SPOTLIGHT: Tracy Kidder '67

Tracy Kidder ’67– Pulitzer Prize winner, literary journalist, and Harvard graduate–has been writing award-winning non-fiction for the past 35 years. While many of his books center on life in his native Massachusetts, his most recent projects have led him to Haiti and now to Burundi, where he traveled to research his latest work, “Strength in What Remains.” Published just over a month ago, it chronicles the life of Deogratias Niyizonkiza, a 24-year-old medical student from Burundi. Niyozonkoza fled his country in 1994 to escape a ravaging ethnic civil war and ended up in New York. He found his footing there by learning English and enrolling at Columbia, eventually returning to Burundi to form a public health organization, Village Health Works. Kidder took a break from his book tour to talk about his new book and his career as a writer.





The Harvard Crimson: How did you meet Deogratias, and what compelled you to write about him?

Tracy Kidder: I actually met him at Harvard, at Eliot House, about 3 years ago. I’d come to see Paul Farmer [the subject of his earlier book, “Mountains Beyond Mountains”] who had an apartment there. Deo told the outlines of his story to my wife, and as we were driving away, my wife told me a fragment of the story that he told her, and it sat in the back of my mind for several years.

I was drawn to him, partly. He’s really charming, and there’s an ineffable quality to him—a straight warmth and enthusiasm. And there was a sense of someone who had been wounded. This is in part a story about courage and determination. The whole thing moves me and horrifies me. Unlike other things I’ve written in the past, this is much more event-driven.



THC: What kind of challenges did you have in depicting his story accurately and compellingly?

TK: A good part of this story is that the only source I have for it is Deo’s memory, and memory is of course a very plastic thing. I’m absolutely sure that the story is, in its entrails, basically true. I mean, I don’t remember things very well from the day before yesterday, and these are Deo’s 12-year-old memories. This was one of the reasons I wrote the book as I did, and turned to the first person after the reader has heard the bulk of the story. The more remarkable story is what happened in New York, and that I did verify.

The experience of being with Deo, watching him in the throes of memory, especially in Burundi, was spooky. It was not so much difficult for me but for him. I was taking him back to the places where it seemed as if his memories were lying in wait for him, alive as some kind of long-lived virus.



THC: “Strength in What Remains,” like “Mountains Beyond Mountains,” deals with the issue of healthcare in a developing country. What brought you back to healthcare?

TK: I don’t really think in terms of themes; I usually meet someone who interests me. I think of myself as a storyteller, not as a writer of big ideas. You are drawn into Deo’s world. And that world is the world of international health affairs. I think there’s some ridiculous ideas out there that journalists shouldn’t be moved by what they see; there’s a certain built-in detachment to the job itself, but I was moved by what I saw in Haiti, and similarly moved by what Deo has done to create Village Health Works.



THC: Tell us a little about Village Health Works.

TK: It is a sister organization to Partners in Health [which Paul Farmer founded]. Deo, for the longest time, was their fundraiser, and he did an amazing job; he gathered friends and family from America and Burundi to rally for a public health effort that is by no means complete. They saw 28,000 different patients in their first year of operations, most of whom they treated for free. It has enormous support from the people in the area, has cleaned up water supplies, and tries to work on all the biggest health problems there. Now, it’s really turned its attention to women’s health, which along with clean water is probably the most important thing in developing countries. And who knows, Obama, in Ghana, was talking about African-American cooperation and mutual responsibility. Foreign aid is usually done in such a way that most of the money never gets to the people who need it, but here’s an example of what needs to be done. I think it’s an instrument of peace.



THC: You graduated from Harvard in 1967, with a B.A. in English. What did you imagine yourself doing at the time? What most surprises you when you look back on your trajectory?

TK: I wanted to be a writer—either Ernest Hemingway or F. Scott Fitzgerald, but I made a pretty stupid mistake and went into the army and into Vietnam. Fortunately it didn’t turn out too badly for me. The way it turned out, it surprises me that it’s worked and that I’ve been able to write for a living. And I feel that although my experience at Harvard was mixed, I’m grateful to two professors: Robert Fitzgerald and David Riggs. What I learned from them in the most general sense is to love literature.



THC: Where do you think you’ll go from here?

TK: Often the hardest thing for me is figuring out what to do next. I think I’m coming back to America. There’s so much insanity out there. It’s interesting to see what will happen next.



Tracy Kidder will be presenting his new book at the Brattle Theatre on Tuesday evening.

—Sophie O. Duvernoy