Ideas - The overlapping truths of history and fiction

Episode Date: August 20, 2026

Fact and fiction may seem poles apart but writers Esi Edugyan and Tiya Miles find the two intertwine perfectly in their award-winning storytelling. Both authors try to imagine past lives in their work, in part so that we may reimagine our own. They may operate in different realms but what they share is the telling of profoundly important stories that would otherwise go untold. It's been a longtime goal for IDEAS to bring these two accomplished authors together for a discussion — and it was worth the wait.This podcast was recorded in front of an audience in January 2026 at a Toronto Public Library event.

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Welcome to Ideas. I'm Nala Ayyand. Thank you for coming. We at Ideas have imagined this moment for literally years. And it's really hard to believe that we're finally together, the three of us on stage, with these extraordinary, two extraordinary and accomplished people, S.E. Dujan and Taya Miles. We are so honored that you have both made the trip specifically for this event. The event was an on-stage discussion at the Toronto Public.

Library. Esse Adujan made the trip from Victoria, British Columbia. Essie Adugin has the remarkable distinction of being a two-time Giller Prize winner for her novels, Half Blood Blues, and Washington Black, and for having both novels shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Essie also delivered the 2021 CBC Massey lectures out of the sun on race and storytelling. And with her on stage, Taya Miles. Taya Miles is the Michael Garvey Professor of History at Harvard University. I first had the honor of interviewing Taya on ideas about her multi-prize winning book, all that she carried, just after she won the Kundle History Prize,

the world's richest prize for a work of history. And we spoke again about her subsequent book, Wild Girls. And most recently, she's written a work of fiction titled The Cherokee Rose. There's a fascinating complementarity with Taya and Desi. Essie, the novelist, who steeps herself in historical research to realize imagined lives. And Taya, the historian, who uses novelistic techniques to reveal actual lives lived. They operate in different, one might even say, disparate realms. But what they share is the telling of stories that would otherwise go untold.

And they are both master storytellers. It's such a thrilling moment for me to be with you here today. Thank you both for being here. So my job here is done. I'm going to leave you with our two guests. I would like to begin with the moment that we're living in right now. Our age has acquired, of course, a few labels to describe it. We call it the post-truth era. We call it sometimes techno-futalism. We call it the era of the strongman. Now I wondered since you both peddle in words to envision times past, if you could sort of picture us a few years down the road, maybe a decade down the road, and you're looking back on our time right now, what labels would you give our age? Taya will start with you. Well, Nala, I sincerely hope that we will have that moment 10 years down the road when we can look back now and see things clear. from a space of relative security and peace.

I have a friend who has studied indigenous religions from around the world, and she is also apprenticing herself with a number of people who identify as prestices in the Yoraba tradition. And we were taking a walk one day, talking about everything that's going on, and she told me that the people she was learning, told her that it's all falling apart right now. That it has just begun.

It will go to the very end until we have nothing more of our current society, and then we will have the chance to rebuild. So I was quite struck by this and terrified by this, but I also found a little bit of hope in it. And I think since that time, I have been considering this moment as a great unraveling a great splintering of many of the norms that we have slowly built over time. Essie, what adjectives or labels would you use?

I hope, as you do, Tanya, that in ten years we are in a position to look back and see that this is a settled thing that we can move on from. I'm not so convinced. When I think about this time, I think post-woke, because I feel like woke was something, this period of time when people were open to hearing the stories and the experiences of people who maybe hadn't had access to, I guess, the same liberties and opportunities as others.

And that seemed very short-lived. And suddenly there was a backlash upon us. And which I feel maybe begun with, maybe even a little bit on the left, of there being an over-policing of language. And so once that started to really take hold, it seemed like that was the beginning of a sort of decline. A decline?

