Upheavals

The last time we confronted writers with the world’s burning issues was on March 19 when countries all over the world, one after the other, were closing their borders and communities in order to better fight against COVID-19. In this very publication, Turkish novelist Elif Shafak wrote a fierce editorial against the poisons of nationalism and authoritarianism. We never imagined then that, seven months later, we would be back where we started. No one could have known either the extent to which the pandemic was going to complete the uninhibited response of the American president, one of the most conspicuous members of this clique of national populist leaders who have been hindering the world’s progress with his aggressiveness and overconfidence. With close to 218,000 deaths, the United States has been the country most hurt by the pandemic, a sad record due in large part to the irresponsible behavior of Donald Trump who, since the beginning, has been forcefully denying how dangerous the virus is, even from his hospital bed after he ended up catching it. This stubbornness has started to sow doubts among the American population, a good portion of whom still support him. But nothing is decided yet, as Trump is capable of anything.

To better understand the stakes of this exceptional election, and most importantly, the fear and anger that seem to rise among Democrats, we asked nine writers, either American or living in the U.S., to pick up their pens and answer our questions. These writers represent the diversity of American literature in stories, novels and essays, poems and thrillers, wide-open spaces and urban culture. Some of them have gone on a warpath against Trump, like Siri Hustvedt who, with her husband, Paul Auster, and their daughter, Sophie Auster, launched a movement in August named Writers Against Trump, which gathered more than 1,800 writers committed to convince Americans to go vote “against the racism, xenophobia and misogyny of Trump, his administration and the Republican Party.”

We are taking this opportunity to congratulate our colleagues at the magazine, America, who, for the past 15 issues, have been telling the story of the Trump presidency through writers’ testimonials, and who are now working on their final opus. Why do we need the perspective and the words of writers so much? Because their imaginary world feeds on reality; because they have a very particular way to tell us the story of the world and its upheavals, especially those of the U.S., whose culture has been permeating the entire world for a long time. Who better than John Steinbeck or Toni Morrison to talk about the Great Depression or racial inequalities? Trump provides endless food for thought to contemporary writers — writers, who in large part consider themselves, in the words of Robin MacArthur “so desperate and hungry for hope.”