Author Vanessa Ferlaino talks hate crimes and being human

Vanessa Ferlaino is on a mission to make people more human.

She’s the author of Human, an award-winning book documenting her journey of becoming more in tune with her true self by coming to understand the oppressive programming that creates the barriers of inequality in society. 

In an interview with CityNews Halifax, Ferlaino explained that her book is not about overcoming hardships and resilience, but a call for humanity.

“The program tells us, this is who you are, you fit this role in society, and that's what you need to be,” she explained. “My true self is not what this program has told me I'm supposed to be.”

Ferlaino took part in a two-hour book signing at Chapters Halifax on Saturday afternoon. The event, Hate Crimes: Deconstructing Society to Create Change, took place in the wake of a 70 per cent increase in hate crimes in Nova Scotia in 2020, the largest spike in the country. 

While book signings often provide authors with tons of feedback on their work, Ferlaino says she finds the experience of hearing other people’s stories just as valuable.

“As an artist, everything that I do, it's a gift and I have my purposes for doing it,” she explained. “But then once it's out there, it's like a free for all everyone else … people can use it, see it, and hopefully be inspired in their own way.”

For Ferlaino, hate crimes fall under an umbrella of a system of colonization and white supremacy that has been embedded and engraved in society.

“We're trying really hard to make a difference and to be more diverse, but very clearly, we still have a lot of work to do,” she said, noting that her book explores ways to break free from oppressive programming. 

Part of that work, she says, is changing our education system for young people to better understand things like mental health and how to have healthy inner-self dialogues.

“We’re not born violent,” Ferlaino said, noting that “violence comes from unhealthy lifestyles, unhealthy family relationships [and] unhealthy cultures.”

One reason Ferlaino believes Nova Scotia is seeing such a steep rise in hate crimes is that the acts are fear-based, noting that the more society progresses, the more fearful these individuals become. She says that what connects hate crimes like shootings and attacks on women’s rights, is that people aren’t taking the opportunity to learn about each other’s cultures and backgrounds.

Without that basis of understanding for our fellow humans, Ferlaino says people can’t be empathetic, and in doing so, blocks them from being able to grow.

“Let's go inward,” she said. “Let's start with being a bit more human to ourselves so we can be more human to each other, and organically, we can start creating change in our world and our society.”