Black Berry, Sweet Juice by Lawrence Hill

In the hilarious Any Known Blood a bi-racial man struggles to affirm his black identity.

“Identity should not reside in the biology of the blood”īeing bi-racial also focused Hill’s interest in blood themes. In Niger in 1979 he required a blood transfusion during a case of gastroenteritis. In Mali in 1989 he contracted malaria, a disease spread by mosquitoes from the blood of one person to another. “I have all sorts of personal reasons to be obsessed with blood.”īesides his blood’s limited ability to transfer oxygen, Hill, like his grandfather, father and brother, suffers from diabetes-the inability to regulate the amount of sugar in the blood. Still, all these years later, Hill admits that blood has become a kind of obsession with him, an obsession he now shares with the rest of us through his 2013 Massey Lecture, entitled Blood: The Stuff of Life. I was running like a middle aged man,” says Hill, “and I was15 years old.” His blood had let him down.įortuitously for the young runner, Hill’s track coach was a journalist and he encouraged Hill to pursue writing stories instead. The problem turned out to be in his blood: “A test determined that I couldn’t process the oxygen in my blood and deliver it to my muscles efficiently. I had to accept what was obvious to everyone else: I was never going to be an Olympic runner.” “Everybody else on the team was incredibly talented and then there was me always finishing dead last by far. Hill trained ceaselessly for three or four years but eventually realized his dream would never come to pass. Neighbours who rose early grew accustomed to the sight of Hill running past their house at 5 a.m. In summer he practiced outdoors at Varsity Stadium. In winter he trained at the Pigsty, an indoor track in a building on the grounds of the Canadian National Exhibition. “I was going to become a great athlete,” says Hill, “That was going to be my way of being honourable in the world and earning my father’s respect.”Īt age 12 Hill joined the elite Victoria Park Track Club in his Toronto neighbourhood of Don Mills. Rather, he dreamed of a career as a champion long distance runner. Lawrence Hill did not grow up wanting to be a writer.

Black Berry, Sweet Juice by Lawrence Hill