NAOMI ISHIGURO AND JULIANNE PACHICO

Naomi Ishiguro

Julianne Pachico

Naomi Ishiguro and Julianne Pachico are two writers whose work explores the theme of colliding worlds and the issue of ‘belonging’ in a divided world. The talented writers tackle challenging political discourses of disenfranchisement through two quite different, but equally moving, tales of friendship, fates, and missed opportunities. In this engaging discussion for The Cambridge Literary Festival, British literary journalist and chair, Alex Clark, caught up with Naomi Ishiguro (daughter of Nobel-Prize winning author, Kazuo Ishiguro) and Julianne Pachico to explore their latest works of fiction. 

For Alex Clark, the literary resemblance between Ishiguro and Pachico’s work is its examination of “people who are inserted into different types of experience, about the collision between classes of people, and kinds of people”. Naomi Ishiguro’s Common Ground is a coming-of-age story set in a Romani community in a small Surrey town, during the early noughties. It tells the story of the friendship between shy and retiring Stan, and charismatic and curious Charlie, who belongs to the local Traveller Community. Spanning over a decade of the two main character’s relationship, Common Ground is very much a novel about fated opportunities and ingrained prejudice. Julianne Pachico’s The Anthill is a set in Post-Peace Colombia. It follows childhood friends Lina and Matty, who reconnect following a twenty-year absence when Lina returns to her childhood home of Medellín. However, Lina’s reconciliation with both a past lost and a country made unrecognizable by tourism and the 2016 Peace Agreement, means her homecoming is anything but welcoming.

Hot on the heels of the 2020 short story collection, Escape Routes, Naomi Ishiguro describes her debut novel as being one that “examines the strains and stresses that get placed on a friendship when you’re at different points, being offered different sets of opportunities and you’re moving in different ways to each other.” What’s interesting about Common Ground is its evocation of the question of destiny and the way circumstances of birth and upbringing shape people’s lives.

Ishiguro’s integration of political belonging was inspired by the toxic narratives of the 2016 Leave Campaign. The issue of public space and who can exist in those spaces are central to the aptly titled, Common Ground. But discussion of the Traveller community did not come without its difficulties. There is no denying that concerns over cultural appropriation have become a global discourse of late. And it was an issue Ishiguro was all too aware of. “Do I have the right to tell that story when it is a type of discrimination I don’t experience”, the author found herself asking. To avoid ventriloquizing the Romani experience and voice, Ishiguro explained how writing in a third-person narrative and conducting extensive research became essential to the story.

Julianne Pachico in The Anthill, however, does write from experience. Born in Cambridge, Pachico moved to Colombia in early childhood before heading to the US to study. Pachico’s debut 2017 novel, The Lucky Ones is also set in Colombia and explores the history of its peak years of violence, between the years of 1993 and 2013. Speaking of her fictional and literal ties to the country, Pachico said “both books are set in Colombia because that was a very formative part of my life and writers tend to explore formative themes in their fiction.”

The Anthill is a story that brings together the disenfranchised and the enfranchised in society. Pachico explained how she was interested in writing about Colombia’s “strident political divisions and just the idea of how you get a country to get along if there are people who are just so at odds with each other”. Reconciliation and forgiveness are the overriding messages of The Anthill. Can you ever forgive something that is unforgivable? How do you harmonize vigorously opposing political stances?

Thought-provoking and illuminating, this dual-panelled discussion was well worth the watch. And these two budding writers are certainly ones to keep an eye on. Common Ground and The Anthill have already found a space on my library shelf. Have you picked up your copies yet?

Tia Byer