It is breakfast time in Vancouver and David Chariandy and his 15-year-old daughter are sitting side by side on a sofa – he has warned that Skyping might have to be squeezed in, that the family tends to be hectic in the pre-school hours, but he knows it matters to include his daughter in the conversation. For she is the reason his new book exists. I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You – subtitled “a letter to my daughter” – is short (barely 90 pages) with a bright cover; there is, as you pick it up, nothing to prepare you for its power, unless you already know Chariandy’s fiction. He writes slender books that go straight to the heart. His most recent novel, Brother (2017), was about a boy shot by a policeman and the aftermath for his family. It was piercingly moving. But this new book is devastating in a new way because it is nonfiction – and personal.
Chariandy’s daughter was three when the anecdote that opens the book happened. As a child, she had firm beliefs, such as that chocolate cake is good for you. Father and daughter had been putting this opinion to the test – sharing a hefty slice in an organic restaurant in Vancouver – when Chariandy went to fetch them each a glass of water. He coincided at the tap with a white woman, “nicely dressed, a light summer cream suit, little makeup, tasteful”. He remembers: “I hesitated out of a politeness, and this very gesture seemed only to irritate her. She shouldered herself in front of me, and when filling her glass of water, she half-turned to explain, ‘I was born here. I belong here’.” Her loud voice suggested she “meant to be overheard, to provoke agreement, maybe, although the people lunching around us reacted only by focusing harder upon their own bowls and plates”. His daughter was busy with her cake and her father made a decision to avoid confrontation. Nor did he answer when, seeing his troubled face, his daughter asked: “Hey… what happened?”
“I remember that day,” says his daughter (who, to protect her privacy, we won’t name): “When he came back, he was really upset, I didn’t understand why. I was shocked to read the book – I cried a lot. It gave me a view on his life and what I’d missed while I was living right in it.” She understands – she comes across as a wonderful, forthright and intelligent girl – that it is ordinarily hard to see a parent clearly. She was struck by her father’s nuanced self-portrait in the book and his addressing in all its complexity (and sometimes brutal simplicity) what it is to grow up black in Canada (and, by extension, elsewhere). “Parents only show so much to their kids because they have to stay strong and be parents,” she says. “Although I knew he goes through struggles on a daily basis, the book was a revelation.” It turns out that although it begins with the speechless moment in the restaurant, it was inspired by a later moment in his daughter’s life and a different reason for being left speechless.
“My daughter turned 13 around the time of the election between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, and was asking about the distressing things Trump was saying about women, minorities, Mexicans and Muslim people,” he says. She was puzzled that Trump could have such “nakedly prejudiced opinions”. Her birthday coincided with Trump’s inauguration: “At the moment of the Muslim ban, we were trying to have a celebration of my daughter’s life.” And while Chariandy knew “distressing racism” and “violently colonial acts” happened in Canada, he hoped to reassure. “Could this happen in Canada too?” his daughter wondered. “Not right now,” he soothed.
Two days later, there was a “devastating incident in which an individual who admired the views of Trump and Marine Le Pen walked into a mosque in Quebec City and executed six people”. Chariandy wondered: “What words do I have as a parent to offer to my beloved daughter about this painful issue?” They went to a vigil at a nearby mosque. The next day, his daughter had to go to a “place close to Quebec City where the shootings had happened, her first long stay away from home. And at that moment, I felt: I have to write to her.”
His first acknowledgement in the book is to his “Dearest daughter, first and foremost, for your faith and inspiring feedback”. And now he proudly mentions her ability to detect inequality in films and literature, telling her: “You’re quicker than me – even though that’s what I do.” (He teaches creative writing and English at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver). She denies this with a laugh. She talks about his diffidence about writing (not least with this book). He never boasts about his path but it has been remarkable – the son of a Trinidadian mother who emigrated to Toronto in the 60s as a domestic worker and a south Asian father who gave up on the publishing house where he was paid less than his white colleagues to become a factory worker. Chariandy grew up in Scarborough, Toronto. He is 49 and, as he tells it, he read his way into another world. Books were – are – his transport.
His daughter understands the delicacy of her father’s undertaking: “I gave him permission to represent me in a book that would be exposed to the world.” She admits it feels a “bit weird” that there will be “people I don’t know who have an inside view on our family.” But she believes, with unfeigned enthusiasm, “the book is important and I am really grateful he wrote it”. It includes an incident where Chariandy’s little son (to whom I am briefly introduced on Skype, trundling around in his pyjamas) is called “nigger” by a girl at school. What is striking is Chariandy’s compassionate understanding of the bigger picture. He writes: ‘I’ll confess my thoughts did go to that young girl… After all, she had done little more than absorb and relay a message freely circulating in the world.” But at that time, his daughter was taking matters into her own hands. “My brother was hurt and that was what mattered to me,” she says. “I told the girl: you can never say this again. This is not OK. I guess I had a moment of feeling sorry for her because she did look confused. She didn’t know how much history this word had behind it.”
The book will raise questions, for everyone who reads it, about race and identity. In Brother, Chariandy explores the racial background of one of his characters – the daughter of a Filipino mother – before concluding: “But really, Aisha was only herself.” I try a provocation: should we be content to be only ourselves? Must we carry the baggage of the past – might it not be psychically healthier to travel light?
“Some of us do not have a choice,” Chariandy says. “The world names us and we have to figure out what to do. I’m of mixed racial background but, growing up, was named black. Because of the particular ways in which I was named, it was hurtful, but there was a journey I embarked upon towards recognising the beauty and strength of people named black.”
He adds: “The past is not yet past. When things happen, the only way we can make sense of it is by telling the story about the past – realising where prejudices come from. And the point would be not only to spin a story about racial violence but to tell how our ancestors have bravely and creatively overcome these things.”
Belonging is complicated. The family have visited Trinidad (Chariandy still has relations there). He explains that because he grew up in Canada and has been used to people asking where he comes from, it was a disorienting experience to look as if he belonged. He adds, incredulously: “There is even a word there for my ‘racial mix’ – dougla.” Yet neither father nor daughter felt Trinidad was home. After a lifetime in Canada, why would they? Each recognised that, as his daughter puts it: “In a deeper sense, we did not belong.”
Chariandy’s wife is white, which further complicates their daughter’s racial identity. But she is clear: “I am Canadian and also south Asian. I am black and I am European. I am all those things and can’t dismiss any of them.” Her mother briefly introduces herself and reveals that her husband has been nervous about the book. He chimes in: “I’ve never felt more nervous about writing. When you are potentially exposing a loved one…” But he interrupts himself to say that, although the story is his own, “I want my daughter to feel empowered to represent herself.” I say that – on the strength of briefly meeting her – I cannot imagine there will be any problem with that. I already have a hunch about the answer to the last question: Might she, one day, reply to her father’s letter/book? “There are a lot of things I could say back,” she replies, “I can, for sure, see myself writing a response.”
• I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You by David Chariandy is published by Bloomsbury (£9.99). To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £15, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99
