My Favourite Crime. Deni Ellis Bechard

Author’s Preface

      This book brings together many parts of a journey that began when I was growing up poor in rural British Columbia and Virginia, struggling to make sense of my ex-con father and his past as an impoverished, largely uneducated Québécois. As I began writing about him, I became increasingly aware of both his and my place within the larger history of our rapidly changing society. But to document change, one must look at the tools of change, and as I did so, I understood the ways that the act of writing could transform cultures and that education and political knowledge could shape my life. What I couldn’t have imagined was how much my study of the historic forces that had influenced my father would help me engage with social and political change elsewhere on earth. The journey often felt faster than I could keep track of – from my earliest memories of living in a run-down trailer without running water or electricity, to earning several university degrees, to doing journalism in dozens of countries on five continents, writing about women’s rights, the environment, and the impact of war on people’s lives.

The essays and journalism in this collection offer many glimpses of that journey. They show my growing engagement with writing, my struggle to understand the impulse toward adventure and rule breaking, and how I learned to channel that desire to transgress into creativity. In these pages, art is often the instrument of inquiry and its subject. Just as I used art to extricate myself from the painful circumstances of my youth, I increasingly tried to align its emancipatory powers with the creative efforts and achievements of others, expanding the scope of my work while attempting to shed fresh light on theirs. Compiling this book, I was reminded of the circular nature of growth and the ways that learning, sharing, building solidarity, and creating art are inextricable. Similarly, just as studying my family history made me aware of larger, global histories – whether canonical or obscured by oppression – doing journalism overseas taught me how to understand the impact of North American culture elsewhere, which led me to turn a far more critical eye on the countries where I grew up: Canada and the United States.

      Despite these central concerns, the writings here cover a wide range of subjects in a variety of ways. The collection begins with essays about my father and criminality before shifting to long-form journalism and then shorter dispatches from Afghanistan and other countries, among them Cuba, Iraq, and the Congo. It concludes with a series of essays that reflect on the role of writing in my life and the importance of political engagement, social accountability, and a sense of outrage at the abuses of the governments that preside over the places I have called home.