Winnipeg and Toronto author Adriana Chartrand speaks to Shelly Kawaja about her debut novel.
Shelly Kawaja (SK): Congratulations on your debut novel, An Ordinary Violence. Can you tell us what inspired you to write this book?
Adriana Chartrand (AC): There wasn’t a single moment of inspiration where the story or characters came to me all at once; it was an unfolding process during the writing, but the story in general comes from a desire to examine contemporary colonialism through the lens of horror.
SK: In An Ordinary Violence, Dawn returns home to the Prairies and becomes haunted by her relationships with her father and brother, as well as by a violent past. The reader moves back and forth from Dawn’s present-day experience to her past experience as mysteries slowly unravel. How important is the interplay between the past and the present in this book?
AC: Dawn is haunted while in Toronto, as well – the haunting follows her, and she realizes, as we all do, that running doesn’t change who you are, or the things you’ve experienced. The interplay between Dawn’s immediate and more distant past with the future is important because it speaks to the circularity of time; the past, present, and future are all entwined, for us as individuals and for society.
SK: Dawn is also confronted by the loss of her mother and is haunted by her spirit. Can you tell us a little about Dawn’s relationship with her mother and how this motivates her to get to the bottom of what’s going on?
AC: When Violet dies, Dawn experiences the loss of her mother and also of her mother’s people – she loses the physical connection to her Indigenous side, and the will to connect with it. Her mother’s spirit’s apparent concern for what’s happening motivates her to see her mother as flawed but fully human and to realize that her mother’s experiences with her own family, with being Indigenous, don’t need to be Dawn’s.
SK: There’s a lot of violence in this book. Sometimes the violence is overt, but other times it is hinted at and more atmospheric. What role does violence play in this story, and how important was it to you to not write about violence gratuitously?
AC: It plays a big role as the book is about grappling with colonialism and white supremacy, both violent ideologies that operate overtly and more subtly. I wanted to capture both the overt violence and the sense of a subtle, more insidious violence. It was very important for me not to write about violence gratuitously, especially violence against Indigenous people, as creating a spectacle out of the violence takes away from the exploration of its causes and effects, which I’m more interested in. I also didn’t want to create any more images of Indigenous people being gratuitously hurt or killed, because we have enough of those.
SK: It takes years to complete a novel. How long did you work on this book and how did you know when it was complete?
AC: I’m terrible with dates and timing but I think I worked on it for about a year and a half before I submitted it to House of Anansi’s open call – after they bought it, I worked with the editor for about a year. I knew it was complete when the final version for publication was due.
SK: Can you tell us a little about what led you to write in the first place?
AC: I’m an extremely avid reader and I’ve always written – this was the first time a story kept flowing and became long enough to be a novel.
SK: How is your writing practice informed by a sense of writing to or for others? Do you have an audience in mind when you write?
AC: I think my main audience when I write is myself—as with a lot of people, I try to write what I would want to read. That being said I don’t exist in a vacuum so my main audience would be Native people around my age looking for contemporary stories. I want it to be able to speak to people across different Nations and provinces but I hope that Natives from the Prairies will connect with it in particular. I also hope non-Indigenous audiences enjoy the perspective and the story.
SK: Who is your work in conversation with? (i.e., other authors/artists, specific people, audience, peers, etc.)
AC: I don’t know that I can answer that – I hope it will be in conversation with many authors, artists, etc. but I think that’s for various audiences, critics, etc. to decide. I have many influences that I won’t try to name here.
SK: What is your definition of a successful piece of writing? Who decides that?
AC: I think the interaction of the writing with audiences is what makes it successful – the dialogue, thoughts, emotions that it inspires in other people, the connections it’s able to make for and between people.
SK: What was the most satisfying aspect of working on, and finishing this book?
I could edit forever – I wake up in the night and realize one word should be a different word kind of thing – so learning when to be satisfied was in itself satisfying. It still feels surreal that it is a book that will be out in the world.
ADRIANA CHARTRAND is a mixed-race Native woman, born and raised in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Her father is Red River Métis (Michif), born and raised in the Métis community of St. Laurent, and her mother is a mixed white settler from Manitoba. Adriana has two degrees in film studies and has previously worked in the social work field. She lives in Toronto and works in the film industry.