J.K. Rowling talks about childhood traumas in US documentary
Author J.K. Rowling has spoken of the childhood traumas and mystical influences that inspired her to write the epic Harry Potter.
In a US television special screened on ABC, Rowling said the saga of childhood confusion, danger and adventure was driven by her own experiences growing up.
At the age of nine, Rowling’s family moved from a suburban Bristol street to the Gloucestershire countryside, near the Forest of Dean. It was a place that inspired the mystery of forests and magical creatures.
“I’m very drawn to, to a forest and it’s my favorite part of the Hogwarts grounds,” the author said in a November 2006 interview obtained by ABC News and used in the documentary J.K. Rowling: A Year in the Life.
“The advantage of a forest is it can be so many things: it can be a place of enchantment; you never imagine a crowd in a forest, it’s a solitary place. But there’s just something, is it because it used to be a place of shelter and safety to us, I suppose, so I think I am very drawn to them, even though they can be spooky.”
Rowling, who started writing from a young age, also spoke about the pain she suffered when her mother was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1980. “She had a very virulent form of the illness and at that time there were no drug treatments at all. And they said ‘Well, you’ve got multiple sclerosis, see you’.”
Rowling, whose books have sold more than 400 million copies, was distraught and she revealed that her mother’s illness strained her relationship with her father.
“I was very frightened of my father for a very long time,” she said in the 2006 interview. “I also tried desperately to get his approval and make him happy, I suppose, and then there came a point quite shamingly late in life where I couldn’t do that any more, and so I haven’t had any contact with my father now for a few years.”
Source: Splash News
Tags: author, book, documentary, Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling, trauma, writer