Writing Radical Fiction Part 2
You’re listening to Back in the USSR on CFRU 93.3 FM,
I am Siegfried. And welcome comrades and
friends to our second episode about writing radical fiction. Last week I talked about my own experience
being a communist and a fiction writer in the fantasy genre and a bit about how
challenging that is, given how conservative a genre fantasy has historically
been and in many ways continues to be with regard to contemporary examples like
Game of Thrones. I talked about how
fantasy traditionally concerns itself with the restoration of an idealized
past, the “return of king”, the revival of an idealized feudal order where
everything is in its right place, a convention that even more radical fantasy
writers like Ursula Le Guin and Michael Moorcock had difficulty getting
beyond. And I also talked about the
inspiration that I got from the communist playwright Bertolt Brecht, and how
audiences can be made more receptive to radical ideas when they are expressed
in a way that breaks people out of their immersion in every day realities and
forces them to think critically about what they are reading or viewing. But, most importantly, I talked about the
need to place working class and oppressed people, rather than aristocrats and
elites, at the center of fantasy and science-fiction stories. And I want to talk a little more about why
that’s important and why I come at writing in this way.
First, I want to stress the importance of history and
of historical memory in the present moment.
On Friday I attended the Guelph Climate Strike event, I marched with
students from the University of Guelph down to city hall and witnessed this
extraordinary coming together around the issue of climate change. Over five hundred people showed up, there
were banners, megaphones and speeches.
People seemed to recognize that capitalism was the problem and the real
force behind climate change and the global environmental crisis that we’re now
in. But I couldn’t help but notice the
literally night and day distinctions between the speeches made about climate
change by indigenous people on one hand and white settlers on the other. Those speakers who were white talked
overwhelmingly about the future and the need to save future generations from
the effects of climate change. They
didn’t talk about the past, history, their ancestors or historical
experience. Indigenous people did. The indigenous people who spoke, including a
good friend of mine, drew a clear line between the past and the present and the
future. They connected the struggles of
their ancestors against residential schools and colonial genocide with the
present struggles against pipelines and with the well-being of future
generations. And because they understood
and were connected with their past, their understanding of the future was a
whole lot clearer than that of the white speakers, many of whom were engaging
in activism for the very first time and who were inspired to become activists,
not by the example of indigenous land defenders who have been fighting to
protect the very survival of their people, but by this Swedish girl Greta
Thundberg whose been all over the news lately.
Their hearts are definitely in the right place and I’m glad they’re
becoming activists now, but they still have a lot to learn.
Class struggles and struggles against injustice and oppression
never spring from nowhere. They always
have a history in previous struggles that shape the conditions in which new
struggles emerge. And people identify
with past struggles based on their own lived experience, material conditions of
their lives, and their connection with previous generations. Indigenous people have that connection, black
people have that connection, Latino people have that connection, so do people
in the formerly colonized countries of Africa and Asia, and even European
peoples like the Irish have that connection that runs deep within their
culture. But white North Americans
typically do not. White North Americans
who paid “the price of the ticket” as James Baldwin said, and who gave up their
roots what is now called Europe in order to become “white”, to be granted a
privileged position in a colonial society and to bind up their fate with the
settler-colonial project based on genocide and slavery. Effectively they went from being people
rooted in a time and place to being rootless tools and weapons of empire. White people are an artificial, manufactured
creation of empire rather than an organic society and culture, and it
shows. I would recommend people read
Theodore W. Allen’s brilliant book “The Invention of the White Race” if they
want to understand more about how and why this took place: how impoverished
emigres from numerous European countries were transformed into footsoldiers in
a genocidal war to make the North American continent “safe for capitalism” from
sea to shining sea. That’s not to say
that there hasn’t been a history and tradition of class struggle in North
America among people of European descent, of course there has, but it’s much
easier to convince a rootless white person, who has been taught to blame
non-white people for all their problems, to forget about that history than it
is to convince an Irish person living on their own ancestral land in a country
that’s still partially colonized by Britain.
This is especially true if said white person leads a cushy life in a
suburb built on stolen native land on the outskirts of Guelph Ontario, having
reaped the benefits of the post-war boom that allowed them to believe that
capitalism was good and humane, and who haven’t known real hardship or struggle
since their grandparents’ generation in the 30s and 40s…and they’re probably
not all that familiar with that history either.