Yeah, a decline. And I don't really know how we come back from this place. I think I'd also use the label Ahistoric. I feel like we're in this era where so many of the, I guess, policies being enacted, and I'm thinking self of the border, decisions are being taken without any regard for a sense of history. Given everything that you just said, the ahistoric backlash,

the decline, the unraveling, just what it's like having that role of someone who tells the stories that are often overlooked in our time and our history. But far from being prioritized, Taya, these stories are being sidelined, there are libraries, that are banning books in some places. There are even leaders who are trying to push back

on the kinds of narratives that you are telling. What's it like to be working as a historian in this time, in this day and age? Sometimes it is just incredibly demoralizing, to be honest. And it feels like the people who are working in these areas now and those who were doing this work before us,

the people whose shoulders on which we stand that all of that work, all those years, is just turning to dust. And it can make one wonder, what's the point? What's the point of finishing a book? And I'm just going to say it when people are being shot in the streets. You just come to a point, I have come to a point of asking myself, is this really the most conducive to freedom, democracy, a better future, use of my time.

But when I have those moments of questioning, I do turn back to what are the things that have sustained me, that have sustained my family, that have sustained generations in the face of deep darkness, and stories are among them. Stories really can be anchors that can help us to take a moment to pause and to look at what's going on around us, to understand, to interpret, and to come away with deep meanings, true meanings of what it is to be human. And we need those. Even if everything's falling apart around us, we need those. I mean, they can be our handholds. And that's exactly why we're here is to talk about telling those stories. Of course, there are, you know, at a glance, history and fiction seem

to be antithetical. You know, the currency of history is fact, and the currency of fiction is you know, basically making up stories. But what they share, of course, is the potential to imagine the lives of others. And not just that, but to perhaps reimagine ourselves. You've both written fiction. You've both written nonfiction. What's your best argument for why we need both to tell stories that would otherwise go untold? Essie? Well, I think because I'm a historical novelist or I deal with history in my fiction. The research process is much the same for me when I'm writing an essay or a lecture versus a piece of fiction. But one of the, I guess, the delights of writing for me pure nonfiction is the way I get to tell that story. You know,

it's something where I deal with a lot of supposition in my nonfiction work. because I am often looking at stories of marginalized figures of whom we know very little. And so I allow myself to imagine the blanks on the record. So I allow myself to kind of dream, you know, when we don't have a sense of somebody's inner life, this is one of my favorite things to try and imagine. You know, I think of a figure like Angelo Solomon, who's somebody that I discuss in one of my first Rassie lectures about art. This was a man who was born enslaved and ended up becoming one of the figures at the center of Levini's aristocracy in the 18th century. And he was very learned.

He was friends with Mozart. He joined a Masonic Lodge. He became the head of this Masonic Lodge. He moved in elite circles. He moved in elite circles. He would play chess with the emperor, Franz Joseph. He married an Austrian woman. and they had a daughter who also moved in elite circles.

And I just thought, you know, what would his thinking have been like to have gone from being, you know, an enslaved boy and then to make this trajectory that he could, you know, never have imagined, you know, where he's sitting at the pinnacle of, I guess even Austrian letters. He was somebody who was very much trying to rewrite the tenets of his Masonic Lodge and his fate was so shocking to me just because he had made those strides and would have considered himself

to be fully assimilated into European life but once he passed away his body was taken from his family he was effectively he was skinned the skin was put over a kind of wooden frame so he's turned into a mannequin

and then he was placed in a kind of pastoral scene in the Natural History Museum in Vienna. And there were all sorts of taxidermied animals surrounding him and flowing water, and it was just this horrific fate. And for about 50 years, his daughter attempted to retrieve his body and was not able to. and in fact I think the display was only destroyed during the October Revolution when somebody set

the museum on fire but I thought what a life what a life to feel that perhaps you had gotten to a place or risen to this place maybe even

feeling himself beyond race and for that to be his fate but I did sort of wonder how did feel about his own life on a day-to-day basis? What were the things that he most prized? Who were the people that he most loved? What did, you know, what was it that he most loved about this life and also hated about this life? What did he recognize was completely unchanged from his time as an enslaved boy? And so to be able to kind of, you know, I guess hold those questions up to delight and really explore him through this kind of way of, I guess, reconstructing an inner life

through imagination. I think that to me is one of the pleasures and joys of nonfiction. Whereas with fiction, I feel like it's a process of learning as much as I can and then trying to forget everything that I've learned so that I can privilege the character. And, you know, you're Does it just, if I could jump in here, does it change your relationship to the subject, depending on which way you're writing about them? I think it does. Yeah. I think when writing a work of fiction, the character is so much rooted within your own psyche

that when you do that research, it's really informing the character, but it's not sort of conforming your ideas about this character. You're not kind of constructing the character based on these historical details. This person just has to be living, breathing flesh first and foremost. And then maybe later on you can kind of see how these historical details affected him. Sorry, Taya. Taya, I'm curious. You're nodding away.

