Putting an award-winning author and a university professor on stage to open up a frank dialogue on racism and censorship may sound like a volatile proposition. Even so, on Thursday, PEN Canada, in association with the Royal Ontario Museum, will present Sir, I Intend to Burn Your Book: Lawrence Hill and Carol Duncan on Race, Censorship, and Free Speech.
In the spirit of free expression and the give-and-take of ideas, the speakers will engage in conversation, as opposed to a debate. But that doesn’t mean they’ll agree on every little thing. “We are hoping, in the course of our dialogue, to raise some issues on which we may share opinions, and others on which there might be a divergence of opinion,” said Duncan, who is an associate professor and chair of the religion and culture department at Wilfrid Laurier University.
Hill, who became a household name after the success of his novel, The Book of Negroes, has frequently taken on race and free speech in his writing. His 1992 work, Some Great Thing, is a fictional account of a black reporter encountering prejudice and censorship while working at a Winnipeg newspaper.
As Hill sees it, censorship in its most extreme forms is a tool of intimidation, and one he has experienced first-hand. In 2011, a Surinamese-Dutch activist group emailed the author to say it would be burning copies of The Book of Negroes because of its use of an offensive term for black people.
The incident, from which the title of Thursday’s event is derived, prompted Hill to air his views on the muzzling of free speech. In a Toronto Star column reacting to the book burning, Hill wrote of the act, “It underestimates the intelligence of readers, stifles dialogue and insults those who cherish the freedom to read and write. The leaders of the Spanish Inquisition burned books. Nazis burned books.”
The stifling of dialogue that Hill mentioned is an especially dangerous prospect for Duncan, who believes that any idea, no matter how objectionable some may deem it, should be opened up for examination. “The question is…is it in our interest to have those ideas out there and to debate them and, if necessary, to define why they are so reprehensible?” she said. “Having a censored text or idea closes down that kind of debate.”
Honest, open discussion is particularly important when it comes to the delicate issue of race in Canada. The enduring myth of our multicultural mosaic portrays an inclusive utopia north of the border, while demonizing the race-excluding United States melting pot. But that’s too simplistic a model for Duncan. “It misses our shared, troubling histories around race and racism, shared histories of enslavement of Africans and colonization of Indigenous people,” she said.
Conversations like the one to be featured in Sir, I Intend to Burn Your Book aim to shed light on our history of racial divisions, and help us understand the continuing impact those divisions have on Canadian culture today.
Challenging our rose-tinted myths and dredging up our most shameful histories is a painful process, but one that, according to Duncan, will enrich our culture.
“Openness to hearing ideas and to debating and discussing them is, from my point of view as an educator, of paramount importance,” she said. “As is developing the skills to do so.”