Annick Cojean interviewed Haitian-Canadian author Dany Laferrière for Le Monde. Here are a few excerpts translated from the French original:

I would not have come this far if…

… If I had not been so protected, when I was a child, by all these women—my grandmother, my mother, my aunts—who spared me the flames of the Duvalier dictatorship and surrounded me with so much warmth. It is from this childhood that I draw constantly. It became the catalyst of my literature. Almost half of my books evoke my grandmother. I obviously would not be here either if the dictator had not forced me to go into exile, at 23, to a large, unknown city. An exile designed as a punishment, but which I took as an opportunity to see the world. But everything comes from my childhood. And from that inner peace with which these women shaped me.

Yet, life was harsh in Haiti. The oppressive regime. The constant threat. And is it joy that serves as your foundation (support)?

That’s true! These women understood that rather than breaking their backs fighting the obstacle of the dictatorship, it was better to avoid it. And it was their snub to the dictator to raise me in the midst of joy and tenderness. It has also become my motto: the question is not to confront the dictator but to be happy in spite of him. All he wants is to be at the heart of our lives, whether we love him or hate him. Well, none of my books are connected to this issue. I talk about everything and nothing, from Heraclitus to my grandmother, about Japan or New York and Port-au-Prince. This perspective was created as a way to get around the dictatorship.

[. . .] One would imagine that they raised you with the myth of the rebel and revolutionary father.

Haiti was born of revolution. This is one of its strongest myths. It was followed by two hundred years of tumult, 32 coups, and an inability to rest, because of the relentless succession of political catastrophes and natural disasters: dictators, hurricanes, floods, and earthquakes. Yet there is an inner peace that allows one to recover quickly, miraculously, from all these shocks. For in Haiti, land of turbulence and serenity, tenderness alternates with violence. My father was on the side of violence, I am on the side of tenderness. To each his own way. These are two sides of the same coin.

[. . .] In rapid succession, you worked at different jobs, worked at a factory… Did you want to write then?

Oh no! I did not think of that at all! I was busy exploring the city and doing physical work; I was learning about Winter, Spring, Summer, friends—Haitians and Quebecers—and all this is done gradually, like a bird builds its nest, branch after branch. And then I spent a great deal of time in my bathtub devouring books. Because I discovered two things that do not exist in Haiti: solitude and privacy. In Port-au-Prince, each house contains at least 36 people; it is impossible to be alone. In Montreal, I closed the door to my room and there was silence, in which I could wait for the sun to set and for the arrival of complete darkness. This creates a sensitivity that I had not known before. The vastness of Quebec, with such a sparse population, the winter that isolates and forbids you to wander the streets, make us engaged with ourselves and are conducive to self-reflection. This is, perhaps, what made me a writer.

[. . .] And in Haiti [would you be able to live and write there]?

Ah! It is very difficult to write in a crowded city. One can be a poet there, because poems are written standing, on the doorstep. But the novel is a bourgeois art that requires a table and time. There is a lot of writing when one is not writing. Because we must first dream it, imagine the architecture of the building, its foundations, and its friezes—everything large and small. There should be a winter! The Russians—who fled to their dachas—knew that. It is not in Port-au-Prince where one could write War and Peace! It is true, Hugo was able to write Les Misérables in temperate climes. But that’s because he’s a monster. If you are built in a normal way, you cannot write in Haiti! Especially if you’re Haitian and you have inside you all this energy and spontaneous movement. Nobody would ever leave you alone. Nobody would believe you’re busy. When I wrote my first novel in Montreal, I had put up a little sign outside: “Do not disturb the great writer. He is currently writing his masterpiece.” Quebecers who came by, went on their way immediately. Haitians, in contrast, blithely rang my doorbell. “Ah! You really did the right thing,” they said, “because people might bother you.” Not for a second did they feel affected. [. . .]

For full article, see http://www.lemonde.fr/culture/article/2016/03/20/dany-laferriere-la-question-n-est-pas-d-affronter-le-dictateur-mais-d-etre-heureux-malgre-lui_4886530_3246.html