I was so enjoying your answer. It was for that we're on a stage. Oh my goodness Nala. I mean, there's so many ways that I want to enter your question. So I think I'll start by pulling back and then see if I could end up close to where Essie. Sure. Handed it over.

As to the question about fiction and history and what each has to offer, the first thing that came to my mind was that there are so many ways that people learn and engage with information and ideas and feelings. So as a teacher and just as a thinker and a person in this world, I once tried to communicate in every way possible. I wrote a novel based on my historical research in large part because I realized that women in my family,

while they would buy my histories and put them on their shelves and be so proud of them, never read a single word, except maybe the acknowledgments. And so I looked at what they were reading, and they were reading a lot of romance. And I thought, is there a way that I could entice them into actually opening one of my books and diving in? And so I tried to write a book, a novel that had romantic through lines based on historical research I had done, to try to just open the different ways of connecting with readers. And as a writer, I have found that I just love all the forms.

I love them all. I love the ways in which they present us with different constraints and opportunities. And I feel sitting next to Essie that I'm getting a master class in writing fiction because I will say that what I've tried to think about, how does Essie do it? You know, how does she bring magic to the page? What came to my mind was, feels like. she, you, allows history, the historical information or the quote facts, the what happened, to come up through the pores of the story. That's how it felt to me to read Washington Black,

which I told you, I think it's an absolute masterpiece. It's a marvel. So wonderful. Just beautiful. That's how I felt. That history was just breathing. It was just moving through the pores of that story. That's not how I write fiction. Just because I don't think I have that turn of mind yet. I'm working on it. But I feel, Nala, you want to ask me a question. I want to jump in here. And it's a bit scary to do that with both of you on the stage, but I do have to push back a little bit because I think your book, all that she carried, reads like a novel. I mean, it tells this incredible. incredible story. I'm surprised your relatives

haven't read that way. But it's a riveting. I think Essie would agree with me. It's very much a it's a story that begins with love. I mean so romance is there at the beginning, but it's also it brings these characters alive. It's a beautiful

book. And more and more historians are trying to do that. And I imagine they're trying to approximate this beautiful world that you're describing that Essie works on a regular basis. Would you agree?

Thank you. Thank you for that. All that she carried, it's a strange book. It's a book that I love. I actually cherish that book, and I feel like somebody else wrote it. I don't really recognize myself in the passages or in the sentences. But it came into its form because I had reached the limits of what the archives could tell me. and I had to go into this other space,

which I feel is a space that Essie begins with. It's a space of just richer imagination, kind of reaching or yearning for the sense of who people are on the inside. Because I didn't have enough documents to tell the story of this family of enslaved women. I just had to go there, kind of over there, crossing the border between history and fiction. in a manner of speaking because I didn't really. It is history. I did write a few fictional passages

just for myself to try to get a sense of scene or relationship, but those were not things that I wanted anybody else to see. Can we look at a couple of examples? I have some readings, we have some readings from both of you, but perhaps if we could

since you're talking about it, the first reading there. But I should just say for those of you have not read all that she carried, what you need to know is that it's a book, that centers on a cotton sack, which has embroidered lines on it, saying that an enslaved woman named Rose gave the sack to her nine-year-old daughter, Ashley, just as Ashley was about to be sold to another estate. The embroidered lines say that Rose gave Ashley, among other things, three handfuls of pecans, which were a luxury item at the time. And if I may ask you, Taya,

