Quote from Chris Cleave

This Saturday, I am going to a book club meeting.  I chose the book for this month: Little Bee.  I am obsessed with this book.  During the few weeks I read the book, my mind was constantly thinking about the plot.  After finishing the book, I continued to think about the novel.  And now that I am reviewing the book, and preparing for book club, I'm ready to reread the book, and see what I missed the first time.

This afternoon, I was reading the Q&A section at the end of the novel.  Not sure who asked the questions, but there was one answer that really stood out to me, and I would like to share it with everyone.  Enjoy, and I hope everyone is encouraged to read Little Bee sometime in the near future. 

In a video on your website you mention that the book is, in some way, about "the horror of being alive in a world where atrocities happen."  Are there particular human rights issues you'd like to take this opportunity to call attention to?  In the face of such monumental tragedy as is exposed in Little Bee, how can one person make a difference?

"I guess I hardly need to call anyone's attention to the reality that there is more horror than happiness in the world.  A billion people are hungry, hundreds of conflicts and wars are ongoing, tens of millions suffer from eradicable diseases, there is always at least one genocide under way somewhere on the planet, more people still live under dictatorship or oppressive regimes than live in free societies, and arms dealers still make more money than farmers.  Of course individuals can make a difference, but the fact is that evil has had the whip hand in this world ever since Cain.  That doesn't mean we should stop trying to be good, but we shouldn't kid ourselves, either.  Evil is not going to be vanquished.  Our job is to resist it, and to plant the seeds of further resistance so that goodness never entirely vanishes from the universe.  There are degrees of resistance.  It starts when you give a dollar to a homeless person and it escalates to the point where people give their lives, as Gandhi did, or Martin Luther King, Jr.  One person can make a difference by traveling as far along that continuum as they feel able. "