André Alexis on Canada’s political madhouse

BY: Andrea Thompson

Can a prison be civilized? Can a madhouse also be a safe haven? These are some of the questions explored in Asylum, the much anticipated, satirically driven second novel by André Alexis.

Alexis’ voice became a vital flame on the literary landscape when his debut novel Childhood was released to critical acclaim, scooping up honours such as the Chapters/Books in Canada First Novel Award, the Trillium Award, and a place on the shortlist for the prestigious Giller Prize.

In Asylum, the Trinidadian-born author once again explores the issues of identity, home, exile, the nature of reality and the paradox of romantic love. Set in Ottawa during the Mulroney years, Asylum unearths our human contradictions through an assortment of intellectual characters that are both passionate and disconnected, and whose political-style rhetoric reveals our often times unconscious hypocrisy.

Speaking from his home in Toronto, Alexis explains his fascination with the conversational style he heard while living in our nation’s capital. “One thing that struck me was the highfalutin’ talk of politicians who were always stressing the good of humanity to mask what are often more base desires. So there’s this constant bumping and tension between what people say they want to do, and the high language they use, against the real nitty gritty … like having an affair with someone else’s wife,” he says.

While Asylum deals with the profound isolation and disconnection that is often part of the immigrant experience, the author takes a pass on tackling issues of race directly. For Alexis, this decision is conscious, and reflects his belief in racial equality, and a desire to exercise his freedom to explore more universal themes.

“I have no problem with people writing from a black perspective,” he explains, “but an exploration of our humanity should be open to me without me having to say, well I’m a black man exploring love and hate, or I’m a black man exploring politics, or I’m a black man exploring whether there is a god or not. If you feel that you need to say that, then I think on some level the revolution hasn’t really taken place. Victory, if you’re going to fully assume it, means that you have the choice. White people don’t have to write about being white, so why should we have to write about being black?”

When it comes to race in politics, Alexis sees the election of a black president in the US as something that has affected all of us. “There is a perceptual change there that is huge. I don’t know any black people who were watching that election who weren’t crying that night, because it was simply overwhelming to have that boarder breached.”

In spite of this, Alexis doesn’t see a trickle-up effect on our own political landscape. “I don’t think that a black person elected in Canada would have the same sort of significance up here, because we don’t have the same sort of racial dynamic,” he says. “What would happen would be a native politician would be prime minister of our country; that would be more the equivalent, because [of the way] the indigenous native population in Canada has been disenfranchised.”

While critical acclaim for Asylum is gaining steam, Alexis is busy continuing his work as a book reviewer for the Globe and Mail, and host and producer of CBC radio’s Skylarking. With a third novel in his “Ottawa trilogy” in the works, we can soon expect more of Alexis’ excavations into universal psychological terrain. “We have at our disposal the full range of human knowledge, human emotions, human thought,” he says, “and we shouldn’t limit ourselves any more than we should let people on the outside limit us.