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| Photo by Travis Silverman |
Aviva Rubin is the author of the new novel White. Her other books include the memoir Lost and Found in Lymphomaland. She is based in Toronto.
Q: What inspired you to write White, and how did you create your character Sarah?
A: White was inspired by what I learned and witnessed as an anti-fascist and anti-racist activist in Toronto in the 1990s when Holocaust denial, White power and neo-Nazi groups were flourishing in the US and Canada.
A bunch of us had founded JFAFL (the Jewish Feminist Anti-Fascist League), and together with groups like ARA (Anti-Racist Action) that had chapters across North America, we protested in the streets and organized public actions.
I was often struck by the media’s depiction of both us and the neo-Nazis as fringe actors – troublemakers on both sides. Kind of the flip of “good people on both sides.”
Once, when around 200 of us showed up at a counter-demonstration organized by a neo-Nazi group whose member was being sentenced that day, what got depicted by the press were police mounted on horses with plexiglass shields pushing us away from the courthouse. What we stood for was irrelevant, what got flagged was how un-mainstream we were.
Also, at that time, a dear friend infiltrated a White supremacist group in Montreal. While she did not come from a family like the Cartells, she was very conscious of her Whiteness, the privilege it conferred and what she could expose through it. Her concerns permeated her art practice and many came to rest in White.
Lastly, as a Jew, with my uncle a Holocaust survivor and many of my grandparents’ families murdered, I was consumed, particularly as a teenager, with all the nuances of that trauma.
Sarah emerged out of all this, particularly my interest in what happens on the margins of society, and the marks that growing up steeped in extremism, hate, and set beliefs will leave.
Messy, complicated and not always easy to like (my favorite kind of character), Sarah is an outsider among outsiders. Any direction she turns, something is lost. To choose openness and empathy is to forfeit family and a sense of belonging. I describe her Catch-22 as a dedication to creating a world she feelings underserving of.
Q: The Kirkus Review of the book calls it a “provocative exploration of the ties that bind and the mad hatred that kills.” What do you think of that description?
A: The novel is provocative for sure, in great part, I believe, because it refuses the clear answers people tend to seek. I like to think I do too, although maintaining nuance and grey, refusing black and white thinking, requires work.
Because it took me close to 15 years to write White, a couple of characters that started off as categorically bad became more layered. I push myself to understand what gets people to their views and why pure evil is in fact quite rare.
The ties that bind, familial primarily, underlie Sarah’s belief that her legacy is ultimately inescapable, that it’s in her blood. And of course there’s still love that complicates things even further. Her therapist Mona (forced on Sarah by circumstances) has quite the challenge.
While White itself is more implicitly than explicitly violent, hatred certainly does kill, whether by intention or indifference. I might take exception to the word mad. Mostly there is no madness, just ugly sane unthinking hate.
Q: Did you know how the book would end before you started writing it, or did you make many changes along the way?
A: Many many many changes. One example is Sarah’s mother, Margaret, who was a full-on character in earlier versions and is barely present now. Despite that, the fact that she did exist helped me understand Sarah better.
I often say I’m grateful I won’t ever write a first novel again. That was gruelling. From now on, I know where my main characters are headed, at least in broad strokes.
It’s hard to answer the question about the ending without giving anything away. But I will say that Sarah meandered across the country, met, slept with, investigated, and walked away from many people that never made it into the final story.
I wonder if other authors have shared what almost feels like surprise at how their characters behave and the choices they make. Seriously, what the hell, Sarah!
Q: What do you hope readers take away from the book, particularly considering the prominence today of white supremacists?
A: Hate, in all its forms -- intolerance, xenophobia, extremism, fundamentalism, and everyday ignorance -- is this moment’s pandemic. How have so many been convinced to take comfort there?
What’s changed profoundly between now and the mid-1990s when White is set, aside from the internet, is permission, even encouragement, for White nationalists to express hate, often thinly disguised as pride in one’s own identity, often not.
The natural thing to do when one reads something about heinous beliefs and behavior is to feel relief. Oh, that doesn’t represent me. This is often accompanied by a certain smugness that comes of seeing oneself as better than those folks.
My hope is that White prompts readers to conduct a moral inventory of their own received beliefs. Not to let themselves off the hook.
How much hate and prejudice have I absorbed over the years, if only by cultural osmosis? It’s an uncomfortable question but one we must ask ourselves if we are serious about forging a morally inclusive world. If the novel keeps inspiring people to take part in this conversation, I’ll feel it’s done something worthwhile.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I’m working on two novels. One is YA set on the eve of the 2016 US federal election about a mother and daughter who have opposing political views.
To celebrate the election of the first woman president of the United States, and as a bit of a screw you to her mom who voted for the other guy (supposedly for economic reasons), 17-year-old Charlie, who is passionate about building miniatures, and having a hard time connecting with her long-term best friends, heads out to camp in the Gila Wilderness for two weeks.
There she meets the ghosts of Chris McCandless, 24, who died in Alaska in 1992, and Everett Ruess, 20, who died in Utah in 1934, with whom she takes risks and sorts stuff out.
Back home, her mom, Nadine, who finds the letter her daughter left telling her not to worry, begins a frantic search.
The second novel, set in Pittsburgh in 2017, is the story of Sylvia, a curmudgeonly frumpy math genius in her 50s who left graduate school at Carnegie Mellon 30 years earlier to work in a boutique investment firm because she couldn’t afford to stay in school.
Her boss, whom she adores, has a heart attack and Sylvia, who does all the number crunching and behind the scenes heavy lifting, discovers what he’s really like and the far-reaching schemes being run with investors’ money.
A humorous #MeToo meets a mid-50s coming of age story.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: I think I pretty much exposed myself. But one last thing, in addition to writing, I love to talk, particularly about these themes and their unfortunate relevance today.
Thank you so much for including me and White in your Q&A. I’m thrilled the novel is landing in the US as well as Canada at a time when attention, action, and bravery around these issues are so desperately needed.
A shout out to my amazing publicist, Chris Reed, my social media magician and dear friend, Bridget Saulnier, my publisher, Rebecca Eckler of RE: Books, and my incredible editor, Deanna McFadden.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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