I can see now, a child coming to understand existence through the experience of suddenly not existing.
Kathryn Mockler: What is your first memory of existingShani Mootoo: This is a wonderful, provocative question for which I had to weigh several plausible answers. Could it have been when there was clapping and sounds of happiness and encouragement from a room full of doting adults when, at age three, I was asked to dance like I had seen done in the Bollywood movies? Or could it have been when I was seven, and an artist hired to do portraits of each child in my family, stared at me from the side of his canvas as he painted, disappeared behind the canvas, peered out and looked again, on repeat until his work was finally finished and I saw that he had captured my image as perfectly as if he had actually seen my heart? Could it have been when my mother, who seldom seemed to notice me, brought out my drawings and paintings without me knowing she would do this and showed them to the portrait painter? Could it have been when the portrait painter studied each sheet of paper I had worked on, put his hand on my head as he said to my mother, “So young; she shows real talent”, or when, before leaving our house, he presented me with several real canvasses, real tubes of oil paints, real artists’ brushes and a palette? As I weigh these, I think of one more time, and think the truest first recognition of notions of existence and nonexistence might have taken place when I was four years old. I was living then in Trinidad with two people I thought of as my parents. An odd thing happened; a man and a woman accompanied by two children younger than I, came to live with us. They were strangers to me, and to this day, I don’t believe I had known of their existence before their arrival. I would eventually learn that the people I had been living with in Trinidad were not my parents, but rather my grandparents who were taking care of me while my actual parents, these newly arrived adults, lived in Ireland so that my father could attend medical college there. The two children, I had to learn, were my siblings. The notion of existing, too complex for a child of four to understand fully, was, I do remember, deeply felt, known in the heart, when my doting grandmother split her attention between the three grandchildren; it was a shock to me to recognize that I was not the only one in her world. This would have been, I can see now, a child coming to understand existence through the experience of suddenly not existing.
KM: What is the best or worst dream you ever had?SM: My best dream involved me flying, and I had it again and again, until I wrote of my main character Mala, in my first novel Cereus Blooms at Night, flying through her neighborhood at night. The dreams I used to have started with me, a young person in jeans and a t-shirt, finding myself in some kind of trouble from which I had to escape. There was no one who could or would help me, and no tools with which to fight. All I had was my weak little body. In desperation, I would lift my arms up above my head and pull the air back with them, hard. From the first of these dreams, I felt a hint of lightness and so, knowing that my life depended on me alone, I raised and pulled back, raised and pulled back, with only the force of a magical belief that I could do it, trying to swim-fly with the speed a hummingbird beats its wings. Flight was always achieved in these dreams, but only at the last second before attack. As the dreams recurred, I found myself working in them to perfect take-off and remaining in the air. Height was important, for If I didn’t achieve it fast enough, any part of my body or clothing could be lightly brushed by anyone, foe or friend, or thing, the leaf of a tree, a draft from the tunnel between houses, and the magic, the spell, would be broken; I would tumble ungracefully back to harm. From dream to dream, I perfected my technique. It was wise, I found, to take-off and land, as soon as possible, on a rooftop— not sloped, but flat—from where I could then begin the process of launching to greater heights again. For a good while, dangers on the ground remained, but once escape was perfected and I was able to take care of myself, those dangers evaporated all together, and I would come to know the pleasure of flight for itself. Launching no longer had anything to do with escape; it was all about the desire to see the world from above, and in these dreams I would go far and wide, and there came a time when, in the dreaming, I met others who flew, like me, for the love of it, and for love itself. It was when I put all I had learned from those dreams into the writing of Mala’s delightful flying episodes that mine came, very sadly, to an abrupt halt. I am happy to see this question here, to have the chance to remember this sequence of dreaming.
