Event Highlights: European Voices: A Reading & Conversation with Lola Lafon
On Thursday October 27th, The Pardee School of Global Studies’ Center for the Study of Europe partnered with the Association Francophone de Boston University to bring French author Lola Lafon to Boston University. The conversation with the author was moderated by AFBU Faculty Advisor Liliane Duséwoir, Co-Director of Undergraduate Studies and Senior Lecturer in French and Spanish in BU’s Department of Romance Studies.
Culturally, Lafon’s background is a mélange of French, Russian, and Polish. She was also raised in the diverse cities of Bucharest, Sofia, and Paris. In addition to her multiculturalism, Lafon is also an author with a multidisciplinary skill set. A dancer and musician turned author, Lafon came onto the scene with a natural talent for writing. “I wrote because I needed to write,” says Lafon. “I wrote because I liked to write, because it was my way of talking to people.”
“I think writing is very physical,” explains Lafon. “So, for me with dancing you are in front of yourself, so what you see in the mirror is exactly how you are, it’s not better it’s not worse. It’s the same way with writing. It’s humiliating in a very good way; it keeps you in reality.”
Her most recent novel, The Little Communist Who Never Smiled, is the fourth she has published. Combining themes of politics, capitalism, and feminism, this fictionalized account of Romanian gymnast Nadia Comaneci ties together Lafon’s writing prowess with her several social and political collectives, especially feminism. “In France we have this thing called la littérature feminine, or woman’s writing,” details Lafon. “I’m not sure I like this because that would mean that, if you had to add ‘woman’, writing is ‘man’.”
“I wasn’t sure that I was going to do this novel, and then I saw this French newspaper who wrote about [Comaneci] when she was eighteen… [the author] said ‘the little girl became a woman. Verdict? The magic is off.’” The use of the word verdict here strongly impacted Lafon, as she re-imagines Comaneci’s childhood under scrupulous investigation. “When I read this, I knew I had my novel, because for me the subject is this trial, made on women’s bodies.”
In The Little Communist Who Never Smiled, a critique on perfectionism, Lafon skillfully blends together fact and fiction. While the names, dates, and events of The Little Communist may be true, Lafon explains that her writing mixes the historical with the creative. “I don’t write my life,” says Lafon. “I believe in imagination.”
-Toria Rainey ‘18
Watch this event on YouTube!