ALU Summer Book Club: An Interview with Valérie Bah, author of The Rage Letters

In the Montreal of The Rage Letters, a rotating cast of characters find lovers, contend with family, grind through the work day (and sometimes, night), and suffer micro (and sometimes, macro) aggressions at the hands of white Montrealers. The connections between these glimpses of queer, trans, and Black lives become more apparent as you read, turning fragmented stories and vignettes into a vibrant sense of community. Lose yourself in this engrossing read by filmmaker and writer Valérie Bah, sumptuously translated by Kama La Mackerel.

All Lit Up: Thanks so much for answering these questions, Valérie!

Some sections in this book are written in a visceral second person, there are poetic vignettes, the points-of-view switch and intersect. It’s a richly layered book and a joy to read. Did you set out to write The Rage Letters as a cohesive, linked collection, or did it come to you a story at a time?

Valérie Bah: Thanks for the opportunity to reflect on these questions!

Most of the book was written in discrete chunks. I went through periods of thinking, « yes, this is the character/circumstance/whatever that this book is about », yearning for a sense of cohesion. What’s funny is that this sense of cohesion contradicted my lifestyle at the time. I was deep in the gig economy while technically working a full-time job, travelling a lot, doing every workshop imaginable, living at night, sleeping during the day.

But then, I finally let it all hang together. That coincided with meeting Esi Callender, a playwright and dramaturg who introduced me to their reading circle, to whom I read some of the stories for the first time and they were all very affirming.

And that led to a re-reading and editing process where I would search for patterns in the heterogeneity. From that point on, I had fun creating connective sections and stories from different angles and forms. I think it reflects on a personal process of allowing various parts of myself to live freely without feeling the need to justify or explain them.

All Lit Up: At one point, a character refers to an art curator’s taste for work from marginalized communities that “She had an appetite for trauma.” Could you tell us about writing about this particular difficulty for queer artists of colour who contend with this very thing, performing their traumas for a white gaze?

Valérie Bah: This actually makes me feel physically ill. I could rant about the cannibalism embedded in racial capitalism, but let’s just say that I’m learning to say no to seemingly well-meaning invitations from institutions that don’t actually have a stake in anyone’s liberation. Just no. And fuck off.

All Lit Up: We don’t want to spoil the scene, but there’s a moment in the book that speaks well to the contradictions of the non-profit/charity sector. Namely, that white people are often the figureheads in this sector, and people of colour are either made into faceless, pitiable “beneficiaries”, or, if they work in the sector, are subject to harassment and burnout. It’s so crystal-clear and evocative – almost like an exposé. How did you plan for writing about characters who are orbiting this flawed system of support in some way or another?

Valérie Bah: There’s a principle in comedy that proposes that contradictions are inherently funny. And having worked alongside friends in the belly of the non-profit industrial complex, there are a lot of experiences we could relay that would push one to tears or laughter. Depends on tone.

But then, it’s not at all funny and many of the systems built up around us would make no sense if explained to an alien. All of this was built on stolen land? You’re only allowed to steal if you already have a lot of wealth? You can bomb a place to create « safety »? Like, what?!

All Lit Up: There are themes of faith scattered throughout the book: characters pray and attend mass, there are Psalms spread out through some of the sections. How do your characters engage with faith and why was this important to include in the book?

Valérie Bah: NK Jemisin once said something (and I’m very loosely paraphrasing) about how the act of worldbuilding also involves creating a cosmology, whether you intend to or not.

And that stuck with me. Having grown up around evangelical Christianity, I would be remiss not to spare the characters from a judgemental sky daddy. At one point, I’d even drafted the beginnings of a story called « Jesus Christ, White Boyfriend » about a character whose friends stage an intervention from a toxic dude who also happens to be the Messiah, but it was a little on the nose.

That being said, the book contains references to vaudou lwa (deities), eschatology and symbols, and I like to think that these are a bit more invisible in a way that makes them the dominant cosmology.

All Lit Up: We’re going to quote from a scene we loved: “Across the plateau. The mouth of the metro spewed out the rush-hour mob. Spectators surrounded a street artist who jammed on her electric violin. They scattered soon as she whipped out her hat. A public bench reeked of smoke and bubble gum. Preteens with baby faces sharpened by Babylon snickered to themselves, spit on pavement, scowled back at strangers.” Montreal is so alive in this book – it almost feels as if it were written “on location.” What does it mean to you to communicate a sense of place – especially for a reader who may never have visited Montreal before?

Valérie Bah: I really like looking! At people. At places. I used to do street photography, which is to say I would creep around at night with a camera. One of things it taught me is that you are very much a part of the strangeness you’re witnessing. So it’s a pleasure to observe and share weird, mundane and/or noteworthy things.

Besides that, it feels important to provide a point of view grounded in a political analysis. What does a city square say about how people are organized? Who’s in power? Who is free?

All Lit Up: What kinds of inspiration led to the writing of The Rage Letters? Was there particular music you listened to, art you examined, or other writers who inspired you?

Valérie Bah: I actually made a lil Spotify moodboard playlist with the illustrator who conceptualized the French cover.

There were many other inputs. Some that come to mind are Ezili’s Mirrors by Natasha Tinsley Omisike, a really poetic theory book that explores Blackness and gender, and there’s Bitch Planet, a comic book series about femmes who get sent to a carceral planet and then just fight their captors and reminisce about their origin stories and fight some more. Satisfying stuff.

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Valérie Bah is a Tiohtià:ke-based filmmaker and writer whose work explores intergenerational trauma & healing, as well as mundane/radical acts of survival. Couched in magical realism, Val’s narratives are driven by Black feminist thought and lived experience.

Photo of Bah by Carmen Rachitaneau.

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Thanks to Valérie for answering our questions! Get The Rage Letters here on All Lit Up for 15% off with the code INTHECLUB2024, all summer long.

And keep on top of all summer book club happenings here.