Trump's shadow looms: author colm tóibín on immigration and a story born of fear
Sixteen years in the making, Colm Tóibín’s latest collection of stories, The Catalan Girls, carries a weight far beyond its pages. It’s a chilling reflection of a world where the unthinkable becomes commonplace, where the specter of authoritarianism forces ordinary people to confront extraordinary choices—and where a writer’s intuition can sometimes foreshadow reality.
The seed of an idea: a hike, a plumber, and a looming threat
Tóibín, a Brooklyn-based author renowned for his meticulous prose and keen observations, details the genesis of “Five Bridges,” a story central to his new collection. It began with a simple image: a hike near Muir Woods with friends, overlooking the Pacific. From this idyllic setting, the seed of an idea sprouted—an Irish plumber, working in the Bay Area, grappling with the agonizing decision to return to his homeland, leaving behind his daughter, a connection he cherished deeply. But the story truly gained urgency when Donald Trump secured a second term, casting a long shadow of potential persecution over undocumented immigrants.
“The election of Donald Trump for the second term and the prospect of him taking it out on illegal immigrants would be the actual spur to make my character really decide that he had to go home,” Tóibín explains. He meticulously structured the narrative around the precise date of Trump's inauguration, January 20, 2025, envisioning a final, poignant day out with his daughter on January 18th. The act of writing, he recounts, became a race against time, a desperate attempt to complete the story before the imagined consequences of Trump's policies fully materialized.
Beyond the headline: finding truth in fleeting encounters
Tóibín’s process isn't one of grand pronouncements but of subtle excavation. He draws inspiration from seemingly insignificant moments – a chance encounter with three Catalan sisters in Barcelona, a historian’s recollection of a summer party during the Spanish Civil War. These fragments, he argues, possess a “virus of suggestion,” sparking the imagination and revealing deeper truths about human behavior and the complexities of history.
As Henry James observed, life is “all inclusion and confusion,” while art is “all discrimination and selection.” Tóibín’s work embodies this philosophy, transforming fleeting glimpses into fully realized narratives. He doesn’t seek out the dramatic confrontation, understanding that the unspoken tension, the missed opportunity, can be far more potent. Consider “A Sum of Money,” where a fraught encounter between a boy and his parents after theft goes unwritten, leaving the reader to grapple with the weight of unspoken accusations and the potential for silent transformation.
From fiction to reality: a story echoed in the news
The unsettling resonance of Tóibín’s fiction is amplified by a stark coincidence. A year after “Five Bridges” was published, the story’s premise mirrored a real-life case. Seamus Culleton, an Irish immigrant arrested by ICE while buying supplies, endured harrowing conditions in detention facilities—a fate Tóibín’s character managed to avoid. This convergence of art and reality underscores the precariousness of immigrant lives and the urgent need for empathy and understanding.
“In the stories of the future, such characters will not be so lucky,” Tóibín warns, a sobering thought that lingers long after the final page is turned. The spaces he writes about—a room in New York, a Barcelona bar, a dormitory in Wexford—become vessels for memory and imagination, haunted by what is lost and what might yet be.
Ultimately, Tóibín’s work is a testament to the power of observation, the importance of nuance, and the enduring capacity of storytelling to illuminate the darkest corners of the human experience. The spaces where he once lived—now existing only in memory—serve as a poignant reminder that the past is never truly past, and its echoes continue to shape our present and future.