Have I seen a chicken pass by?
I have chickens, I have sheep and a large garden: everything we eat at home we grow here.
Everything, everything?
Minus the oil, sugar, coffee and chocolate! I need it to write, here you see it, on my desk…
I see…
I strive to balance body and mind and to leave a minimal ecological footprint.
It is one of the themes of his books…
They are the environment, animals, feminism and social justice.
I read that he lived for a time in Tenerife.
Yes, in 1991 and 1992, disgusted with my country’s war against Iraq… I isolated myself. I learned some Spanish. I remember Teide…
When did you start writing?
At the age of eight I started a diary in a notebook… and I haven’t stopped! Look, I have it here! Sees it?
Yes. Can you read me something?
“This morning, after breakfast, I broke my bicycle.”
Where did you live then?
Here in Appalachia. My grandparents were from here and are my pride today, but when I was young I was ashamed of them.
Because?
Because of their country talk, their rural customs (hillbillies, they are pejoratively called), but I matured and changed.
In what sense did it change?
I understood that his voice was my voice, I felt that Appalachia is my place… after having traveled a lot. And today here I am!
Where have you lived before?
My father was a doctor and to help the poor he attended leprosariums in the Congo, where I lived for a few years as a child.
What mark did that leave on you?
I found out that I was white, right away. I learned to live in a mud hut with a palm roof, without electricity or running water… and hungry. My father was very altruistic, and I inherited that from him.
And how do you help others?
I write books that move hearts against injustice. So that my readers demand solutions from politicians.
Does he do it on his Demon Copperhead?
Inspired by my beloved Charles Dickens, that is what I do in this novel of mine.
¡Charles Dickens!
Dickens moved his time with his David Copperfield, the story of a poor boy mistreated by the British society of his time. That’s why I asked Dickens for permission…
And Dickens has given him permission?
It seemed very good to him. My protagonist is another poor child too, but a child of today and here, in the United States.
In our first world.
The first world indecently makes the poor, the poor children, invisible. I wanted to see them and tell you about it well.
But you didn’t live like that child.
I did experience my mother’s unhappiness: it was a time when a woman carried the coffees. My mother told me that she should study and work so as not to depend on a man.
And what were you dreaming about?
Just by not bringing coffee, in short.
Study?
Piano… until I fell in love with biology: I understood that nature teaches us everything and it is enough to study it.
Is Dickens a form of nature?
Yes, when I was young I read his Christmas Carol and it opened my mind, and I knew that people are capable of changing.
What would Charles Dickens say about Demon Copperhead?
“This guy swears too much!” he would say. And I would explain to him how times have changed since his time.
What did Dickens want to tell us?
That David Copperfield… was him.
And what do you want to tell?
The same as him: making the disadvantaged, orphan, poor, drug addict child visible.
How has this been documented?
Through interviews with drug addicts, caregivers, social workers, doctors, nurses… How poorly paid, those professionals! And many children are lost.
Are they lost?
From the age of 18 they are lost from sight, or earlier, in bureaucratic labyrinths.
What changes would you like to see?
I would like to see more compassion, translated into more money for children’s services, detoxification, doctors, nurses…
Which country would you point to as a model?
Iceland and the Scandinavian countries.
Because?
They reduce the distance between rich and poor.
Are the poor of today and yesterday the same?
Today they are more aware of inequalities. Also between women and men: feminism pushes hard. And one day our speciesist supremacism will fall. Did you know that animals dream?
