Farzana Doctor's novel Seven is a nuanced look at women's agency in the face of religion and tradition
Ryan B. Patrick | | Posted: May 20, 2021 4:13 PM | Last Updated: May 20, 2021
Farzana Doctor is a Canadian novelist, activist and psychotherapist of Indian ancestry. Her novels include All Inclusive and Six Metres of Pavement.
Her latest is Seven, a novel that explores the issue of Khatna, also known as female genital mutilation, within the Dawoodi Bohra community in India.
In Seven, a woman named Sharifa accompanies her husband on a marriage-saving trip to India, where she also intends to research her great-great-grandfather — a business owner and philanthropist. She becomes fascinated by his four wives, who are never mentioned in her family. At the same time, she tries to reach a middle ground in an ideologically divided community.
CBC Books named Seven one of the best books of 2020. Doctor spoke with CBC Books about writing Seven.
Finding nuance within a complex issue
"I knew that I was writing about a difficult issue and I knew I needed to make it digestible for the reader. I knew that if this was going to be a novel, I had to put my novel cap on first. I needed to make sure that I was writing a novel that was good, that was going to be a page turner — and that it was going to be nuanced and complex.
"I was very careful in making a lot of choices. So, for example, my protagonist is somebody who is kind of clueless as she is discovering things about her own family history and then her own personal history. I intentionally made her a bit clueless and tightly wound, because I wanted her to be able to take the reader on this journey with her and to be able to learn things in a digestible way.
I knew that I was writing about a difficult issue and I knew I needed to make it digestible for the reader.
"It wasn't a question of how passionate or dispassionate I needed to be. I knew that I needed to be technically savvy as a novelist first.
"You have to start with a story. I chose to focus first on a survivor's marriage and her infidelity and some of her sexual problems and her conflicts with her family members. Then I folded in the sociopolitical issues in this. It's starting first with a story and then second with the issues."
Speaking from a place of privilege
"I come from a place of privilege in terms of speaking out around this issue. It's only been since 2015 that people in my community have been having a public discourse — meaning in the media — around this issue.
"It's very hidden. It's very taboo, very secretive. I know that some of my activist comrades have to do this work anonymously because they're very interdependent in the Dawoodi Bohra community and some of them are being harassed.
I was born into the Dawoodi Bohra community, but I grew up in a fairly liberal family. So there's no one who's going to harass me who means anything to me.
"I was born into the Dawoodi Bohra community, but I grew up in a fairly liberal family. So there's no one who's going to harass me who means anything to me. I'm not interdependent with the community, so that makes it safer for me to do it."
The legacy of Khatna
"As a survivor of Khatna myself, I felt like I could speak to the experience emotionally. I knew that I would probably end up doing lots of education and raising awareness. People could talk about the novel, but they also want to talk about the issues they haven't heard about before.
As a survivor of Khatna myself, I felt like I could speak to the experience emotionally.
"I am also a psychotherapist. One of the ways that that has been really helpful to me is that I was really able to touch deeply into some of the emotional things that were arising for me as I was writing the book and as I've been promoting the book.
"Without that, it might have been really hard."
Love for a community
"It was important for me to write about this community with love, because I do love this community. There are so many good things about this community — Khatna is just one of the negative things that happens. It was important that I wrote characters who are nuanced.
"Even the characters who believe in Khatna are still characters we can love and understand. That's how it needs to be, probably in activism as well. The only way that you can really shift a social norm such as Khatna is to reach people's hearts and minds.
Even the characters who believe in Khatna are still characters we can love and understand. That's how it needs to be, probably in activism as well.
"What I've come to realize, in writing the novel and doing the activism, is that this isn't about tradition versus modernity. Khatna and other forms of female genital cutting are part of the culture of global patriarchy.
"I don't think of it as tradition versus modernity. I think about it as a global problem.
"I hope that people understand the issues in the novel in the way that I intended — in a nuanced, complex sort of way. This is a universal story. I also hope that people in my own community take the messages in and I hope that it ends up being a contribution to the end of movement."
Farzana Doctor's comments have been edited for length and clarity.