Jodi Picoult Meet the Author

the American author Jodi Picoult to talk about her latest novel,

Small Great Things.

Jodi Picoult is a storyteller who asks questions of the moment that

disturb.

Her characters are faced with choices and consequences

we recognise and maybe fear.

Her new novel, Small Great Things is about

life and death, race and prejudice, a story of belief and individual

responsibility.

It starts with the death of a child in hospital.

And soon we find ourselves in a legal, political and

moral haze from which it is very difficult to escape.

Which is what good stories do.

Welcome.

The episode that leads to the whole story is one is very close to

people's experience, to know that it could happen then.

That seems to be something you have got a knack of

doing, finding something we all know could be around the corner.

I think that in the case of this particular

book, you know, racism that is something that is all around us,

even if we don't believe, as people with light skin,

that we are part of the problem. We are.

Because racism isn't just about prejudice,

it is also about having power and when you are born white

in America or in the UK, you have power.

So the episode that leads off the book, where you've

got a nurse that is discriminated against for the colour of her skin

and a hospital that backs up the patient,

the father who says, "I don't want anyone

"African-American touching my kid," that is an episode that I think

would make all of us feel a little bit on edge.

Even those of us who believe in patients'

rights also believe it's not quite fair.

And we all know that ethical questions of that kind, who has

the say, are ones that are all around us.

We sometimes pretend that they are out there but no,

they are in our lives.

Exactly.

And I love doing that.

I love writing about issues of morality, issues of conscience.

One of the reasons I wanted to write this particular

book is because racism is really hard to talk about without

offending someone and so as a result of that we don't talk

about it at all.

But when we do talk about racism it's really easy for us to point

to a white supremacist and say, that is a racist.

It is a lot harder to point to yourself and say the same thing.

Right.

It is impossible not to say that this is the kind of story which

is particularly appropriate at the moment.

Not just because of the outcome of the election in itself

but because these questions are alive in the American discourse

in a way they haven't been for some time.

One of the things that has been interesting for me about the release

of this book is it was targeted to an audience of white people.

As a writer who is white myself I'm not going to write a book

about racism to tell people of colour how difficult

their lives are.

I am going to write to tell people who look like me, you may need

to open your eyes a little wider.

Interestingly, since the election we have seen a rise in hate speech,

hate crimes.

We have a candidate who rose to power with divisiveness and

through scapegoating groups of people.

What I'm hearing a lot of right now is that a lot of white

people are devastated by the vehemence and vitriol

that is suddenly bleeding and rising to the surface.

People of colour are saying that has been there all along.

If you are right, and the evidence suggests you are, about outbursts of

nasty stuff, which of course the President-elect has said that he

abhors and never encouraged, it will mean that this has got to be

confronted directly, obviously by him and in office.

Much more directly than it has been.

And by society at large.

There is no more saying, "There are some wild, kookie people

"but they are a minority."

It is there in front of them.

Not only that but I would argue it is not

a minority anymore.

This president-elect made hate speech mainstream and has filled a

cabinet with people who actually are white nationalists so you can't

really call the marginal anymore because now they have the ear

of the President, the highest office in America.

The interesting thing from your point of view is

that you have written a story which is fiction and

based on episodes which could happen and probably have happened to some

people here and there.

But it is dealing with these questions not in

a political way.

Correct.

Not in terms of Donald Trump's election or

anything of that kind.

But in the here and now, the day-to-day

practice of your life.

Absolutely.

Racism is big, messy and scary and institutional and systemic

but it is perpetuated and dismantled in individual acts, and so just as

there are moments of micro-aggression where a person of

colour feels a direct threat or something even very subtle

that is sort of a slight from a white person,

there are also moments of healing that happen between people.

How much does the moral landscape that you are talking about

here affect you when you are contemplating the story or when you

are manufacturing?

It is actually the genesis of the story for me.

The books that I write come from issues

that I don't understand, things that keep me up at night,

things that are worrying me as a wife, as a woman,

an American, a mom.

And you know they will grip the reader.

This is going to sound horrible but I don't care.

The truth is when I'm writing I'm really

writing a book for myself, to thrash out something I don't understand.

This book was a huge wake-up call for me.

I had to look very deep within myself and saw a lot of

things that were unflattering.

I have not spoken about race for 50 years of my life because I don't

have to.

That is a privilege in and of itself.

I am not particularly proud of that but I learned through

this book how to be a better ally and that's something I hope I can

share with people who want to have a conversation about race

that don't have the tools or vocabulary to do so.

You can do it in a story without shouting it from the rooftops.

That's the point.

The beauty of fiction is it allows you a gentle

slide into a very difficult and rife moral discussion.

If I walked up to you and said, "Let's talk about racism,"

you're going to shut down.

If I give you a book instead and say, "When this happened

"to Ruth it made me feel this way and it reminded me of something

"I saw in the news..."

All of this means you are having a much more organic discussion.

That is why I think fiction is such a magnificent tool

for discussion.

I just am fascinated by the way that you find a question

that disturbs you, intrigues you, keeps you up at night.

How long does that take?

It depends.

It usually feels a little bit like you are a

dog with a bone.

It's something that keeps waking me up and I keep

thinking about it.

And you know that's a story.

If it keeps waking me up I know it's right.

The other thing is you know how sometimes you

are obsessed with something, everywhere you turn you seem to see

evidence of that.

Very often that happens to me.

I was worried about racism and thinking about it and

then I kept finding issues and stories in the news that seem to

reflect that, including the real-life story that inspired this

of an African-American nurse who was discriminated against in a

hospital.

Once you're up and running, does it write itself?

Nothing writes itself!

It's not that it has gotten any easier in the past

25 years.

I do think that the practice becomes more familiar to

you but every book is different, every group of characters is

different and in particular with this book, this was my 24th book,

you would think it would be easier.

It took longer to write, I had 1,200 pages of transcripts for notes.

I'm still thinking about the book, discussing the book.

I haven't moved on to do research for the new one

because my head is still stuck here.

To that extent, you always do an enormous amount of research.

You talk to people, you look at people who have been in this

situation and you referred to the transcripts.

You get it all in your head before you

start to make it up.

Correct.

In particular, this book was a specific

challenge in that it is told by three different narrative voices.

Two of which are very different from mine.

One is an African-American woman and one is a white supremacist.

Because I was writing Other, I really had to find the best

way to do that with empathy and authenticity.

Empathy and authenticity are two interesting words here.

Somebody with which you profoundly disagree, this has been

made clear, you have to get inside their heads.

Absolutely.

And it doesn't make it easy.

When I wrote that character I would go downstairs

every day and take a shower because I felt dirty.

I didn't like being in his tongue or in his head.

I didn't like the way he made me feel.

But you have to understand it. I had to.

And one of the things I am proudest of in this book is you will feel

sympathy for a white supremacist.

Things happen to him that in my opinion are the worst things

that could happen to anyone.

In the end, do you think that helps you?

I do.

You get readers who begin to understand how easy it is.

Yeah.

Nobody in real life is black or white.

Nobody is 100% evil or 100% good and I do believe fiction is

meant to be a reflection of the world around us so my characters

shouldn't be caricatures.

Small Great Things.

Jodi Picoult, thank you very much. Thank you so much.