Q: How did you come up with the idea for The Bitter Side of Sweet, and for your three main characters?
A: When I decide to write a book, it’s because I’ve found an
issue that won’t let go of me: some injustice that resonates deeply.
For The Bitter Side of Sweet, it was the idea that children
in one part of the world have to work in modern slavery conditions so that
children in another part of the world can have inexpensive treats.
Researching the human rights issue leads me to the setting: The
Bitter Side of Sweet needed to be set in the Ivory Coast because it is both the
largest producer of cocoa in the world and has, at a conservative estimate,
over 200,000 children working in unpaid and un-free conditions to do so.
Once I know my setting, I move on to character. Whose voice
is the best one to tell the story I need to tell? Whose experience would be
most representative of the conditions I want to reflect? For The Bitter Side of
Sweet, my answer to those questions led to my trio of Amadou, Seydou, and
Khadija.
I try to pick characters that are representative of the
children involved in the injustice: for example, in The Bitter Side of Sweet,
Amadou and Seydou are brothers because, though boys and girls are trafficked
out of Mali into the Ivory Coast in about equal numbers, it is the boys who are
predominantly sold to the cacao farms, while the girls are split between farm
work, domestic labor, and the sex trade.
Amadou always had a strong voice in my head, and his
emotions were ones I could relate to. Seydou, as the younger brother Amadou
needs to protect, is the one to keep him human in inhuman conditions.
Q: What kind of research did you need to do to write the
book, and did you learn anything that especially surprised you?
A: The thing that surprised me most from researching The
Bitter Side of Sweet wasn’t any one fact, but the very nature of the research
itself.
For my first book, Golden Boy, I was fortunate enough to be
able to travel to Tanzania to trace the path of the book, and interview people
on the ground.
However, when I was booking my ticket for The Bitter Side of
Sweet, journalists in the Ivory Coast were being imprisoned for asking too many
questions about chocolate. This danger led me to abandon my trip, a decisions
that forced me to reimagine what good research would look like.
I went back and re-examined the types of learning I gained
from my trip to Tanzania—everything from the color of the dust, to little
setting details, to the transformative experience of talking, in-person, with
experts in the field—and I tried to find ways to replicate each of those
without the travel.
In the end, I had someone who had grown up in that region of
the Ivory Coast read the manuscript to check the tastes of the food and the
colors of the taxis.
I had a preeminent journalist who had spent years in the
Ivory Coast researching these abuses read the manuscript as well to make sure
that I was representing the issues accurately.
And, lastly, I took a trip to a fair trade cocoa farm in
Haiti, to learn first-hand the process of growing cacao and making chocolate.
Merging these disparate sources, I was able to feel
confident that the book held up an accurate mirror to reality. Any remaining
errors or omissions are, of course, my own.
A: My biggest hope is that readers walk away just a little
bit more curious about the chain of events that give us all our favorite
luxuries.
Chocolate is something that seems so wonderful, so harmless.
If slavery can exist in its commodity chain, where else might injustice be
present?
I believe that the first step to someone making choices for
meaningful change is developing an awareness that an asymmetry exists in the
world. Only then can we decide to do something about it.
Q: Did you know how the novel would end before you started
writing it, or did you make many changes along the way?
A: I never know how my novels will end! I generally begin
with a fairly solid sense of the first third of my books. From there, I have to
figure it out as I go along. Every choice a character makes has consequences… I
am in awe of people who know all their characters’ choices ahead of time and
can plan out a whole book!
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I’m actually working on two books with my editor at the
moment! Currently, neither one has an official title or publication date, but
here’s a sneak peak at what’s to come from me in the next few years:
One book is set in the mining city of Potosí, Bolivia where
the price of the mountain’s riches has always been human suffering.
Today, miners who survive the toxic gasses, unpredictable
explosions, and occasional tunnel collapses face a life expectancy of ten years
from the day they begin work. Over 3,000 children ages 6-16 currently work in
the mines of Potosí.
My book tells the story of one girl who, refusing to accept
a future defined by the crushing inertia of four and a half centuries of
generational poverty, fights to escape the grasp of the Mountain That Eats Men.
The other is set in Bali, Indonesia. As the fourth most
populous country in the world, Indonesia has over 250 million people, yet only
700 psychiatrists.
Without a mental health system, families resort to pasung: a
practice of shackling people with mental illness in a confined space
indefinitely. Though it has been outlawed since the 1970s, approximately 19,000
people currently live in pasung.
My book tells the story of two brothers affected by this
practice and their struggle to define family, responsibility, and reality in a
world where pasung is seen as the only available treatment for mental illness.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: That’s it for now! Thanks so much for interviewing
me.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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