On Nov. 17, Canadian media and literary elites gathered at the Park Hyatt in downtown Toronto for the Giller Prize gala.
It was the first time in two decades that the literary award was not officially sponsored by Scotiabank, which has come under immense pressure over its investments in Israel’s largest weapons manufacturer.
But hundreds of Canadian authors and book workers — including former Giller Prize winners and finalists — continue to boycott the Giller Prize, demanding that it also sever all ties with Indigo Books and the Azrieli Foundation, both of which are accused of being complicit in the displacement and subjugation Palestinians.
Among the hundreds of writers and book workers boycotting the Giller Prize is Palestinian-Canadian author Saeed Teebi, whose most recent book, You Will Not Kill Our Imagination: A Memoir of Palestine and Writing in Dark Times, came out in September.
Teebi delivered a speech at a Boycott Giller event in Vancouver on Monday, the text of which is republished here, with minor edits.
In my memoir, I considered, in a limited way, the role of the artist in times like ours, times where we all witness (and are often complicit in) obvious evil in the world, and yet feel powerless to stop it.
“Often, the main service that the artist provides is temerity. A certain kind of artist is compelled to say the unsayable because they cannot bear not expressing the truth as they know it. They are the witness that has not been prevailed upon — by concerns for their safety, or their reputation — not to enter the witness stand of the public.
And the temerity of the artist inaugurates and encourages temerity in the masses. This kind of artist is different from the one that witnesses only so that they can throw their hands up, besieged by tragedy but resigned to being unable to cause any real change.
This is especially important in vacuums of political capacity, like in the West where pro-Palestinian political action is forbidden or rejected, or in Israel with its crackdown on Palestinian identity. Artists are uniquely positioned to take on the enormity of entrenched power relationships and via their work foment further action. This can be a key step in eroding the legitimacy of regimes.”
To me, this feels like the truest kind of artist — the one who actively engages with, and more than that, embodies humanist principles and themes — not just in their work, but in their life as well. I called that kind of artist an “unresigned artist,” an artist not resigned to be a mere witness, but instead sees themselves as critical to solving seemingly intractable problems.
That passage from my book is one that I wrote over a year ago now, but if you don’t mind I’d like to connect it to today’s event.
We have heard some beautiful readings today. But the people behind the readings are even more beautiful in my view. There is no greater compliment I can pay any of the readers today than to tell them that you are the unresigned artists I was thinking of when I wrote that passage. Dina Del Bucchia, Carmella Gray-Cosgrove, Jen Sookfong Lee, Jacquelyn Zong-Li, Ziyad Saadi, Jasmine Sealy — you are artists who will not allow their ambition or their vanity to supersede their principles.
I want to appreciate what that commitment really means, because many of you here have been doing this going back to times when it was far more difficult, even dangerous, to do so.
I remember Jasmine Sealy back in October 2023. At the time she had only recently published her debut book. And yet there she was making a statement on the genocide at a festival in this very city of Vancouver, in the first month of the genocide, subjecting herself to abuse from audience members and others before and after the event.
I remember Jen Sookfong Lee, an established novelist and editor, speaking repeatedly on podcasts and radio shows about the genocide and her writing community, breathing into mainstream spaces ideas that people weren’t sure they were allowed to hold.
She’s not here today but I also remember the wonderful Noor Naga, standing alone on the streets of Toronto in front of a protest placard, shivering in her parka as she denounced the Giller Prize at the top of her lungs.
I remember Ziyad Saadi getting nominated for a prestigious award, and calling me on that very day. He didn’t know if the award was clean, or if he should withdraw immediately. Imagine that being your first thought after getting the best news of your writing career. Imagine the commitment to decency and justice that takes.
That’s what the unresigned artist looks like. You do not see a world that you critique, implicitly, obliquely, in your work, from some kind of bubble, at a safe remove. You see a world that you are actively a part of, every day — and one that you can still change. Your principles and your imagination are inspiring.
It is not lost on me that you being an unresigned artist also puts you on the margins of this community we call Can Lit.
We all know there is a much slicker production going on right now, where a lot of our writing peers are spending their time. It may seem strange to think of them right now, but I think it’s important to, because they are the people enabling that production.
You know, many of the people at the Giller Gala tonight are friends, or something resembling it. Some we have been on book panels with. We hugged them, we sat next to them, we shared laughter and wisdom with them. Some of them told us how much they love our books. Some have posted about our books repeatedly on social media, even.
I always want to be kind, so I will say it this way: I hope they one day realize that validating institutions that enable genocide is enabling genocide. Letting your name be used in conjunction with the logos of such institutions is enabling genocide. Attending the glitzy ceremonies of such institutions is … you know.
Some worry that confrontational words like these will create a fractured writing community. They say that at a time when literature already feels so threatened, we as writers should not play a hand in destroying it. In general, I’m sympathetic to this concept, honestly. But ultimately, literature does not come before humans.
All the books written this year are not worth more than a single life taken unjustly. And if the community is fractured by our commitment to humanity and liberation, then the community never deserved to go unfractured in the first place.
But let’s be clear: the Giller Prize is not what keeps the writing community together. It never has, never will. The Giller Prize is not some linchpin. It’s not even our patron. It is just an award. It is an award that needs us to validate it, not the other way around. We don’t need to be court jesters for that institution, pledging fealty to the king before we dance in his court.
The thing an institution like that wants most of all is our silence. For us, we know that’s far, far too high a price to pay.
It’s become common to hear that Palestine is the moral compass of our times. But I’ve never thought it needs to be our compass. Our compass is actually very simple. No dead human beings is our compass. Liberation, justice, humanity — those are our compass.
We accept no exceptions to our compass. We refuse, forever and ever, to be resigned to losing our compass.
I am so very proud to stand, with all of you here, in that refusal.