I grew up in a suburb like that on the western edge of
Guelph. I was far-removed from the ills
of the world as a kid. And, apart from
some difficulties fitting in at school, I had a pretty amazing childhood. I had to learn about the true state of the
world from other people. People like Mrs
Baker, my 8th grade homeroom teacher, who got in a lot of trouble
when she taught my class about sweatshop labor and Third World poverty. People like Mr Walker, an aboriginal Mohawk
man, and a Marxist, who unapologetically taught the real colonial history of
Canada and of European imperialism in my high school history and civics
classes. Or Professor Eidlin, my thesis
advisor in university, who taught me to question established narratives and to
always ask “why”. Those people and many
more besides brought me to the point where I could become a communist in an
anti-communist society, where I could become an ally of indigenous peoples in
the context of settler-colonialism, and where I could come to grips with the
cruel realities of capitalism and imperialism.
So when I write fantasy novels. When I write this literature. It’s coming from that lived experience and
from those people who influenced me. The
same holds true for any writer, but I think I can safely say that my experience
differs from that of many fantasy writers who are content to churn out stories
that glorify kings and empires. I’m more
interested in the history and experience of those who fight against kings and
empires, whether in a fictional world or in the real world. I want to tell their stories and have that
mean something. For me it’s part of a
broader struggle for justice worldwide, not a hobby. It’s something that I choose to do. For the same reason that I choose to teach my
Chinese students about the real history of settler-colonialism and genocide in
Canada. Given what I’ve learned and what
I’ve experienced, writing for me cannot be a diversion or an escape, unlike
some of the fantasy writers I recently encountered at the Eden Mills Writer’s Festival. And writing can’t just be
about warning people and painting gruesome pictures of dystopian futures and lamenting
at how bad everything is. Writings is a
part of the fight for liberation, for justice and emancipation. It’s about confronting and exposing the
destructive forces of imperialism, colonialism and capitalism – even in a
fictional format. It’s about expressing
solidarity with those who fight against these forces all over the world. And it’s about showing that those forces can
be defeated and that something better, regardless of its imperfections, can be
built.
I believe it is my responsibility, given my situation
at this crisis point in human history, to express the class struggle through
whatever medium I can. Including the
fantasy genre. Like I said, it’s hard
for people who come from a background like mine to understand the way the world
really works, how horrific it is, and why so many risk their lives every day
fighting for a livable future along with justice for their ancestors. Maybe by setting these kinds of struggles in
a fictional setting, by setting my stories just far enough beyond the real
world to make readers let down their guard for me but still close enough to
drive the message home, however uncomfortable it might be, I can make it easier
for them to open their eyes.
Handsome Furs - Serve the People
So I’m working on a novel right now that I intend to
make into a trilogy. This trilogy will
explore the revolutionary birth of a new nation, a republic, out of the ashes
of an ancient and oppressive empire. The
setting of this trilogy is a region known as the Thousand Cities, which, like
Medieval Italy and Germany, is divided into many petty warring states, principalities,
duchies, areas ruled by the Church and so on.
This land was once the heart of the Empire of the Five Seals, a
theocratic empire ruled by a powerful Church and an emperor claiming divine
right, before it’s collapse amid civil war almost two centuries before the
events of the trilogy take place. Since
then the land has been divided between rival lords, while the Church is trying
to reassert itself through a bloody Inquisition, and foreign empires compete
for influence and resources. The
protagonists of the trilogy will thus have to face the brutalities of feudalism
and capitalism alike in order to create a new society that will give the people
of this land a future. These heroes will
not be perfect. They will not be lost
messiahs or chosen ones. They will have
all the hang-ups that come from growing up in a highly oppressive and
exploitative society. Thus some
revolutionaries will have trouble treating women as equals, or respecting those
who come from a lower class background, or from a marginalized or oppressed
nationality or a persecuted religious group.
It is only through hard experience in the face of terrible enemies that
they will learn to walk a new path. And many
of them will not survive the journey.
