Revolution and Orality: A Conversation with Yara Rodrigues Fowler
“Revolution can be thought of as a kind of deep, expansive work of imagining”
Written by Yara Rodrigues Fowler, shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year 2019, there are more things is a powerful sweeping novel that explores history, revolution, and love. Shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize, there are more things builds upon Yara’s unique voice that was introduced to readers in her debut, Stubborn Archivist.
Written in a fragmentary pastiche prose style, Yara builds her narrative around two women with Brazilian roots, whose worlds collide in London in 2016 – as political turmoil unfolds across both Brazil and the UK. Guiding its readers across continents and generations, from the London riots to the darkest years of Brazil's military dictatorship, there are more things offers an exploration of sisterhood, queerness, and revolution, as well as a glimpse into a better way to live.
photo credit: Jade Jackman
Could you let us know a little bit about what led you to this point in your writing career, and how did the process of writing there are more things begin?
My first book, Stubborn Archivist – a shorter book about three generations of women, starting in Brazil and ending up in London – focuses on characters who are all within the same family. So, for my second book, I was interested in what I could do with a much chunkier narrative, and how I could keep the reader in my novel for a longer amount of time, creating an imaginary world that spanned many more years, spending more time in the 1960s as well as the 2010s.
I was interested in the political moment we were experiencing in 2016 and 2017. Depending on how you’re counting, it had been almost 20 years since the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War; there’d been this centrist kind of consensus around most of the world in the West, but also in Latin America. I'd grown up with that kind of consensus, so I was really interested in all the things that happened that were not meant to happen: the return of fascism, Brexit, the rise of Donald Trump, and even the coalition government in the UK in 2010. I remember, at the time, I was studying government politics at AS level, and we had been told to write for our exams: ‘the first-past-the-post system exists so that we never have a coalition government’. And then we had the election in which a coalition government was formed, and our teacher just said, ‘Oops… the examiner says that it's okay if you don't refer to the election, you can still say what we had in the textbooks…’
I just thought, if all these things are possible, what else can we ask for? And if this kind of neoliberalism didn't work, what will work? So, I became interested in the revolutionary movements of the 1960s and this idea of demanding liberation, instead of demanding just a bit less austerity. I was thinking about how I could use a longer novel to connect these two periods and create this sense of intergenerational time and change.
Yes, your book is one of the first books I've read in a long time that spans a long period of time, although you don't realise it as a reader. Moving through time feels natural and effortless and you really do gather a sense of all the characters and their feelings and emotions, as opposed to some texts in which the historical flashbacks can be a little jarring or you just spend the whole time thinking, ‘who's speaking now and what’s actually going on now?’. It felt like this fluidity had something to do with the form that you write in, and the fact that you don't stick to prose conventions. I wondered if you could talk a little bit about how your writing style helped you to cover the breadth of your work?
Yes, I think there are several things going on here. Firstly, I suppose my starting point was that I wanted to include the historical parts that are set during the dictatorships in Brazil - there's one section that’s set in 1969-74, during the most repressive years of the Brazilian dictatorship. I really wanted this narrative to feel quite magical and exciting, and not like, ‘Oh God, I’m being thrust back to the war bit of War and Peace’ – not to compare myself to War and Peace, but you know what I mean. So, I was inspired about books like Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things and Margaret Atwood’s Blind Assassin – where there's also a Laura who drives off a bridge – where the power of the book really comes from what happened in the past being so close to the present. Those narratives are so sexy and exciting. Also, the amazing Possession by A.S Byatt, set in 1990, where there are these academics in the present who uncover these saucy love letters of these Victorian poets.
I obviously can't write about 1960s and 1970s Brazil with the same authenticity as I can 2010s London, so what I'm doing is using all these archives to fabricate a narrative, in the vein of Saidiya Hartman. I wanted that part of the text to feel formerly more magical and almost more imaginary, to signal that it's invented, and much more speculative. I also wanted the text throughout to feel like a pastiche of different elements – there are recipes, there are lists, and all kinds of elements - partly to draw attention to the fact that it is a novel that has put been put together by someone, which has multiple connections to the outside world; it's not pretending to be an authoritative, realist text which gives the final word on a topic, like a traditional, conventional novel often does.
Then lastly – and maybe this is what you were actually getting at – I think the way I write, I try to make it as oral as possible, to have a kind of lightness, in a way that I think probably is informed by growing up on MSN messenger – you know, that ‘why would you put a full stop if you can put a line break in?’ mentality. I think that probably does make it a bit easier to get through as a text, and I've been told that it's easier for dyslexic readers as well. So maybe there's something about using the distribution of words and blank space on the page as part of my textual toolkit, rather than just relying on conventional prose.
On that note, I wanted to talk about this pastiche of different elements you mentioned. Some of the elements you incorporate are in Portuguese, and I really enjoyed that, even though I had absolutely no idea what the words meant. Were you ever worried about putting text in your book that so many of your readers wouldn’t understand? What were your thoughts behind that choice?
I think it's very fair to say that most readers won’t understand them - it's a book that’s published in the UK and I don't think I have particularly well penetrated the Brazilian community in London. I suppose there are a few different things going on. Sometimes it's just because that's the right word to use – that was definitely the case more with Stubborn Archivist, where it was the family talking to each other. With there are more things, it started with wanting to disorientate the anglophone reader, enabling them to empathise with the migrant experience in the UK, but it also became a type of pacing device. So, for the anglophone reader, I thought it was quite fun to hold back information and have them think, ‘Oh my God maybe I'm never going to know what that letter said!’.
I was considering that maybe the English readers never get to find out, but my editor said we couldn’t do that, which I think was the right thing to do; you always have to make a choice when you withhold information, as you are also making the text less accessible. And just to say that my editor was very supportive of me making those choices and having big bits of Portuguese included. I also was really reluctant to have a glossary because I think that again gives the illusion of a final word, rather than of meaning that can't quite be grasped, which I think is a bit more reflective of how language works, meaning works. There are some explanations in that note at the back and that was important in order to honour the real things that happened, that had been suppressed or censored.
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Read the full interview in our Generational Issue.