KM: What is your favourite or significant coincidence story to tell?SM: An American-Canadian (A-C from here on) woman here in Canada got in touch with me and said she had a friend in the Caribbean, a friend who knew me, and that friend suggested she get in touch with me and we meet. The Caribbean woman was, indeed, once a friend, but I hadn’t been in touch with her in more than thirty years. That she was someone the A-C and I knew was not a coincidence, that was just life. Or, rather, it didn’t at the time seem like a coincidence. In any case, I didn’t respond with enthusiasm to the A-C, making no concrete plans to meet. But the A-C had a close friend here in Canada who, oddly, also suggested we should meet. This friend and I knew each other fairly well, as we were (are) both in the arts, had done a residency at Banff together, and were (are) both immigrants of colour, she from India, I from Trinidad. But, settled in my ways, I didn’t feel I needed or wanted to make new friends this late in life. My artist friend from India, however, invited the A-C and I and another woman to lunch with her in Little India. On meeting the A-C, I was certainly intrigued. She had what she called a bi-cultural life, one here, the other in the Caribbean. Well, so did I. While that was nothing more than a tiny coincidence, what an amazing thing it was to meet someone here, a bred-in-the-bone American turned Canadian, white and all that that might suggest, who knew that a mango wasn’t simply a mango, but that there is a large variety of mangoes, each with subtle but important differences. And she could actually describe those differences. She even had a tree of her own in the Caribbean. And the rest is fifteen year-old history. But those coincidences were slight, and they had, in fact, barely begun. In the courting days we realised that our artist friend who had managed to introduce us, had years before given the A-C a clipping from a cereus plant that I had given her—definitely a coincidence to make one shudder a little, if only with laughter. In the A-C’s house, imagine, she held and cared for something that once belonged to me. Then, more coincidences were realised and, in fact, began to pile up. I would learn that she had last had a relationship with a Mexican video artist, and she learned I had once lived in New York City with an American video artist. With a flash, we both realised that my then-partner (the NYC one) and her previous Mexico interest were the best of friends—a friendship beginning just when I was leaving NYC for good and, on reflection, had actually witnessed brewing. The A-C had known of me while she was in Mexico through by-the-way hearsay, but hadn’t paid attention to my name. It further turns out that she and the Mexican were in Toronto, at the Gladstone Hotel when a book launch was taking place in a room there. They walked by as the writer was reading to the audience. The A-C wanted to listen in, but the Mexican was eager to go out into the city. She didn’t catch the name of the writer or the book. But from the hallway outside she did get a glimpse of the writer and was curious. That was me, and the book was Valmiki’s Daughter. It would be three years after this that the A-C and I would end up at that lunch in Little India. More talk as time went by, and we realized that I had sat on a jury that gave her, years before, a grant for her work that I actually remembered in some detail almost a decade later. By the time of that first lunch meeting, she’d already read Valmiki’s Daughter, but it would take time getting to know the more mundane details of each others’ lives before it would dawn on us both that that was the book that was being read from, and I the person she’d glimpsed at the Gladstone. We’ve been together now for fifteen years and still such ages-old interconnectednesses, or coincidences if you prefer, surface. But enough, for now.
KM: Can you recount a time (that you’re willing to share) when you were embarrassed?SM: It was at the Miami Book Fair, in their authors’ lounge where one was sure to share a sofa, table, coffee or meal, with a good number of internationally well-known public figures and writers. Overwhelmed by it all, too timid to hobnob myself, I stood back and watched amazed, nevertheless, that I was in the same room with so and so. Finally I spotted another Canadian writer, a man I knew from back home, from Canada. Our context here was disorienting, though—we were in Miami and around us were many people who I knew only from photos but hadn’t ever actually met and, as is the way with me, I couldn’t, for the life of me, remember his name. He was standing in a tight circle of men, chatting. It was not like me to break in to say hello, especially as I didn’t know him well enough to do so, and all we really had in common was that we were both Canadian writers in a foreign land. If only I could remember his name. If I did, I could muster the courage to pass by and just say a quick and performatively confident hello, using his name, and walk on. In any case, the circle was just too tight, five tall men, clearly old buddies, for me to have tried this. I would embarrass myself, I was sure, and didn’t want to do so, particularly in such a setting. And yet, he turned slightly and looked directly at me. Directly. And he smiled broadly. I was so happy. He recognized me, too. When the circle broke up, he went on his own to sit on one of those comfy chairs off to the side, and I, having got myself a plate of food, made my way over and sat opposite him. We began to speak, small talk, a kind of relief for us both. Finally, I admitted to not remembering his name. He said, Oh, have we met before? A bit taken aback, I said, I’m sure we have, probably at one of the festivals back home. Where is back home, he asked. I shuddered a touch now and asked, Canada? He grinned and was about to speak, when a woman passing by said out loud, “This happens to him all the time! Everyone thinks they know him.” I quickly asked who he was. Jeffrey Brown, the woman answered as she disappeared down the path behind me, laughing—either at the phenomenon of this kind of thing constantly happening to this person, or perhaps at me. Of course, the moment I heard his name, I realised who he was, the Chief Arts Correspondent for the PBS NewsHour and who I watched almost nightly in my living room back home. My ears and face burned, as I tried to remember all we had been talking about, what I had said that might have made no sense to him, and then, to my great relief someone who actually knew him came and greeted him with the genuine warmth of familiarity. I’m not sure he saw when I got up with my still-full plate and slipped away. Books later, I would often imagine getting in touch with him, reminding him of our amicable meeting in the authors’ lounge at The Miami Book Fair and of our long and ropey conversation, suggesting I send my current book release to him to be featured on his section of the nightly PBS news. I’d fly to Boston to be interviewed, of course. But, in no time, I would recall that earlier twist of embarrassment, and bring the ever-growing fantasy to an end.