just to read that first reading, if that's a book. okay. Her access to this luxury food adds greater strength to the speculation that Rose worked in the Martin household as a cook. An image forms more readily now in our minds of Rose going marketing at the behest of the Martins while dressed in some checked or calico cloth, toting a basket on her head in the custom of black trouse and women, and returning from the crowded wharf with a basket full and a sack of pecans. So an image forms in our minds. So an image forms in our minds. you kind of move from hard facts to this movie, basically, of, you know, these are hard facts that you uncovered through research,

and yet you create kind of this mind movie for us of what Rose is doing. What allows you that kind of imagining as a historian? You know what? I'm just laughing in my hand, and I guess out loud now, because I just told you there's no fiction in the book, and there's not all that you carried is history, but this passage, which is not one that I selected, I mean, it is me moving into a space of imaginative speculation

because I don't have a document that says Rose did that. This is my attempt to imagine Rose in place and to explain how she got her hands on these pecanes that she packed into a sack for her daughter. So is there, what does that feel like to move into that space? Is there a discomfort or how challenging is it as a historian to, as you say, blur the move across that border? I was pretty afraid to publish this book.

I mean, I truly was because I worried that fellow scholars would think that the book wasn't rigorous enough, that it wasn't scholarly enough, that I was taking too many leaps, that I was too close to my subject, that the argument was too soft. This book is really all about love between and among a mother, a daughter, and family members. So it was frightening, but it was also liberating in a way. And something happened when I was writing this book

that had not happened before and hasn't happened since, which is when I said that I don't remember some of the passages and it says like a different person wrote it, I really am described in my experience. This was a book in which I lost time. And in some of the most difficult passages, where I was dealing with violins against enslaved black women and girls, I didn't really feel like I was there.

I didn't feel like I was there, but I felt like others were there, to be just fully expressive of that experience. I felt like others were there. I felt like I had help in writing those passages, and then the day would go by, and I'd go back and read it and think, oh, what is this? What is this that's appeared on the page? Just before I come back to you, as you, who are those others?

Nala. Nala. You're trying to give me in trouble. Okay. So you don't have to tell us. I'm just curious. Here's what I'll say. I don't know.

I do not know, but I did feel a sense of ancestral presence. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. Can I ask, because that hasn't happened before and it hasn't happened since? No. See, does that ring familiar in any way? From my experience, no. No. Washington Black in particular was almost the opposite of that. It was just so arduous in coming.

And, you know, I wish it had been like this. I wish I had been honored with the presences of the ancestors. It definitely felt born of a different energy. I want to give a sense of that. The challenge of doing what you did in that extraordinary book, which, of course, is told from a respective of a young enslaved boy named Washington Black from Barbados in 1830. I'm wondering if we could begin the discussion

of that with just with that first reading of the very opening line of that book. I might have been 10, 11 years old. I cannot say for certain when my first master died. So that speaks of the challenge right there. It is not 1830 when you were writing those words. Your experience is removed from a 10 or 11-year-old enslaved boy. Barbados, but yet that line, you were, at some point, you were comfortable using the pronoun I when writing about someone that clearly you are not. That must have been so hard. Yeah, it was initially. I think it really was. And also, just in terms of first lines, I mean, that's, it was very difficult to come to that first line. And what I like about it,

is the sense that here we have an enslaved boy who has so little ownership over his own life that he cannot even say what his age is with any certainty. He has just everything in his life is prescribed by someone else and that someone else is the master, his first master. And the death of his first master is something that is specific, somehow his knowledge of it just will have so much more bearing on his own life than even his own birth or his sense of himself as being, you know, having some ownership over his own life. Fact and fiction may seem poles apart. But as you've been hearing from novelist, S.E. Adujan and historian Taya Miles, the lines of fact and fiction crisscross in ever richer ways, the more we keep unpacking how they portray past lives,

as powerfully and as accurately as possible. This is Ideas. I'm Nala Ayyed. Okay, so there are millions of podcasts, and maybe you're cool to stick with the ones you already know you like. But if you're just a little paranoid about missing out on the best new stuff, we can help. Every other Thursday, the Sounds Good newsletter will bring you one must-hear show from CBC podcasts. And because we're true audio nerds, we'll also tell you about shows that we love that we didn't make.

