WANTED IN JAMAICA: EMPATHY

By Diana McCaulay

One of the most frequent questions I get asked about my novel Dog-Heart is this: How did you, an uptown woman, put yourself in the mind of a 12-year-old inner city boy? (I often think the sub-text is – how dare you? And please add the word “white” before woman and the word “black” before boy, although they are never actually uttered…)

I always say in response that I went through a period of very focused observation of children on the streets of Kingston, and then I thought about what I had seen, tried to imagine what the lives of the children were like, tried to feel what they might feel. So no, I tell my questioners, I didn’t research Dog- Heart, I empathized it.

Since May of last year, following what is now being euphemistically called the “Tivoli Incursion” where between 70 and 120 Jamaicans died in circumstances that have never been fully explained, I have been struck by the lack of empathy in the way in which we regard our fellow Jamaicans. This is not a new

revelation; of course, we Jamaicans have always been fierce individualists. But as I continue to think about possible solutions to the apparently intractable problems of our society, I wonder if the answer is to be found in that simple word – empathy. What if we could put down the baggage we all carry – racism, classism, a host of categories by which we identify “us” and “them,” our perfectly justified hurt, rage and fear – and just ask ourselves: how would I feel if that were me?

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