Much like the characters of his novels, André Alexis presents a complex simplicity. His prose is stunning, sharp and incisive. His sentence structure is deceptively simple, yet load-bearing, holding fast to a poetic underpinning of consequence. In relaying unvarnished veracities with an ancient literary genre, Alexis is demonstrative, distinguished.
And in winning the 2015 Scotiabank Giller Prize for Fifteen Dogs, the Toronto-based writer is redefining what it means to be an African-Canadian author. The fact that Alexis, a Trinidadian-Canadian, earned his Giller win the same year as Jamaican-born Marlon James won the Man Booker Prize and African-American Ta-Nehisi Coates the National Book Award is perhaps no coincidence. As Sam Cooke sang, “A Change is Gonna Come,” and there are winds of change blowing in terms of both the stories artists of colour are telling, and the receptiveness of the modern public to heed them.
Fifteen Dogs, which follows 15 four-legged creatures endowed with human intelligence, is measured with meaning. Two gods, Hermes and Apollo, make a wager over what the animals will do with this unexpected gift. Would dogs be happier than humans if given their intelligence and thought? What does it mean to be self-aware, the book ponders, and what are the universal truths around conscience and consciousness? It’s essentially a moral fable with animal actors; through human’s best friend, we find out the questions to these answers as the dogs fall victim to humanity’s baser natures.
The critically lauded book is part of a five-volume series called Quincunx, which tinkers with modes of literature such as the pastoral, the apologue and the quest narrative. Alexis tosses the reader into heady content, and he doesn’t care if they sink or swim, so long as they get wet. Immerse thyself, his work seems to say.
Black literature has historically been seen as a marketing shackle of sorts, a necessary (yet unnecessary) overarching scaffold that has defined both the writer and what the writer can say. The standard industry practice of segregating black authors to a specific corner of the bookstore or library makes sense on retail principle — making it easier to identify and locate these particular works of fiction — but tended to have the limiting effect of crashing together disparate and often incompatible genres all by virtue of skin colour.
Black literature and authors have been pigeonholed throughout history; the separate shelf space creates the narrow assumption that black readers will only read books by black authors, or that these scribes myopically explore only the concerns of the lives of people of colour. It’s an ongoing debate.
One can argue that, to earn mainstream cred, artists typically had to be culturally inert, pandering to the masses with racial broad strokes at the expense of artistic integrity. Alexis has risen above, delving into universal themes and cultural commonalities that are enriched by his racial makeup and illuminated though his methodology to prose.
The Scotiabank Giller Prize win marks him as an overnight success, but Alexis’s debut novel, Childhood, was released nearly 20 years ago. He’s both a testament to the drive necessary to become an author of note, and a template for aspiring writers of similar skin colour to persevere if literature is their true calling. His dedication to his craft defines him just as much as the universality of philosophical thought that intrigues him. He challenges others to answer the call.
The social construct known as race may have shaped us, but it needn’t constrain us. The Trinidad-born Alexis isn’t just a black author; he is an author of black descent. His literary body of work — beginning with Childhood and highlighted with standouts such as 2008’s Asylum and 2014’s Pastoral — has the connecting thread of grappling with identity, of sense of self, of societal standing. Simple truths, strident commonalities inherent to critical thinking and humanistic analysis; from the perspective of a black male, it’s about presenting philosophical themes from a different lens, a refreshed perspective.
The late poet and author Maya Angelou once wrote: “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” It’s real talk. Alexis sets an example for all writers — but most particularly to writers of colour — that it’s important to worry less about the racial ramifications as it is to write your truth.
Ryan B. Patrick is an arts and culture writer based in Toronto.
This is part of a series of reflections on Black History Month in Ontario. Twice a week for the month of February, TVO.org features essays on how black history and black lives today intersect with education, pop culture, social policy and more.
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