{"id":461,"date":"2010-01-23T21:43:32","date_gmt":"2010-01-24T01:43:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/2010\/01\/23\/chris-cleave-little-bee\/"},"modified":"2010-01-24T12:34:19","modified_gmt":"2010-01-24T16:34:19","slug":"chris-cleave-little-bee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/2010\/01\/23\/chris-cleave-little-bee\/","title":{"rendered":"Chris Cleave: &#8220;I Was Brought Up to Believe Asylum Seekers Were Heroes&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><object width=\"480\" height=\"385\"><param name=\"movie\" value=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/VqM0pwhoXrQ&#038;hl=en_US&#038;fs=1&#038;\"><\/param><param name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\"><\/param><param name=\"allowscriptaccess\" value=\"always\"><\/param><embed src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/VqM0pwhoXrQ&#038;hl=en_US&#038;fs=1&#038;\" type=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\" allowscriptaccess=\"always\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" width=\"480\" height=\"385\"><\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n<p>Last March, when British novelist <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chriscleave.com\/main\/\">Chris Cleave<\/a> came to the States to promote the hardcover edition of his second novel, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.powells.com\/partner\/29017\/biblio\/1416589643\"><i>Little Bee<\/i><\/a>, I was fortunate enough to meet him at a luncheon reception for attorneys at Paul, Weiss, a Manhattan law firm that prides itself on its pro bono work for those who come to this nation seeking political asylum&#8212;an important theme in the novel, which follows a young Nigerian woman as she escapes from a British detention center where she&#8217;s been awaiting likely deportation. The novel takes a complex issue and boils it down to its human and emotional essence; it&#8217;s an overt work of political advocacy that emphasizes drama over didactics, and one that you won&#8217;t easily forget. And now it&#8217;s out in paperback, so your last excuse to have not read it by now has vanished.<\/p>\n<p>In the video clip above, Cleave told me about how the writing of the novel was intertwined with his political consciousness, each informing the other; just before that, we&#8217;d discussed <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=jnFX81fHCXA\">his discovery of Little Bee&#8217;s voice<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last March, when British novelist Chris Cleave came to the States to promote the hardcover edition of his second novel, Little Bee, I was fortunate enough to meet him at a luncheon reception for attorneys at Paul, Weiss, a Manhattan law firm that prides itself on its pro bono work for those who come to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=461"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}