So, yes, main characters will die in my books, no question. I mean read Edgar Snow’s “Red Star Over China”
if you want to know how dangerous trying to build a new society is in the face
of imperialism and entrenched class hierarchies. Read about the beginnings of the Cuban
Revolution and how few of the rebel fighters who traveled with Fidel Castro on
the Granma lived to see the revolution succeed in 1959. Spartacus’s slave rebellion against Ancient
Rome. There is nothing easy about making
real change in an oppressive society that has become unlivable for so many of
its people. People fight and sacrifice against
immense odds because the situation has become intolerable and they succeed when
they have the organization and vision to succeed – and that doesn’t emerge
overnight. Successful revolutions only
come about after a long series of failed attempts, failed organizations, failed
ideas. They only come about after a
history of struggle that then builds to a point where the continuity of history
is broken and something new and radical can emerge. That’s the truth of the matter, and I’ve
never seen it explored in a single fantasy genre story, not even once. Science-fiction comes closer, but even there
I haven’t seen a story that would do justice to how revolutions actually happen
and how people actually liberate themselves.
For revolution to be possible, the normal cycle of
oppression in society has to be broken.
Medieval peasants rose up in rebellion more than we were ever taught in
school, but their struggles rarely developed coherent alternatives to the
existing state of things in a society where feudal lords lived on the backs of
multitudes of serfs. Fatalistic
attitudes were common in a society where many peasants would never see their
thirtieth birthday and such attitudes were promoted by elites in Church and
State who wanted the peasants to “know their place” and accept their misery as being
part of some divine plan. I mean listen
to this song by the doom metal band Khemmis, “A Conversation with Death”. It’s a metal version of an old Appalachian
dirge which shares a lot of features, themes and imagery with medieval English
songs. And the people of Appalachia,
along with the people of Quebec and Acadia are about the only white people in
North America with real traditions of resistance as marginalized and oppressed
nations. So the “Hillbillys” of
Appalachia still sing English peasant songs from the 1300s. Just listen to the lyrics here:
You’re listening to Back in the USSR. Appalachia, the mountainous region of what is
now the eastern U.S. that produced those lyrics, has a unique history. Not only did early poor white settlers flee
there when the lowlands of the southern U.S. were taken over by cotton
plantations, but escaped black slaves fled there and founded whole Maroon communities
in the back country. There was also a
lot of intermarriage with local indigenous peoples like the Cherokee. Deserters from the Confederate Army even fled
there during the American Civil War. And
the resulting marginalized rural peasant communities in Appalachia fought back
when the land speculators, railroad barons and coal mining barons moved into
the hill country in the 19th Century and that resistance continues to
the present in places like West Virginia,
where they even stood up against the US Army.
All this produced quite a unique culture that has often been denigrated
as “in-bred” and slandered in many of the same ways that America has historical
denigrated indigenous people as backward savages, and even as cannibals. There are multiple horror stories and even
Hollywood movies portraying “hillbillys” as cannibals and that goes back to the
days when Appalachians were attacked as having “gone indian” because of their
way of life – which didn’t fit into the way people of European descent were “supposed”
to behave. So when poor Appalachians
came to Chicago in the 1960s seeking work, it’s really no surprise that they
were the mainstay of white support for the Black Panthers and for Fred Hampton’s
“Rainbow Coalition”, even forming radical groups like the “Young Patriots” that
stood in solidarity with the African-American freedom struggle and made common
cause with them against the capitalist state in America. And that’s the point I really want to make
here. These historically marginalized
and oppressed people, with a real experience of resisting established authority
in the name of survival, even if they also have fatalistic attitudes toward the
world around them, can embrace revolutionary ideas when they see the potential
for real change, and that’s a very powerful thing. People understand where they are now, they
see where they want to go, and they develop the tools and the organizational
means to get there together.
Real heroes are made when people wake up like
this. But they’re never alone. Real heroes are never alone, they’re always
part of something greater than themselves, always part of a real movement of
people that carries them along and propels them to do the things that they do. That’s why Fred Hampton of the Black Panthers was such a hero. He moved with
the people. That’s why Fidel Castro was
such a hero. That’s why Thomas Sankara,
who led a revolution in West Africa in 1983 that took a former French colony
and re-named it Burkina Faso “The Land of Upright Men”, was such a hero. That’s the kind of hero I want to see in the
novels I read. Including fantasy and
sci-fi novels. And I’m just not seeing
it. That has to change. I want heroes that serve the people. And I think, just like philosophers, the job
of writers of fiction in this day and age is to interpret the world as a means
of transforming it. Just as Marx
said. Fantasy genre writers are not
removed from that. They too need to play
a progressive role in history. They too
need to stand upright.
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