- WINSTON SILL/FREELANCE PHOTOGRAPHER
Canadian writer and filmmaker Cheryl Foggo (right), speaks with Mayor of Kingston Desmond McKenzie (centre) and Canadian High Commissioner to Jamaica, Claudio Valle (left), at Seymour Ave, St. Andrew, on Monday. There was a reception in her honour, at which she presented the documentary 'The History of Lesra Martin', as part of Canada's Black History Month celebrations.
Tanya Batson-Savage, Freelance Writer
A QUESTION often asked of writers is why they write. So when Canadian author, screenwriter and playwright Cheryl Foggo recently touched down on the island as a part of the Canadian High Commission's acknowledgement of Black History Week, The Sunday Gleaner asked her the reverse - why she believes readers read.
We meet for a very quick interview in the lobby of the Knutsford Court Hotel in Kingston, after which Foggo will dash off to the University of the West Indies (UWI) to participate in a creative writing class. There she will take to other young writers burning to take up the pen.
Foggo enjoys the diversity of writing for different media and different audiences. She believes that her gift for the word has been inherited, as both her mother and grandmother are good writers and would have been authors if they had lived in a different time.
READING FOR ESCAPE
Soft-spoken, yet eloquent, she explains that in her view readers come to books for different reasons.
"In a way, reading was an escape when I was young," she explains. As such, she believes that some people read to find an alternative world. And Foggo admits to quite enjoying the art of world creation.
"I do love the work of creating a world that someone can escape to," she says.
Foggo notes that she knows she has successfully created this world when she begins to enjoy it and feel the emotions of her characters.
Foggo further explains that one of her favourite worlds was created in her play Heaven, which was based on the real place, Amber Valley, but with fictional characters.
"I so love them," she says of the characters from the play. "I honestly believe that they could have existed and in my mind they are somewhere out there living their lives."
The world created in her first young adult novel, One Thing That's True, which was nominated for the 1997 Governor-General's Awards for Canadian Literature, is another of her favourites.
"I absolutely believe in that world," she said.
EXPERIENCE THEMSELVES
Foggo points out that escape is not the only reason people read.
"I also think people read for the opposite, wanting to experience themselves," she says.
Foggo points out that reading about oneself can help to validate one's experience, and some people come to books searching for that validation.
"Sometimes being a human is a lonely experience," she says.
She notes that finding one's experiences or ideas expressed by a writer can therefore be a very "empowering" experience.
She also believes that some people read to expand knowledge.
Yet, she admits that these considerations are hardly ever on the front burner when she is writing, except when she is tackling historical information, as then she has to make sure she is accurate.
She explains that when tackling documentary projects, her topics are well researched. Indeed, she admits to enjoying the act of research so much that she may get distracted and go off on a tangent created by interesting discoveries.
Foggo's work includes the 45-minute documentary The Journey of Lesra Martin, the story of the man who acted as the catalyst for engineering the release of boxer Rueben 'Hurricane' Martin, which she wrote and directed.
Foggo has also created adult and children's fiction.
OWN HISTORY
Foggo was drawn to the pen as a way of writing about the stories from her own history that had gone untold.
As such, her first novel, Pouring Down Rain, the story of her family, is very important to her.
The novel was a finalist for the 1990 Alberta Culture Non-fiction Award. She explains that if there was any story that she had felt must be written, it was that one.
As the interview draws to a close, Foggo made sure to point to the generosity of both the Canadian High Commission and Scotiabank.
She does so because she wishes to point out that commercial support for the arts is very important.
"There is nothing more valuable to a society than literacy," she says. And who can argue with that?
