boulder Public Library and and Civic Lawns. Right here on the Front Range of the Rockies. Forty-two minutes from my house. How great is that?!

Those are the Flat Iron Mountains rising behind the
Boulder Public Library

Watch for updates on The Bookwright.