{"id":23016,"date":"2019-02-21T12:51:56","date_gmt":"2019-02-21T17:51:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=23016"},"modified":"2019-02-21T12:51:56","modified_gmt":"2019-02-21T17:51:56","slug":"author-hopes-one-book-one-aurora-will-change-perspectives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/author-hopes-one-book-one-aurora-will-change-perspectives\/","title":{"rendered":"Author hopes One Book One Aurora will change perspectives"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

Camilla Gibb\u2019s upbringing, by her own admission, wasn\u2019t exactly \u201cjolly.\u201d
\nA native of England, she grew up in a family headed by a father she describes as \u201crule-bound, rigid, and ex-military\u201d and \u201cas a consequence of it not being a particularly jolly [atmosphere]\u201d her parents divorced when she was 10. While a divorce is always a challenging time for children, for Ms. Gibb it ultimately helped open up a brand new world to her.
\nAt the age of 10, her mother fell in love with an Armenian actor who grew up in Beirut. Although he was not Muslim, he was an Arabic speaker and his addition into the family brought a new sense of \u201cfun\u201d into her world.
\n\u201cEverything changed,\u201d says Ms. Gibb. \u201cThe smells changed, the food changed, the dynamic and energy changed and I thought wherever he comes from must be a happy place. That influence certainly stayed with me, thinking there is something there that spoke to me.\u201d
\nThat influence outlasted her mother\u2019s relationship with the man, but it informed the direction of her life.
\nWanting to know more about this culture and its influence on the world, Ms. Gibb dedicated her life to pursuing a career as an anthropologist. For her, anthropology was \u201ca portal, an escape, and a means\u201d to get to a place for which she always had romantic ideas.\u201d
\nHer novel, The Sweetness in the Belly, the Aurora Public Library\u2019s 2019 One Book One Aurora selection, is very much informed by this journey.
\nThe Sweetness in the Belly is described as \u201ca richly imagined narrative of one woman\u2019s search for love and belonging cast against a nuanced portrait of political upheaval\u201d in Ethiopia. It follows Lilly, a young, white Muslim nurse searching for her missing love, Aziz. This yearning takes her \u2013 and the reader \u2013 to Haile Selassie\u2019s Ethiopia, which is on the cusp of revolution.
\nWriting has always been a passion for Ms. Gibb, but there was a time when something like a novel was, for her, considered an almost \u201cillicit\u201d writing form.
\n\u201cI really took my academic self seriously,\u201d she explains. \u201cI was a pretty seriously driven young academic, but in that world I don\u2019t think things like sensory experience and feelings were really valued. I didn\u2019t read any fiction for the entirety of my education, 10 years, where I had grown up with fiction. It was everything. Secretly, I started writing short stories \u2013 secretly, because it almost felt illicit at this point.\u201d
\nTaking a gap year after getting her PhD, Ms. Gibb says she began writing a short story \u201cthat just wouldn\u2019t stop.\u201d Previous attempts were \u201cterrible\u201d but this one, she says, had some momentum and she was \u201cscared\u201d to abandon it.
\n\u201cThis looks suspiciously like something that is not a short story,\u201d Ms. Gibb recalls thinking.
\nShe was supposed to take up a job in Lethbridge, AB, at the time, but deferred it for a year to pursue her instincts, although she says she didn\u2019t tell anybody as it seemed like a \u201cbetrayal\u201d of her academic life.
\nTwo novels into her writing career, there were still signs of her academic life in the first couple of drafts of The Sweetness in the Belly. Her first two novels were written from the perspective of children, and the same can be said of the first iteration of Belly, but her editor at Doubleday asked a very pointed question: Who is Lilly as an adult?
\n\u201cI realised I had just written the backstory,\u201d says Ms. Gibb. \u201cOne of the things I think she was encouraging me to do was not hide behind the voice of a child; there is a complicated political framework and a child doesn\u2019t have to know what is going on, a child doesn\u2019t have to have an opinion, a child could be a pawn. She was forcing me to grow up in a way to take on the complexity of this place. I had to let Lilly grow up and I had to rewrite the book from the perspective of her as a young adult who is aware of what is going on.
\n\u201cI think I was intimidated to take on the politics and the complex social and political landscape, and it took a lot of years, really.\u201d
\nThe book, she says, wasn\u2019t so \u201cagenda driven\u201d until 9\/11, but it was already underway. She was driven by a desire to tell an \u201cintimate story about this person in this place.\u201d
\n\u201cIt was a literary endeavour, not a political endeavour, but when 9\/11 occurred, I realised the context in which it would be received and the landscape had completely shifted,\u201d she says. \u201cI had more of a responsibility, perhaps, or this book had more of a responsibility than just a piece of literary creation. I probably didn\u2019t respond to the extent to which that was true until I started having conversations with people around the book when it was out in the world and I saw how it could be used as a counter-balance between some of the more disturbing stereotypes of Islam as a religion of terror.\u201d
\nThis idea of challenging stereotypes is just one characteristic that made The Sweetness in the Belly, in the eyes of the Aurora Public Library, the perfect selection for One Book One Aurora 2019. Its themes have leant themselves to a wide-array of programming that will take place throughout the year based around the book, ranging from culinary endeavours to an evening of Arabic poets coming in to share their art in their own language and music.
\n\u201cThis is a dynamic world,\u201d says Ms.
\nGibb. \u201cThe issues of immigration and migration are as old as we are. There are alarming circumstances that are moving people, but it always happens. We live in a complex, multicultural word. Why wouldn\u2019t we want to have informed friendships and find a common understanding, sharing each other\u2019s experiences in that way? I want people [through One Book One Aurora] to have an experience, which is what I look for in a book. I want an experience. I want to be immersed in something that is both outside my own experience, but also kind of reflects our common humanity. I hope it alters one\u2019s way of looking at the world, which is a little bit ambitious.\u201d
\nTo find out how you can start that journey through One Book One Aurora and Ms. Gibb\u2019s novel, visit onebookoneaurora.com.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Camilla Gibb\u2019s upbringing, by her own admission, wasn\u2019t exactly \u201cjolly.\u201d
\nA native of England, she grew up in a family headed by a father she describes as \u201crule-bound, rigid, and ex-military\u201d and \u201cas a consequence of it not being a particularly jolly [atmosphere]\u201d her parents divorced when she was 10. While a divorce is always a challenging time for children, for Ms. Gibb it ultimately helped open up a brand new world to her.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":22557,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[27,4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23016","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-and-culture","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/2019-01-03-02.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-5Ze","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-22 19:53:14","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23016","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23016"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23016\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}