Issue date: 3/13/08 Section: Arts and Culture

Camilla Gibb musses up

I've always thought of books as other worlds that you travel to as you read, becoming increasingly intertwined with the sights you see and the people you meet. Writers are like personal tour guides; they take us into the minds of their characters and give us the inside scoop on their lives. Books can teach us about the world, especially those foggy areas that we ourselves aren't very familiar with.

But writers are also tourists, themselves learning about the worlds they create. This is the approach Camilla Gibb took with her third novel, Sweetness in the Belly, published in 2005. This past March 5, at the University of Toronto's Faculty of Information Studies, Gibb read from her novel, shared her influences, and answered questions about her writing and academic life.

It makes sense for her to do a reading at U of T, since she has been part of the community for many years. After finishing her BA here in Anthropology and Middle Eastern Studies, she began her PhD in social anthropology at Oxford as a Rhodes scholar and traveled to Ethiopia, where she lived for a year and a half, researching and immersing herself in the local culture and customs.

Gibb's high school guidance counselor told her to live before she wrote, and that was what she did. She set out to learn as much as she could about the world around her before even considering the prospect of a writing life. After earning her PhD, Gibb returned to Toronto to get "a grown-up academic job" as a post-doctorate research fellow at U of T. Her life was going according to her eighteen-year-old plans., until something had happened in the process - something that changed her in more ways than one.

A third-year exchange to Cairo, Egypt left Gibb recovering from more than just culture shock when she returned home. After feeling overwhelmed and alone in the crowds so far away from Toronto, she spotted the same displacement on a young woman's face while walking around University College. This woman turned out to be Agitu, an Ethiopian refugee studying at U of T, and Gibb describes this as the most important friendship she has ever known.

"I wanted to know her story and the world she had left," says Gibb, leaning over the podium as if the audience were close friends to whom she was telling a deep secret. Passionate, confident, and resembling an older Ellen Page, Gibb speaks from the heart and you believe every single word. "At the same time, I wanted to keep a bigger conversation alive."

The two became fast friends, and over countless dinners and a shared part-time job at UC's alumni office, Gibb learned about Ethiopia's history and the horrific dictatorship Agitu had lived under for years. It was only natural that when completing her Doctorate, Gibb would choose this country as her focus.

"My friend had always said she would go home when the dictatorship was over, but when this happened, she had to confront the fact that she most likely was never going home. She said, 'how could I trust that they would treat my people differently?' And so when she felt she could not go back to Ethiopia, I went."

Gibb became fascinated with the religion of Islam, and made many friends there. When it came time to write her academic thesis back at Oxford, she felt she had betrayed those she had grown so close to. Gibb writes personal stories that she emotionally connects to, and slowly but surely, she turned the experiences of herself and her good friends into her third novel. This was not her initial idea, however.

"I wrote bad short stories because I didn't know how to write short stories. And I didn't know how to write a novel. I think you learn by unlearning. I needed to learn to write by focusing on topics completely unknown to me, and that is where my first two novels came from. After those, I decided to become a full-time writer. My quiet side-project had become nosier and nosier and was spilling over into other parts of my life."

When Gibb recounted her pleasant memories of that year back in undergrad to her friend, Agitu told her she remembered nothing. She had felt so scared and invisible, like a ghost, and even slept with her residence room door open; if anyone knocked, she would think someone was coming to take her away. Gibb felt so na've for not realizing how her friend had felt, she felt that fiction was a way to explore that, and in a way, apologize.

"I'm glad it worked out. Agitu told me this novel was the first time she had recognized herself in a character. What matters to me is truth and emotional authenticity."

Gibb is an inspiration in a time when even politics in the developed world are shaky. She states her basic belief as this: "If I can have a voice and the good fortune to live in a country with freedom of expression, I will shine a light on a dark corner of the world."

A question loaded with sadness influenced the novel: what does it feel like to be a ghost? Gibb wrote an entire novel as the answer, and helped Agitu in the process, who is now a California social worker assisting refugees. Gibb didn't set out to teach anything specifically - she finds those types of book "off-putting" - but believes that it's enough for a writer to simply write what is true; it often leads to both the writer and reader learning something important.

After spending three years on a novel, Gibb decided not to publish because she hadn't found the right character or the right story; this is an action that sums up her integrity perfectly. She must be proud of and stand behind everything she does, and can only be involved in a project if she believes in it. That is the kind of writer to admire, and to continue to read.

Page 1 of 1

Article Tools