Go to cbc.ca.ca.com slash sounds good to subscribe. Novelist S.C. Adugian and historian Taya Miles have both been on ideas before. But it took years before our wish finally came true when I had the chance to speak with them both on stage at the Toronto Public Library in January 2026. At the heart of our conversation was the imagine. That's, of course, the water in which fiction writers, like Essie, swim, but it's also the watershed for writing powerful historical accounts of the kind that Taya did with her book, all that she carried. That multi-price-winning book tells the story of an enslaved mother, Rose, who gives her daughter

Ashley a cotton sack just before Ashley is sold away at age nine. Rose places a few things in the sack for her daughter Ashley, among them three handfuls of pecans. Question for you, Taya, you back to all that she carried. Can I get you to read the section about daughter Ashley holding those pecans? The loose oblong nuts felt smooth in Ashley's palms, the sound of their jangle in the sack of soothing and muted music. Their sensual materiality, touch,

sound, smell, and taste must have been a balm for this girl, reminding her that she was loved, despite being cast off, her own and every enslaved child's private apocalypse. On the first floor of some dark cabin, Ashley may have curled up with her sack, taking comfort from the food her mother had packed for the journey. Surely Ashley drew spiritual strength, as well as life-sustaining energy,

from those three potent handfuls. So here, again, your means, moving kind of from the realm of the external fact to internal reality, how the pecans felt, you know, the way they made her feel. What's the principle that behind, that's behind a passage like this? Well, the first principle is starting with the thing, you know, the object, we'll say the fact in quotation marks. And in this case, we're talking about the pecans. the sack that was passed down through this line of enslaved women had inscribed on it this family story,

which said that the mother had packed three handfuls of pecans for the daughter. So that is a reference to something that we can know from historical documentation or historical artifacts. So that's the first principle. The next principle is a gesture toward what it is, I don't know even as I'm writing it. So the language is fairly tentative because I don't know if any of this happens.

So I have to use words like may and must and might, which creates a distance for the reader, and that is unfortunate. But for me, it's really important to signal that we've switched into a different kind of realm in interpreting this moment. And Essie, I wondered, you read that. You read the book.

Just how those kinds of passages strike you? who was a novelist. Yeah, I just thought that the book was magisterial. I thought it was one of the most beautiful and profound things I'd read in an age. And, you know, understanding that you're a historian and that there are these gray areas or these things that you cannot know, and, you know, there is the language of supposition that may, as you're saying, that this could possibly have been the case. but it becomes kind of rhythmic

and you start to not feel it as tentative. You feel that this is the story that you've unearthed. You have the understanding in the back of your mind that it isn't sort of this bedrock thing, but the way that you take the facts that you have and create a narrative that feels inevitable. It's just so powerful. And so you do have a sense of these lives lived

and this strength of these women carried across generations. You know, even something, the detail that you give where the writing on the sack is in three different colors and saying, okay, this color, this is the color, this is the color, color of love and this is this was done for these reasons like I just felt it felt very apt and it felt very um just extremely convincing and very powerful um yeah like I said that the language of of supposition just doesn't um you know it's it doesn't make it feel tentative at all it does the opposite. I want to just kind of reset. And just many of the most accomplished people I spoke to

over the last six or seven years have talked about being chosen in their profession, that they didn't actually choose their professions, that somehow they were chosen to be professors or musicians or sports women and men. And so, Essie, I'm wondering if you could take me to the moment that writing chose you? You know, I was always a great reader as a child. I read widely. My father would, he sort of made a point of taking me and my siblings to the public library every single Saturday morning and allowed us to take out, you know, as many books as we wanted, on many topics we wanted. It didn't really matter if the library would allow us to take it out. He was fine with it. You know, I did read a lot of books that maybe too mature for me, or where I

didn't quite understand, or I remember reading B.C. Andrews at 10 and thinking, oh my God, what is this? Okay. You know, but I wouldn't have changed that for anything. I feel it just gave me such a view onto the world and such a view onto I guess different ways of life even when they were shocking and I think it's such a shame to see attempts to ban books

in schools I think that this is absolutely the wrong thing I think we need to encourage our children to read widely and to read about lives that are drastically different from their own lives And so that was my very circuitous way of saying. I feel that books have always been so fundamental to who I am,

that it's difficult to kind of pinpoint a time when I actually thought, okay, I'd like to write books myself. I think it was fairly young. I was a teenager. But I think it took me a long time to realize that writing books was something that could be a profession. How about you? I'd be so curious to know where did you get your beginnings. How'd you decide to be at?

