Big interview today!

So I've been meaning to post a quick entry about my big interview today for a few days now and haven't gotten around to it.

The story begins 20 years ago, when this author, Farida Belghoul, wrote a book that she didn't want labeled as an "immigrant book." She took to the TV screens and airwaves and basically declared war on the establishment, saying that everyone was trying to pigeon-hole her, they're full of crap, and she wanted respect as an artist. She even attacked other authors from the same population demographic, saying that they hadn't done much to render the label inaccurate, since their writing wasn't breaking free from the mold. In a more stunning comment, she once said that immigrant writing in France was "globally worthless." Ouch.

She once gave an interview to a leading academic researcher on immigrant writing, and apparently she wasn't happy with what he did with it (he tends to go very far toward the sociopolitical readings rather than literary). She swore at that time that she'd never talk to an academic again, haha.

After this first book, she apparently decided that no one "got it" and she dropped out of the public sphere. She became a high school teacher in the suburbs and that was that.

And then I come along.

She runs an organization in the banlieue for children who have been expelled from school, so I contacted the organization to see if I could get in touch with her. I was careful to underline the literary side of my topic and emphasize that I wanted to talk about her issues with the labeling process, since in the end we actually do agree on a lot of things. It took a few weeks, but they finally sent me her phone number.

Figuring they wouldn't have given me her number without first checking in with her, I thought the battle was won. Which it was. But I also knew that she's a tough cookie, based on her interviews. So yeah, here's a rough summary of the conversation we had when I called. It was a cell number so I knew it was her, but I still had to be polite and ask:

Me: Hi, is this Mme Belghoul?
FB: Obviously.
Me: Uhhh...I'm the American PhD student (etc)
FB: They sent me your email. I don't usually reply to these things. I don't know why I replied to yours.
Me: Oh, well, I appreciate it...
FB: What do you want from me?
Me: (explain my topic, how I'd be thrilled to hear more about her opinions on ethnic labeling in literature)
FB: What are you going to do with it?
Me: (explain how it's for diss, won't do anything for publication without her approval, etc)

In the end, I managed to snag an interview today, at her school, over lunch! Yes! So I'm trekking out to the banlieue (two trains and a bus) and am meeting up with the writer who swore she'd never talk to an academic again!!! I'm pretty optimistic, mainly because I think I've already won the battle. We actually do agree on pretty much everything, and the fact that she's let me get this far makes me think that it'll be ok. As long as I prove myself competent, it's not like she's going to declare war on me. I imagine she's thinking "it's about damned time someone did this." But she's still a tough one, haha.

Perhaps the funnier part of the whole thing was that last week I had a meeting with a hotshot sociologist here at the ENS, Stephane Beaud. He's a really great researcher, one of the premier scholars in France on youth and immigration and banlieue life. He's written "the book" on a lot of standard interpretations of what's going on--and he's very openly sympathetic to their cause, so he writes with great humanity and genuine care for his subjects. I've taught one of his books and the students loved it. And he's the nicest person ever. Anyway, all that to say he's a big deal. So I was meeting with him last week to discuss my topic, and he was very nice and encouraging about it. He asked me what kinds of interviews I've done, so I mentioned a few, then I added that I was seeing Farida Belghoul this week.

That's when he basically fell out of his chair.

He was like, "how did you get her to agree to that???" Then he told me that when he got her on the phone once, she was like, "we have nothing to say to each other" and hung up on him!!! Hahahaha. He was highly impressed that I had managed to get her to invite me to lunch on top of it all. In the end we agreed that I had a lot going for me that he didn't, namely the young PhD student studying literature thing. I also think being foreign probably really helped in this case. I'm anything but "the establishment" at this point. Plus he's a sociologist and she hated the sociopolitical readings of her work, so he had a pretty major handicap there. Nonetheless, I managed to score an interview/lunch date that not even Stephane Beaud could pull of. hahahahaha.

So that's today from 12:30-2:30. I'm going to leave here a little before 11 to make sure I get out there on time. It's literally just outside the city limits, but since it's such a pain to get there I'm certainly not going to mess around.