On听Tuesday, Oct. 26,听91亚色鈥檚 Canadian Writers in Person course and lecture series presented听author Kim听Echlin reading from her book The Disappeared (Penguin, 2009), which was shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. Special correspondent Chris Cornish (BA Hons. '04, MA '09) sent the following report to YFile.
Bones work their way to the surface.听Thirty years have passed since that day in the market in Phnom Penh.听I still hear your voice.听I first met you in old Montreal at L鈥檃ir du temps, where I went to hear Buddy Guy sing 鈥淚 Can鈥檛 Quit the Blues".
from The Disappeared
by Kim Echlin
Kim Echlin began her reading by recounting the story听The Singing Bone, an old Grimm鈥檚 fairy tale about听a jealous sibling who murders his younger brother and buries his body beneath a bridge.听Some years later, a shepherd finds the younger brother鈥檚 bone and it sings the tale of his demise, revealing the truth, unmasking the killer and obtaining justice for the innocent. For Echlin, 
this story is about how writers find their voices.听It bears witness, she says, to 鈥渉ow we find bones that sing鈥 to reveal lost histories.听It also echoes her journey as she explored the stories of Cambodia鈥檚 killing fields, culminating in her Giller-nominated novel The Disappeared.
Right: Kim Echlin
Recalling an incident during a visit to Cambodia, Echlin remembers sitting alone on a bench in Phnom Penh when a Cambodian woman approached her and said, 鈥淚 lost my whole family during the Pol Pot time.鈥澨齏hen Echlin asked if there was anything she could do, the woman said 鈥淣othing.听I just wanted you to know.鈥澨齌his chance encounter provided the initial inspiration for the novel and in the words of Vann Nath, to 鈥渢ell others.鈥
The hardest part of crafting The Disappeared over seven years was finding a voice.听After reading truth commissions about the Cambodian genocide, Echlin realized that the witness accounts were powerful because they were direct and unadorned.听Because this was also true of old love poetry, she shaped her work into a simple but compelling story that feels much like an extended love letter between two people and two cultures.
Art and music were important in the development of the novel, because each acts听as a universal language and are often the first to be destroyed in oppressive regimes, as the author points out.听Through the 鈥渢ransformative power鈥 of Vann Nath鈥檚 artwork, Echlin found an entry into his 
experience as one of the few survivors of Tuol Sleng prison.听She also described how a man in California discovered a box of cassette tapes that turned out to be recordings of Cambodian music from that time 鈥撎齮raditional songs听blended with the influence of American blues.听He shared the music with Echlin and the world, each cassette like a singing bone of a murdered people.
Echlin found the strongest response to her novel was from younger generations of Cambodians, many of them now living in North America.听She discovered that though grief and loss often became the silent burden of the first generation, it carries forward through their children and grand-children.听鈥淕rief changes shape, but it does not end,鈥 she said.
Setting the novel partly in Montreal at the time of the FLQ crisis also served as a way in for Canadian readers.听Echlin wanted to show how atrocities can happen here as easily as anywhere.听It was also an appropriate starting place because 鈥淐anada tells the stories of the world,鈥 said Echlin.听听As technology makes it easier to share these stories,听she believes we have an increased responsibility to act on injustice: 鈥淟iterature teaches us not to look away.鈥
The Canadian Writers in Person series of public readings at 91亚色, which are free and open to the public, is also part of an introductory course on Canadian literature. It is sponsored in part by the Canada Council for the Arts.听On Nov. 23,听in Room 206 of the Accolade West Building, Nicole Brossard will read from her novella Fences in Breathing.听
Chris Cornish, a former teaching assistant with the course, has since graduated but continues to attend the readings.