Well, when you said to BC Anders, I had a flashback at me. I mean, one of my aunts loved BC Andrews. And we would go on vacation just close to home, but to these state parks and things. She would always have these stacks of BC Andrews. So I will admit that I snuck one to see what this was all about. out and I was terrified. Absolutely terrified. Yes.

I hadn't thought of that book or that moment in so long. But I was also a voracious reader as a child and couldn't stay out of books. You could experience whole world. I didn't like V.C. Andrews' world. But you could to experience the whole world through books. And I think once you do it, it almost becomes an addiction. in a positive way, though. In my childhood,

I'll add another layer to it, which is that I loved taking walks alone in our neighborhood, which would have been viewed by many people outside of it as an unsafe place, but I would go walking around and go into

these abandoned places. Which city is? Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio. And just sit in these old house, these old gutted places and houses and look around and look at the trash and sometimes you would find something really amazing like an old bottle in the debris and I would just imagine try to imagine who lived here what were their lives like and I always have to say this my mother had no idea when I was doing

these unsafe things she she is appalled and she and she would be involved about this but for me that was, I guess, another layer to my experience of reading. It's sort of like reading, reading the stories of the places, but not in words. I'm really curious where the turn happened for both of you to specifically being aware of your desire or motivation to tell untold stories. And so, as he, I'd like to read a little part of your book, Washington Black, when he sees an image of his master's brother who had drawn a kind of hot air balloon and he became quite enthralled with it

and what you wrote about this was I had never seen such artistry this is Washington Black talking about this hot air balloon I had never seen such artistry I stared at the paper in amazement and suddenly I knew I wanted desperately wanted to do it too

I wanted to create a world with my hands and you know I know better than to try to read an author's life into her fiction, but I am curious when you were perfectly aware that you wanted to specifically create a world that involved untold stories. It's so interesting. I have a very specific answer. I did my master's degree at John Hopkins University, which is in Baltimore, and my husband, who was then my boyfriend, was doing his master's degree at the University of Virginia, which is in Charlottesville. And so we would drive back and

forth, or he was the one with the car, he would drive back and forth. And they're about three hours apart, these two cities. And so I would sometimes go down to Charlottesville, and he would be working or studying, and then I would go and wander through the stacks at the University Library, University of Charlottesville Library. And I remember once, just, you know, I turned my head at that moment, but I saw it as like a history of Alberta. Yeah, I thought, well, what is this doing here? And of course, I'm, you know, born and raised in Alberta. So I took the book out and was just sort of flipping through it. And then I came across a photo of these black settlers from the turn of the 20th century to were sort of homesteading in northern Alberta. And I began to read, and I realized that

there had been several settlements in northern Alberta that were established by freed slaves who'd come up mostly from Oklahoma during the government's last Best West campaign. And, you know, I was astonished to see these settlers. This was not something that I had ever studied. studied in any course at any time in my entire education in Alberta. I had no sense of there having been a black presence at all. And I thought, what a thing to discover here in Charlottesville? You know, it just was, it felt so random. But I became quite obsessed with the history and the fate of these people, and I ended up doing a lot of research. And that led to my first, novel. And then it seemed like that from that moment on, it's been a process of looking at

marginalized stories, trying to uncover more about various communities or people of whom we seem to have known, you know, very little. So I want to fast forward from that moment to the CBC Massey lectures titled Out of the Sun, which are, for those of you haven't read it and you should, a nonfiction exploration of visual representations of black people. You say early on, quote, I am not a historian, only a storyteller with an interest in overlooked narratives. This is sort of the photo negative of the question we asked at the very beginning. What were you able to do in those lectures that maybe your fiction could not?

