Margaret Atwood: “Many people who voted for Trump were afraid of Kamala Harris as a black woman”

Atwood is referring, of course, to Donald Trump’s recent victory in the US elections, a historic blow for the Democrats after which the author of ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’, one of the most censored books in republican fiefdoms, sees, for the moment, more questions than answers. «Is the United States, the most powerful country in the world, going to collapse? “Are we seeing an empire in decline?” asks the Canadian before agreeing that if Trump is going to achieve anything, it is “creating a lot of anxiety.” “Especially for people who live near Ukraine,” he emphasizes.

More questions a few hours after Kamala Harris’ electoral failure. «Are we going to have a ‘Hitler’ dictatorship? I doubt it. But it depends on whether we can believe anything Trump says, because he lies so much,” he weighs. And it continues. «Will he survive his mandate? How will your health be? Maybe things are more serious than they seem. Maybe they incapacitate him,” he ventures.

In any case, if the author of ‘Alis Grace’ is that its neighbors have voted more against than for. Their fear of Harris has been more powerful, he believes, than their devotion to Trump. «Many people, even women, were afraid of having a woman president, especially a black woman. In fact, many people who voted for Trump were afraid of Kamala Harris as a black woman. Surely they were worried that they could do to them the same thing that they have been doing in power. That is to say: they were afraid of losing their status,” reflects Atwood.

Now, he adds, all we have to do is wait and wonder “what will happen.” “The Republicans, for example, have separated the issue of abortion from the elections. As a woman, you could vote in a referendum to protect abortion and then vote for Trump,” she illustrates.

Orwell and ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’

Politics aside, yes, such a thing is possible when talking about an author who glimpsed the future and had to make a fireproof edition of ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ to criticize the rampage of censorship, Atwood returns to in ‘Lost in the Woods’ ‘ some of his recurring obsessions such as marriage, death, family relationships and everyday strangeness. Also old passions like the Decameron or George Orwell, moral and literary beacon that, she remembers, accompanied her until her most celebrated novel. “I read it when I was quite young, when I had no idea that ‘Animal Farm’ was a political allegory. It made a big impression on me. Then I read ‘1984’ when I was thirteen, when it was published, and then I understood that it was a book about politics, about dictatorships. That’s where my interest in totalitarian forms of government came from,” he recalls.

At that time, the Canadian recalls, bookstores had not yet become an open bar for dystopias, nor was reality determined to surrender itself to unfair competition with an Olympic spirit. Still, Atwood concedes, dystopian narratives remain more relevant and necessary than ever. The reason? Easy. Things can always get worse. «The 19th was the century of utopias, because they thought that everything could be better. That belief came from all the medical progress, they dreamed of flying, they had created the sewage system… Why wouldn’t everything be better? They did not feel the discouragement of the future,” he says.

The 21st, on the other hand, is on its way to becoming one of the nightmarish scenarios and literature of the end of the world. “Now there is a flood of dystopias, and many have to do with climate change, with the threats that women have to face,” she points out.

Convinced that the difference between a novel and a story has to do with wavelengths and variations of the same patterns, Atwood acknowledges having left ‘Lost in the Woods’ just as she entered it. A little wiser, perhaps, but without any major revelations in the bag. «One of the things you learn when writing is to fail. You have to throw a lot of things in the trash. If you are looking for a more metaphysical answer, there is none. I don’t know if the writer and the human being can be separated. They are like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. They share two functions in the same person,” he reflects.