I was on the wrong side of colonization. My ancestry is mostly mired in having the colonial experience as colonized subjects, first as slaves and then as independent subjects with a post-colonial experience.
Fred D'AguiarPeople were always hungry, bullied, afraid, paranoid - so I just thought I'd show that in the novel in a kind of suffocating way.
Fred D'AguiarMy grandfather is Portuguese. He betrayed what was expected of him and married my grandmother of African descent on my father's side.
Fred D'AguiarThere's an imperative to make sure you distinguish fiction from the fact, because if the fact is doing the work, why did you do fiction? And once you raise the question of why - why do fiction? - then you have to answer it in your text as a kind of enactment of the answer.
Fred D'Aguiar