I felt like I could, you know, it's just, at least for me, to write a work of fiction is like years and years and years and years long commitment. I'm such a slow writer, and it just takes so much out of me. And you only get to focus on the one thing that you're writing about or the one person that you're writing about

for the duration. And so it was such a pleasure. I keep these, I guess it's like a personal archive of stories that I'm fascinated by or histories that I come across in footnotes. And I keep files on these things and on various people in the hopes that one day I'll get a chance to write about them.

And so when I was approached to do the Massey, I thought, oh, this is a perfect opportunity to open these files and do a deep dive and to look very directly at these figures and wonder about the contours of their lives. lives and try and imagine an inner life for so many of these people and to do it in a way that allowed me to make connections between them as well, and also to make connections between those figures and contemporary day figures and to see through lines. And it was just a glorious, wonderful, pleasurable experience. I'm so delighted I had the chance to do that.

Taya, you've had a chance to have a quick look at the lectures. We've chatted about them. Back to the idea of where your motivation comes from. When you read other people's writing about untold stories, what do you think is still missing? I'm not saying what's missing in Essie's writing. I'm saying in general. I'm saying in the big picture,

what do you think what stories feel most urgent to you right now that have not been told? Well, before I respond to that, I just have to say to Essie, you feel like you're a slow writer, it sounds like, but I wondered how long it took you to write each paragraph of Washington Black. I mean, I just thought, how did she write this novel so quickly? I actually went back and counted the years between your novels thinking how did she do this in less than 20 years? I mean, each paragraph seems so carefully crafted. So I'm glad that you're taking the time that you need to shape these stories for us. Oh, that's so kind of you.

Please call my publisher. I'm sure they know. I'm sure they know. What a treasure they have in you. Are there examples? I mean, we live in this world where we're, repeatedly told that if we do not remember history, if we don't remember our past, we are in danger of repeating it. Riffing a little bit on that, but also on something you said right at the beginning,

Taya, which is that there are days when you think maybe writing isn't what you should be doing or what you want to be doing. You know, we turn to history and fiction not just to be entertained, as we've said, but also to imagine the lives of others and to imagine ourselves or reimagine ourselves. But, you know, rational arguments didn't prevent or end the Civil War or World War II. It was fighting and bombs and bayonets. And so to both of you, and this is a dark question,

is there a point? Are there points at which you think, you know, words are useless in the face of what's happening out there? I think there's a distinction to be made between language and fiction. I think there's a distinction to be made between language and fiction, I think there are parts of me that do you think, well, you know, fiction, you know, what purpose is it actually serving?

I mean, words, I think words are the things that will sort of carry us to a place of consensus so that we don't have to fight. But perhaps, you know, one of the things that we are fighting to preserve, in a sense, is culture, you know, is fiction. to be able to, I guess, live in a society where people can write what they would like to write, and we can choose to consume it or not consume it,

and we can allow it to bring great beauty into our lives, because this is why we are here in part. I mean, we're here to, I guess, part of the full expression of life is an experience of beauty, right? obviously we have obligations to each other. We're here to love one another. We're here to honor other lives, but also to experience beauty. And that fundamental thing is maybe so much at the heart of who we are and, yeah, worth fighting for.

Please feel free. Absolutely. So beautifully put, Taya, you did talk about the despair some days of thinking that writing isn't enough. What do you do? What turns that way of thinking for you? Well, a few things. One is it's been obvious and striking that the current administration in the U.S. has been intently focused on history, story, and cultural space and representation. Attempting to overturn, Barry, erase historical information and narratives at national sites in historic spaces, in museums, attempting to redirect national funding in the humanities toward projects that are

are viewed through a certain lens. And that move, which has been consistent and potent, tells me just how important these words and these stories are. That there is an all-out effort to take control of them, to take them away from us, you know, from all of us. To me, this is a reinforcement for the notion that we should be continuing to try to preserve these stories to protect. them, to recreate them, to find more, and to share them. And I want to also give an example

from the past, even though we're in a changed world. And we don't know the world that's coming about how fiction can matter. I'm working on a project right now focused on abolitionist women, their texts, and their activism. And I have been looking closely again at Harry B. Tristow's novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin, published in 1852. That novel, which was a huge international bestseller, the first of its kind, changed sentiment such that it was a major contributor to the U.S. Civil War. And we never know when a work like that, a book like that, a story like that, a certain constellation of words like that will make the difference, but we know that they can. So that tells me that we all have to just keep.

