The Inspiration Behind A GREAT COUNTRY
“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I’ll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about.”
In the summer of 1989, I worked as an intern with the Minneapolis Police Department as part of my college scholarship. The program was designed to open my eyes to different ways of life and help me better understand the world around me. That summer certainly expanded my horizons, with nightly patrol car ride-alongs: I saw everything from crack house raids to undercover prostitution stings, too many domestic violence disputes and an elderly couple’s presumed accidental death revealed as a murder-suicide in the autopsy. I developed appreciation for the dangers police officers face every day, and respect for those who put their lives on the line to improve their communities. Based on those experiences, I later did police ride-alongs in my home city of Toronto, to better understand what I had missed while growing up there.
Thirty years later, when the Minneapolis Police Department was in the news, I watched in shock and sorrow, as did many others, as the life of George Floyd was extinguished by an officer of the law. I thought more about what I’d seen that summer as a nineteen-year-old, trying to reconcile the many brave and decent officers I’d met with what I now saw in a horrific 8:46 minute video clip. It was not, of course, the first nor the last time such a tragedy would occur. Incidents of police brutality have always been part of our society, but the rise of smartphones and social media have made them more visible, and made us all more aware. In the following months, the discussions I witnessed were fraught and often extreme, with people starkly defending one side or the other, and most eager for a decisive solution. It struck me that these conversations were lacking.
While some incidents (like Floyd’s) are easy to adjudicate as wrong, the systems and influences behind those situations are often complicated. How police officers are trained, departmental hierarchy, personal safety risks, the role of sub-conscious bias, cultivated instinct and the necessity to respond quickly — these can all influence an officer’s response. The way neighborhoods are patrolled, a history of unfair treatment, the desire for safe communities, mental states altered by illness or drug use are just a few of the elements that might affect how a civilian reacts to a police encounter. While it might be easy to diagnose this particular societal ill, finding the remedy is not quite as simple.
At the same time, in those early months of the pandemic, violence against Asian-Americans saw a disturbing rise in frequency and boldness. This seemed particularly notable in the San Francisco Bay Area, where I’d lived for many years and where the Asian community had long enjoyed a strong foothold. A new conversation was starting to emerge in South Asian American circles as well. The minority group often deemed to be “model” in the U.S. was being forced to reconsider its role and comfort level in this country. Should we be seeking common cause with other communities of color? Or protecting ourselves in dangerous times? What did it mean to be an American in this new context, hyphenated or otherwise?
These were the ideas — the social, cultural, political forces in America today — I wanted to explore in this novel. One of the reasons I believe fiction is so powerful is that it allows us to step into another person’s shoes and mindset for a moment, to see how decisions that seem irrational to us might make perfect sense for someone else. Much of our perspective is naturally informed by our own life experience. But in the pages of a great story, the reader can also dare to stretch a little. I hope that readers can give some consideration to the perspectives with which they don’t easily agree. None of us are without flaws and we all make mistakes, but many people have good intentions. If we can better understand other sides, perhaps we can find some common ground and root our solutions there. I’d like to believe fiction can carry us to a place of empathy, understanding, and perhaps even forgiveness that’s harder to reach in our daily lives. If we are to face some of our society’s greatest challenges, we must be willing to explore these issues and perspectives in an earnest and open way, and try to find common ground.