PHOTO: Danny Campbell pictured at his desk in France, reflecting his journey from London to Thailand, and beyond.
Writing Across Continents And Cultures
Danny Campbell draws on his travels, cultural immersion, and personal struggles to write deeply moving stories that highlight social injustice, endangered communities, and our profound interconnectedness with the natural world.
D anny Campbell’s writing journey began in Thailand, inspired by social critic Sulak Sivaraksa, and has continued in France as he cares for his disabled daughter. In this interview, Campbell discusses his passion for storytelling, emphasizing the importance of highlighting marginalized voices, such as the Sumatran Acehnese and Karen Hill Tribes. He reflects on his multicultural upbringing in London and explores how empathy shapes his narratives. Through his work, Campbell aims to balance raising awareness about social and environmental issues with creating engaging narratives, offering practical advice for other writers tackling similar themes.
What inspired you to start writing about the lives of individuals on the margins of society, such as Krung and Hasan Bangkaru?
I grew up in London in the 70s and 80s in a mixed family with an Irish mother. Many of my childhood friends were Irish, Black or Asian, so I was sensitive to the racially charged environment of the era. When I travelled to Indonesia and Thailand in the 90s, the obvious persecution and deprivation of the Sumatran Acehnese and Karen Hill Tribes struck a raw nerve. I suppose I felt a sense of solidarity with them, helped along by the generosity and kindness they showed me personally.
How did your experience of writing for Sulak Sivaraksa influence your approach to storytelling?
Sulak, apart from his activism, is a wonderful storyteller and serious scholar of Thai history. He likes nothing more than being surrounded by students or fellow travellers and regaling them with tales from the past, both distant and recent. I even nick-named him ‘the Socrates of Siam’. That kind of mentoring tends to rub off.
Can you tell us about your research process when writing about different cultures, such as the Karen Hill Tribe?
As a teenager I used to write a lot of poetry and got into the habit of always carrying a notebook and a pen, in case the muse should strike. Though one can recollect the tone and atmosphere of the things you wish to write about, the tales, names, places, and in my case transliteration, are best preserved immediately. You can tinker with them later.
How do you balance the need to raise awareness about important issues with the need to create an engaging narrative?
Good question. It isn’t always easy to find that balance. Some important issues are so intimidating a natural response is to bury your head in the sand. In narration it helps to focus on the familiar to all of us, our hopes and desires, our sadnesses and weariness. We all feel these things from time to time. Weaving greater themes into those shared emotions makes them far more accessible.
What do you hope readers take away from your stories about the struggles of characters like Suah, the last Siamese tiger?
The best that I can hope for is to foster a sense of interconnectivity. If some things matter, then all things should matter. Empathy isn’t always readily felt in a world which pits one idea, one way of being, against another. Attempting to see things through someone else’s eyes, or as in the case of Suah, imagining what it feels like to be a tiger, can lend a truer perspective.
How do you think your experiences living in different countries, such as Thailand and France, have shaped your writing style?
In ‘The Last of the Siamese Tigers’ I deliberately tried to emulate the rhythm and syntax of the Hill Tribe villagers, and to do the same to a lesser extent in ‘A Tale of Aceh’. Those are probably outliers. There is a difficult line to tread between presumptuousness and authenticity. Living abroad will invariably challenge your preconceptions. It opens a new cultural vernacular to play with. I have lived in France for nearly twenty years now. Soon after moving here, my wife Katherine and I learned that our young child was afflicted with a genetic illness. That learning journey led me to write ‘A Tale of Aquitaine’, which recounts the struggle to come to terms with the reality of living with a very sick child, and the learning of not only a new language but the vast world of medical knowledge, which was as much an alien language to me as French was.
What role do you think fiction can play in highlighting the plight of endangered species and ecosystems?
Part of the answer to this question ties in with my previous answer about balancing important facts with engaging narrative. The technical and scientific data and language used to identify and explain risks and possible solutions can often go over people’s heads. The other, without wishing to overly anthropomorphise, is to place those creatures and environments into the relatable human experience. Fiction’s role here is to popularise ideas about our world and the condition we have made it.
What advice would you give to fellow authors who are looking to write about complex social and environmental issues in their own work?
It helps to know your subject matter and to ‘keep it real’. Always use first source material, cross referenced if you are presenting it as fact. It’s better to have a pile of notes which can be easily discarded in the telling of the tale. The knowledge you have gleaned will stay with the writing, and while not necessarily automatic, an instinct will develop that can help guide you through the telling of the tale. Also, and it’s easier said than done, be brave. We live in a terrible time as far as information is concerned. We have never had more of it, yet never has it been more corrupted and manipulated. A lie is a lie, however elegantly it is dressed.