doing all that we can to create and to make and to put things out there in this moment. We just have a very few minutes left, but I'd like to ask each of you to read a little bit more. Taya, there's no shortage of hate out there, as we've gone over a few times, online and in real life. So I'd like you to please read one more passage from all that she carried, and this one aptly is about love. We forget that love is revolutionary. The word cute and overuse in American culture can feel devoid of spirit, a dead letter suitable only for easy exchange on social media platforms. But love does carry profound meanings. It indicates the radical realignment of social life. This four-letter word asks us one of the most difficult tasks in life, decentering the self for the good of another.

So, decentering the self in the age of the selfie. It's a tall order. What tells you that such love is still possible? I will say to that that we see all kinds of love in action every single day, but that we're often too focused on our everyday lives and also the terror going on in the world to notice it. So if this kind of love exists when a person on the street says a kind of word to someone else and lifts them up.

And it occurs when a family member makes a meal for another family member and serves them and tends to their needs. It's everywhere. And my feeling is that if we could only see it and notice it, we could at least kind of burn a hole through this sense of decline, splintering, unraveling that we said earlier is taking place. We can kind of burn a hole through that and see through to a future of possibility. SC and your Mousy lectures where you examine, as we mentioned, visual representations of black people,

you say something I want to ask you about. If you don't mind reading, number seven, please. To look at a portrait is to be forced to build a human life out of our imaginations. That is what makes it a fundamentally hopeful act. So if storytelling kind of embodies that idea of being a hopeful act in the way that visual representations can be, what can be the source of that hope? You know, I think to go back to Taya's phrase here,

dissentering this self for the good of another, I think when you encounter a story, whether it's an oral story or something somebody's written, and you can start to ask questions, about another's life, I think that that curiosity about another's existence can be the start of something truly life-altering. Like I feel this desire to connect with another when you start to recognize features of your own life in their story, or in fact, you know, you recognize it's not about yourself at all. You're just wanting to hear their perspective and their thoughts.

even when they're radically different from your own perspective and your own thoughts, you know, the act of reading, like, that's the beginning of a kind of communion where so much change is possible. I think there's a lot of hope in that. And that's the result of the act of reading. What about the act of writing itself? I'm wondering, given everything we've talked about, whether what you do, S.E, is kind of an act of faith.

Yeah, I guess in so many ways it is an active faith. One often has the feeling like you were saying, Taya, like, why am I sitting here in my pajamas, you know, in a room by myself? But then to meet readers, I've just had so many fascinating, wonderful, interesting, necessary conversations with readers that tell me that stories are still these life-changing,

things and not just for writers. I mean for everyone, for everyone who connects with the story, it has the possibility to change things, her to open your eyes. And so that gives me faith. And Taya, last word, act of faith? It feels like an act of faith to get up in the morning and step into this world right now. But I want to, I guess, underscore that when we do that, we're all doing that. together. And that takes me back to Essie's choice of the word communion, which you just use, it's such a beautiful word. I love that word. That's a word that indicates a value that I see lacking among many world leaders today, that I do believe that I do have faith that if we could

hold onto that value to what that word takes us to, communion, that we could try to piece together a better world, if and when, this one disintegrates. I think that's a hopeful note. Essie and Taya, thank you very, very much for taking my questions. What a joy. What a joy to talk to you both. Thank you. Novelist Essie Adujan and historian Taya Miles. Many thanks to them for making the trip to Toronto to join us on a very special evening. Special thanks also to Gregory McCormick

and Sergio Elmere at the Toronto Public Library for all their help in making the event happen. This episode was produced by Greg Kelly, technical production, Will Yard and Emily Kiervezio. Our web producer is Lisa Ayuso. Our senior producer is Nicola Luxchich. Greg Kelly is the executive producer of ideas, and I'm Nala Ayad.

For more CBC podcasts, go to cBC.ca.ca slash podcasts.