Margaret Atwood interview

[bjd]

Not sure this is the right place because she talks about lots of different things, but she is a writer so:

margaret atwood

[casimira]

Very interesting and poignant.

I was particularly fascinated in her discussion of the indigenous people in Canada. Not something one often hears of in the US.

Also, her correlation of women, younger women especially, and climate crisis really drives it home.

I only wish the interview was longer, I could listen to her for hours.

Thank you so much for posting this BJ.

(As an aside, I did not realize that Canada does not or did not publish paperback books. Wondering why that was/is).

[bixaorellana]

Such a keen and focused intelligence!

My only quibble is the over-voice used for the interviewer, as I think the interviewer was perfectly understandable. If the makers of the piece didn't think so, captions would have been less obtrusive.

[bjd]

I'm not sure about the paperback business. I have copies of Atwood's early books published in paperback in Canada in the 1970s. Perhaps earlier, when she started writing, the Canadian book industry wasn't big enough to do both hardcovers and paperbacks?

I agree, Bixa. The interviewer's English is fine. I thought at first it was in Spanish because it takes place in Cartagena, Colombia. France 24 has a Spanish-language station now too but the interviewer was speaking English.

[lagatta]

I guess France 24 advocates the use of RP English. It is annoying when the Spanish-accented interviewer is perfectly understandable.

Started watching the next segment about attempting to remove organised crime institute in a Naples housing estate. Turned off when interviewer said Naples was the city most associated with the Mafia. Mmm, that's Palermo, or perhaps strongholds such as Corleone. The crime syndicate in Naples is the Camorra.

As for Indigenous peoples; they make up a higher percentage of the population in Canada and in the US, and are the largest excluded and systemically discriminated group. Afrodescendants and especially the descendants of formerly enslaved Africans are of course the largest such group in the US. There are a great many people of "Hispanic" heritage in the US as well - many of these, especially from Mexico and Central America, also have significant Indigenous ancestry.

Actually Alanis Obomsawin www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/alanis-obomsawin is older than Atwood but while she is also a writer, she was known firstly as a singer, storyteller and documentary filmmaker. She was actually born in New Hampshire (the Abenaki nation straddles the Canada-US border; present in southern Québec and Northern New England) but was taken to her family's reserve in Québec as a baby. I know her.

Black slavery existed in Canada but was marginal, not because Canadians are inherently any nicer than people in the US south, but because chattel slavery simply wasn't economical in a cold climate - you had to feed your slaves through the winter months. Yes, there was serfdom in Russia with a similar climate, but while a cruel system, families weren't systematically separated as in the South and there were many other differences in the social organisation.

[lagatta]

It is, but connecting it MOST with Naples is jarring.

[bjd]

Well, the presenter did use "mafia" as a generic term, but the guy who made the documentary called it Camorra.