“Your soldiers will come to our lands, but your novelists won’t.”

[kpete]

The Storytellers of Empire
By Kamila Shamsie February 2012

Captivated by an image of an atom bomb falling on Japan, Pakistani novelist Kamila Shamsie asks American writers why, “Your soldiers will come to our lands, but your novelists won’t.”

...............

Your soldiers will come to our lands, but your novelists won’t. The unmanned drone hovering over Pakistan, controlled by someone in Langley, is an apt metaphor for America’s imaginative engagement with my nation. ... Where is the American writer who looks on his or her country with two eyes, one shaped by the experience of living here, the other filled with the sad knowledge of what this country looks like when it’s not at home. Where is the American writer who can tell you about the places your nation invades or manipulates, brings you into those stories and lets you draw breath with its characters?



very good article:
http://www.guernicamag.com/features/3458/shamsie_02_01_2012/

[Solly Mack]

1. K&R

[xchrom]

2. du rec. nt