LitMinds Blog and Interviews

LitMinds first met Lewis Klausner through his role as book events organizer at Black Oak Books.  Given his wealth of experience, we asked if he would interview authors and independent booksellers about their work.  Masha Hamilton’s conversation about her forthcoming book, The Camel Bookmobile, is the first of Lewis’ upcoming interviews.

Interview of Masha Hamilton, Author of The Camel Bookmobile

Journalist and novelist, Masha Hamilton has worked extensively as a foreign correspondent covering difficult and distant stories such as Israel and Palestine, Kremlin politics and life in Moscow, and the changes in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban government. Her new novel, The Camel Bookmobile, describes a lending library that travels on camelback to bring books to remote, semi-nomadic people in the Kenyan bush.  In order to do research for this novel she went to Kenya where she interviewed drought and famine victims in the isolated northeast near the unstable border with Somalia. She is also a licensed shiatsu practitioner and is currently studying nuad phaen boran, Thai traditional massage.

Lewis Klausner talked with Masha about her journalism, novel writing, world travel, and interest in learning about other cultures.

As a journalist and novelist, as a traveler, as a student of massage, you show a strong, interest in learning about other cultures, even in building understanding among cultures. How did you develop these interests?  Do you think your interest in massage influences you as a writer?  

I think I was always interested in the larger world, even as a kid, and my experiences as a journalist only heightened that interest. Covering conflict, I learned that though leaders often try to create a sense of “us” and “them,” the differences are not that delineated. I often felt like it was a whole bunch of “us,” with some of “them” scattered around. That made me feel that the borders we draw around ourselves are often artificial. Massage heightens my feeling of connection to people and hopefully, little by little, makes me more intuitive.

Your second novel, The Distance Between Us, draws upon your reporting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Your new novel, The Camel Bookmobile is based upon an actual institution in Africa that you researched, the Camel Library based out of Garissa in Kenya. Could you say something about the Camel Library itself, and about your own methods of blending factual research with the writing of fiction?

I waited until the book was finished, sold to HarperCollins and in the final editing stages before I traveled to Africa to see the real Camel Library firsthand. I didn’t want my journalistic tendencies to kick in too soon with The Camel Bookmobile. I wanted to listen to the novel’s characters, and allow the imagined story to take precedence and vibrate with its own resonance, before I saw the real Camel Library in action. Being there was a moving and amazing experience. It didn’t affect the story itself that much, but it did lead to the start of a camel book drive – you can see the donor site at www.camelbookdrive.wordpress.com. And the book drive has made the novel launch more meaningful for me.

For me, the voice is part of getting to know the characters and the story and comes directly from them. During the writing process, I try to sympathetically immerse myself in the characters’ world and mindset, so that’s how the phrases develop. I found with my first novel that it just takes a bit of time and focus, letting go of your own concerns and your own words in order to hear theirs.

There are traditionalist voices in Mididima that speak out against the library. They belong to people who fear the reforms or intrusions that the library might bring from the outside world. In the novel you treat these voices respectfully, though you also support the Camel Library project. How do you balance the advantages of modernization against the rights of indigenous cultures to survive?

I think it is a very difficult balance, and one that we as Americans are not always sensitive to. In fact Fi, the American librarian, in many ways illustrates Americans abroad at their best and their worst: well intentioned, but naïve. She demonstrates that even the best of goals, when coupled with cultural ignorance, can lead to mistakes with tragic consequences. In the end, all the characters are changed by the Camel Library, including Fi, who discovers that though the people of Mididima are largely illiterate, she has much to learn from them.

The women in Mididima, even traditionalist women like Matani’s beautiful wife Jwahir, express some frustration at the limits bush culture places upon them. The Camel Library might bring changes in gender roles, might it not?

In the novel, the indigenous culture emerges to take the upper hand. For the real life Camel Library, there is definitely a lot of interest in the Camel Library, but a strong commitment to local values – and the camel librarians make sure the books they carry into the bush will not disrupt or challenge those values.  

The Camel Library and LitMinds share some overall common goals. Both are about making the culture and conversation around books more inclusive and more lively. Have you got any thoughts about this?

Every month, it seems, we see another article or poll, which claims that books are passé, and of course, as an author and a voracious reader, that feels discouraging. Sometimes I imagine there is only a small group of us who love the written word – a group so small we could almost hold hands around a fire. But then, I see the Camel Library, and the excitement with which its books are greeted as they are spread out on grass mats under acacia trees, and a new site like LitMinds appears that grows interest in books, and I feel the polls are themselves out of touch. The best of books still hold deep, timeless truths and allow us to connect to one another beyond space and even time.

Thank you, Lewis, for your great questions.

Click here, to view Masha Hamilton's reading profile on LitMinds.