Published: Sunday, June 10, 2012
“There is probably a dim spot in all of our memories when we come to think of the Cambodian war of the 1970s
that destabilized the country with an extremist communist regime,”
National Book Award finalist Patricia McCormick said to her audience at
the UNO Criss Library in an intimate reading of her latest novel, “Never Fall Down.”
The haunting, hopeful piece of fiction that largely draws on the life of Arn Chorn Pond, the brave, spirited survivor of the late 70s
Cambodian Revolution. McCormick offered vivid accounts of the
atrocities and tragic separation of children and families trapped by the
tyranny of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. She also talked about the
protagonist, Pond, the courageous survivor she met through a neighbor in
New York, and read sections of the book that gradually trace his quest
to find ultimate redemption from the gruesome torture to which he was
subjected.
The book is an account of an 11-year-old boy filled with confusion and
bewilderment, so the language, fragmented and sporadic, was deliberately
chosen to maintain the point-of-reference of the protagonist.
“It is the language of the young adult,” McCormick said. As the war
was taking over the country, children were being brutally pulled out of
the fields and handed weapons.
It’s never easy to talk to a traumatized war victim who could never
tell the story of his life in a linear fashion. For the purpose of her
book, McCormick said that it was important to pose a series of questions
to the protagonist at random and then work towards attaining a
chronology of the events in a diary format.
Despite having such a real, gripping human story, “Never Fall Down“ is
not devoid of light-hearted humor. Sections recount some of Pond’s
delightful childhood experiences in Cambodia, his hometown where he
remembers his earliest memories of dancing to rock ‘n’ roll and of
selling ice cream along with his brother.
Today, though, Pond has found a new life being adopted by a family in
the United States and also being an activist, musician and speaker. He
is still the surviving child of 1970s Cambodia, remembering graphic details of the torment he was subject to by joining a band in the prison camp.
McCormick says the book is an account of his voyage, where he gradually
discovers music to be his savior in the midst of the incredible cruelty
and inhumanity around him. The purpose of “Never Fall Down,” like all
of McCormick’s previous works of fiction, is to save the soul and
culture of the people she portrays with an emphasis on the courage of
the human mind and an ultimate goal to make the world a better place for
all.
For a writer whose tryst with the written world began with her foray
into journalism, writing for the print media had served as a passport to
her curiosity. However, as McCormick waded through the path of
newspapers and magazines for years, the epiphany of being an author
struck her gradually as she discovered how fiction was ultimately more
powerful and true.
“It’s the relationship to the characters I portray that makes fiction
so unique,” McCormick said. “And with it, you have the best of both
worlds and the liberty with your imagination to expand the story.”
Her words resonate with those familiar with her fiction, which includes
the National Book Award finalist “SOLD” (2007), “Purple Heart” (voted
by Publisher’s Weekly as the best book of 2009 and “CUT” (described by
the Boston Globe as “one of the best young-adult novels in years”).
Looking into the gripping, intense, true life stories that inspire her
fiction, the roles of literary journalism and extensive research shine
through.
“It is important that you saturate your memory and senses with the
details you absorb from newspaper stories, chance meetings and from
daily life,” McCormick said in a brief interview.
As for “SOLD,” the novel that earned her national acclaim, she was
passionate to expose the seething reality of sex trafficking in India
and Nepal, to convey the horrific details of the girls and their
families who forced them to prostitution. The book, replete with rich
details of the protagonist Laxmi’s
village in Nepal, her voyage to India and her experiences with the
flesh trade in a brothel in Kolkata, gave readers a slice of the
daunting, hopeless world of the young girls who are used as sex
commodities. Talking about the inspiration behind the book, McCormick
mentioned the organizations in Nepal and India that helped her develop
the human story and the unassuming village in Nepal that gave her the
stimulus to take in every minute detail while turning it into an
extensive research for her book.
The uniqueness of McCormick’s narrative, which follows the techniques
based on literary journalism and research, lies in the fact that, while
she follows multiple situations, she eventually consolidates them in her
story. She does it in “SOLD,” where she frames a composite character
based on the bits and pieces of research collected from the individual
stories of the girls she interviewed. Through the story, McCormick seeks
to break the taboo and unfold the history behind their blemished
identities. Her goal has been to “outrage the dream readers of the
book,” to the extent that that they would get involved in rescuing those
girls. For McCormick’s fiction, which largely revolves around some of
the most gripping stories of terror, abuse, vulnerability and survival
of the protagonists, it is the magic of narrating these gruesome tales
with the precision of language, the minute details of research that
draws the readers to the books.
Focusing on the young adults as her principal readers, she said that
the narrative in her fiction, like “Never Fall Down,” “SOLD,” “Purple
Heart” and “CUT” is often the narrative of young people, used as
innocent frame of references. It is the terror and vulnerability of
these young voices as well as their ultimate strength to fight back
their precarious situations that stimulate her as a writer.
“While as the human, I was totally sad and devastated to know their
stories, as the writer, I was the vulture, the crusading journalist
collecting the details,” McCormick said.
It is this very subtle, real interplay of compassion, intuition and
research that forms the essence of her identity as a writer combining
facts with fiction. In the near future, when she thinks teenagers should
be increasingly aware of whatever is happening to others around the
world, her novels will hopefully continue to influence young minds with
her bold, truthful rendering of human stories.
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