On January 18, 2017, three days before Homegrown Hitler was inaugurated, Margaret Atwood's essay on "What Art Under Trump" was published in the Nation magazine. It now appears in her latest collection, Burning Questions: Essays and Occasional Pieces 2004 to 2021.
As we consider life once again under Homegrown Hitler but this time (as they say) on steroids-- a figure I refer to simply as Chaos, I offer the concluding words of that essay. Directed specifically to artists and writers, it perhaps has broader application, and broader wisdom.
“As once-solid certainties crumble, it may be enough to cultivate your own artistic garden—to do what you can as well as you can for as long as you can do it; to create alternate worlds that offer both temporary escapes and moments of insight; to open windows in the given world that allow us to see outside it.
With the Trump era upon us, it’s the artists and writers who can remind us, in times of crisis or panic, that each one of us is more than just a vote, a statistic. Lives may be deformed by politics—and many certainly have been—but we are not, finally, the sum of our politicians. Throughout history, it has been the hope for artistic work that expresses, for this time and place, as powerfully and eloquently as possible, what it is to be human.”
Margaret Atwood
