[Dean's World] G. Willow Wilson: Tova

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Posted by G. Willow Wilson:
Tova
http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1194839302.shtml


   So [1]my graphic novel CAIRO came out this week. The day it was
   released, artist [2]MK Perker and I spent an hour on the phone,
   alternately basking in our glory and worrying about how the book would
   be received. There have been some good reviews and some [3]postmodern
   ones, but overall the response has been positive. Bill Willingham,
   creator of the hit comics series FABLES and the only Neocon at my
   chest-heavingly leftie publisher, actually gave the thing a glowing
   cover-quote. In other words, it's been a good week, and I should be
   pleased. And I am, but it's a pleasure complicated by politics. On the
   afternoon of the day the book came out, I did a signing at [4]Zanadu
   Comics. One of the guys who stopped by--trench coat, glasses,
   archetypal--picked up the book and flipped through it, then looked up
   at me with the air of a connoisseur of useless miscellany. "Clearly
   she hasn't learned that a ninja never hands over her weapon," he said,
   pointing to a character swathed in a black face-veil and robe, who was
   giving her gun to a skeptical-looking man in a burnoose. The
   character's name was Tova. She was an Israeli soldier, not a ninja. I
   held my peace. The guy went on to tell me he hoped I was ready for the
   big-leagues of fiction after something so trivial as journalism.
   (Journalism is like falling out of bed, he drawled, It's like, woah,
   did I just write something? Fiction takes actual work.) Guys like this
   are an occupational hazard of comic-writing, and if they're buying
   what I write, far be it for me to mock. I let him talk, nodding at
   appropriate intervals. But I had been thinking about Tova too, and
   about the other people who would look at her and see something she is
   not.

   ([5]show)

   I knew I was walking a fine line when I wrote an Israeli soldier into
   the novel. I knew that no matter how complex or conflicted or human I
   made her, bringing her into a story about Arab Muslims as a
   protagonist would burn up much, if not all, of the literary street
   cred I built up in Cairo among Cairenes. Now when I get an interview
   request from an Egyptian publication (we really like your work; so few
   westerners take the time to understand these things; what else are you
   writing?) I cringe. I know my days on the good side of the City
   Victorious are numbered. After he read CAIRO, my husband sat me down
   and asked me gently if I realized it was possible I'd put myself in
   danger if I marketed the book in the Middle East. I knew, but I went
   into the bathroom and cried for awhile anyway. I want so much for
   tenderness to be universally understood, and it isn't. I want not to
   have to separate the people I love to keep them from hurting each
   other. At the very least, I want the space to pretend, in fiction,
   that this is possible. But I may not even have that. My husband wanted
   to know why I needed an Israeli character. Without her, the book is a
   shrine--a sometimes paradoxically irreverent shrine--to Islamic, Arab
   and Egyptian mythology, fit for all but the most hardline bookshelves.
   As one reviewer observed, the only unequivocal image in the entire
   book, the only symbol that is not polluted by shades of grey, is the
   Qur'an. Without the Jew, the book is kosher. I told him I didn't need
   an Israeli character. But I did need the Israeli who was one of my
   most steadfast friends through my conversion; and the Israeli who held
   my hand while I was getting a large, pretty but idiotic Arabic tattoo
   in the days leading up to it, who joked that speaking Arabic would
   help me learn Hebrew; and the Israeli refusenik who was one of the
   first people to read a draft of the book, who was robbed of his Nobel
   peace prize by the tree woman from Africa. I needed those Israelis,
   and Tova was--is--for them. I have not yet been asked to choose
   between the people I love in any lasting way. I have managed to keep
   an exhausting but worthwhile balance. There are friends I will never
   be able to introduce to my Palestinian in-laws, and in-laws I will
   never be able to introduce to my friends. I've made peace with that.
   But when I write a more perfect, bizarre, serendipitous, forgiving
   world, I sometimes forget not to hope I will someday be able to live
   in it.

   ([6]hide)

References

   1. http://www.amazon.com/Cairo-G-Willow-Wilson/dp/1401211402
   2. http://www.amazon.com/Cairo-G-Willow-Wilson/dp/1401211402
   3. http://forum.newsarama.com/showthread.php?t=135035
   4. http://www.zanaducomics.com/z1.html
   5. file://localhost/var/www/powerblogs/deanesmay/posts/1194839302.html
   6. file://localhost/var/www/powerblogs/deanesmay/posts/1194839302.html