Belonging to a Place

Going to New Jersey gave me a new perspective on Indiana - my connections to it and what those connections meant. I came to understand I had stories to tell and thos stores explain my thoughts and feelings on where I came from. Reading Sunjeev Sahota's  Searching for Connection and Belonging, in Life and Fiction reminded me I was not alone in this experience  - or in turning to writing to find understanding of these experiences. 

All my novels to date feature protagonists yearning for freedom and connection, for a sense of self-worth and a place to belong, and no doubt this draws on my own vexed connection with the land of my birth. I’m asked a lot about this, about my characters’ sense of belonging, and then, as if in corollary, I’m asked where I feel I belong (at my desk, I usually reply, to get the question over with). More interesting to me, and what I spend more time thinking about, is how to bring these ideas of belonging and connection to bear on the actual form of my books. So, in China Room, what does it mean for this author’s self to be refracted (by time, by memory, by language) into the other selves in the book, selves that in some cases existed long before he was born?

How do these ideas of belonging and connection actually take shape in—and shape—the narrative? I’m never asked about any of this. I’m only asked about the issues, the politics and topicality that are deemed to govern my novels, which feels odd given that as a reader form is what I always respond to first and most strongly. When writing at my desk the question that is always gnawing at me is not how best to make some kind of point, but how to put this object together in the most artful way possible. Is being seen as an artist and not a political tub-thumper yet another form of privilege, reserved for those higher up the ladder?

We are from here, we can get a different perspective by leaving, but what I do not want to be seen advocating is the Indiana-is-a-good-place-to-be-from-mentality. This state has had more than enough of that attitude. Something similar can be achieved by reading what is not from Indiana - one can travel with one's mnd also.