KM: What do you cherish most about this world?SM: The things that are endangered. Blue sky, forests, trees—flora of all kinds, animals, birds, rivers, the oceans and life they support. I am fascinated by and cherish the benign workings of the earth making, unmaking and remaking itself, like volcanoes and earthquakes, glaciers and fjords, how mountain ranges are formed—in them fossil signatures of the time they were once subterranean.
KM: If you could send your love to anyone, who would it be and why?
SM: This is a somewhat confounding and complex question, because I can and do send love to the person to whom I would nevertheless send love, namely my friend Riwaa. The fact that I can and do, and yet still choose her in answer to this question, means that this love I send daily feels sorely limited and does not benefit her in the way I want it to, or that she needs it to. When the need to express and deliver love is urgent and dire, it can be too overwhelming for one person to bear. While my partner carries the brunt of it, I share the burden with her, feeling this love all the same. There is communication in my household with Riwaa by WhatsApp every day, at least once a day, except on the days when she can’t get an internet connection, when it has been, that is, cut. Communication with her these days is urgent love. Conversation between her and my partner—they have known each other for several years, a relationship that began with my partner becoming her writing mentor and evolving over the years into friendship—has swung from what make-up and girl-products are being used and why, to the cost of a bag of flour or an egg, to the question of if and when the border will open for her and her family to leave. Love used to be having the slightly taboo conversations with her about her hopes for marriage, about western girls and their boyfriends, and pop-culture. And between her and me love was communication that would range from questions about homosexuality to the exchange of recipes, her maqluba for my lentil cakes. Texts would end with emojis of people hugging and hearts throbbing, calls with copious I-love-yous, the words spoken into a piece of metal and plastic, carried almost a third around the world, meant with truly inexpressible intensity. After a particularly terrible period of food being difficult to find or buy, and the incessant and terrifying noise of drones 24/7 she actually said that she was tired of hearing how much everyone cares while she and her family watch her tent neighbours fall in death all around them. Love, the word having lost its active meaning now, comes in small amounts of money sent regularly, where, exchanged on the blackmarket, for every $100 sent she gets the equivalent of $40 that could buy only one bag of flour if available or a few eggs. It comes in understanding that we can no longer responsibly attempt to fill her with hopes of a ceasefire—the umpteenth one promised but not delivered, or that the border—baseless rumours of it’s opening cruelly floated again and again, will soon open and she and her family will cross and we will travel to Egypt to finally meet them in person and we will eat maqluba together. Now love comes with making sure to stay still when we hear her on the phone, her weak voice, having only been able to get a half cup of lentil soup a day for too-long now, say to my partner, “I’m dying”. Love comes in holding my partner’s hand as she shakes, but it comes fiercest in not contradicting Riwaa or attempting any longer to reassure her, for she has been reassured for too long, to no avail. Love comes with listening, not showing the truth of what we fear and what we feel. Love comes with keeping to ourselves our desires for her, our indignation and outrage that events seem to be moving in ways none of us wants. It is to Riwaa and her family that I send all kinds of love.
Shani Mootoo was born in Ireland, raised in Trinidad, and has lived in Canada for more than forty years. She is the author of several novels, including her most recent Starry Starry Night, Polar Vortex, and Cereus Blooms at Night. A four-time nominee for the Giller Prize, her work has been long and shortlisted for the Booker Prize, the Lambda Literary Prize, and the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, among others. Her poetry books include Oh Witness Dey!, Cane | Fire, and The Predicament of Or. She has been awarded the Doctor of Letters honoris causadegree from Western University, is a recipient of Lambda Literary’s James Duggins Outstanding Mid-Career Novelist Prize, the Writers’ Trust Engel Findley Award, and The National Library’s Library and Archives Scholar Award. She lives in Southern Ontario, Canada.
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Starry Starry Night
by Shani MootooBook*hug Press, 2025In Starry Starry Night, Shani Mootoo gives us the singular voice of Anju Goshal, a young girl living in 1960’s Trinidad. Spanning her life between the ages of four and twelve, we experience the world just as Anju does, coming to understand she has evolved into a keen observer because her safety depends on it. Through her clear-eyed perspective, the reader is fully transported and becomes both a witness to and participant in Anju’s negotiations of an unexpectedly new and complex life.
Starry Starry Night illuminates the experiences of a well-off and socially advancing family during the turn of a country’s fortunes. Thoughtfully articulated via the innocent commentary of a child, the book tackles larger issues of family, loss, and trauma. It relays the story of a British colony just before and after its independence and touches on the racial and class problems faced as a result of colonialism.
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