Last week, author Caryl Phillips read a section of his new novel “The Lost Child” to an audience on Grounds.
Phillips is known for his post-colonial style of writing — characterized by a passage of time and space as well as insight into how history dwells on names and people. Not only is he is a prolific writer, but Phillips also became the youngest English tenured professor in America when he accepted the position of visiting writer at Amherst College.
His life as a Caribbean child in a country that refused to accept his British identity shaped his writing.
“The job of a writer is to shine a flashlight into the darker corners of the human soul and illuminate the things that keep us up in the middle of the night,” he said.
Phillips began by reading a piece about the book and his experience writing it.
"Living inside a book for so long may make one lose sight of what the book is actually about,” he said, unable to precisely explain the book's true message.
Phillips' life story captivated the audience. He moved to Yorkshire as a young boy and lived through two major life-changing incidents — the Moors murders, a series of sexual assaults and murders of children, and his weeklong stint at a camp for underprivileged children in Lancashire. He shared how “The Lost Child” came into existence from these two incidences, which he summarized and saved on five post-it notes labeled “Yorkshire,” “Moor,” “Lost,” “Child” and “Literature.”
“It was time to write my own book and tell an altogether different story,” Phillips said.
Even though Phillips spoke about his own story, he emphasized that every story, no matter how small, is worth sharing. The presented excerpt detailed a scenario in which a young girl in college is reprimanded by her father, a universally familiar situation. Although Phillips speaks about life from his own personal perspective, he allowed the wide audience to relate to his ideas and narratives.
Phillips’ delivery was both powerful and engaging. His slow and even pace highlighted the tension in the scenes, and his emotionally compelling conclusion hooked the audience.
However, the best part of the live reading was the question and answer portion.
Various queries from the crowd led Phillips to talk about his cross-genre writing. Even though he was genuinely interested in writing only prose at first, Phillips conceded to writing other genres in order to target broader audiences and accrue more earnings.
As he said wittily, “Wanting to write prose and writing prose are two very different things.”
Phillips also spoke about his friend who convinced him to travel across America on a bus. He claims the experience was “the best education [he] ever had.”
This bus ride culminated in Phillips’ fascination with Richard Wright’s “Native Son,” a novel about a black youth living in poverty.
“I had never read a book about people who looked like me,” Phillips said. “I want to encourage people, show them they can [write] too. I don’t want people to think that writers are strange, cloistered human beings."
“The Lost Child” connected the audience with childhood memories and showed how these experiences have an impression on how their lives unravel. Likewise, Phillips’ reading spread the idea that every voice deserves a place in literature and history.
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