Why the hero of my latest novel is an old woman refugee
“I like it when a flower or a little tuft of grass grows through a crack in the concrete. It’s so fuckin’ heroic.”
― George Carlin
“No one is going to give you the education you need to overthrow them. Nobody is going to teach you your true history, teach you your true heroes, if they know that that knowledge will help set you free.”
― Assata Shakur
The main characters of our society – the lead roles – are people with political or economic power. They – the most privileged racial, gender, and financial groups – are the ones portrayed as embellished heroes in media, movies, and books.
I grew up without television, but when I later watched movies like James Bond or Superman, I got so sick of all the male heroes while women usually had secondary roles and were trophies for the violent, reckless, machista characters. In Hollywood, the British and US heroes would save the day by blowing everything apart, knocking over humble street stalls as they performed in car chase after car chase (beyond the senseless damage, downright boring to watch). Young, white, male Superman would save the pathetically useless female. It was the same formula over and over. Men as the saviours, police as the good guys, brown folks with accents from countries that the movies never bothered to provide any insight into, as the bad guys. The blatant racism, the detachment from reality, and the objectification of my gender weren’t lightly entertaining for me.
We live in a system that is structured around competition, superficiality, excess accumulation of crap, and a horrific ideology that venerates the supposed superiority of Global North countries, despite the economic and direct violence their governments and companies perpetuate. And this is also reflected in the heroes featured in posters on bedroom walls or dominating social feeds; rich celebrities with cushy lives and no backbone. Even those who do muster the lukewarm courage to condemn genocide face little material risk for speaking out. They, and the movie and book heroes may have charisma, but they have few, if any, of the qualities that actually characterise heroes; they are not brave or humble, and they don’t risk their lives or livelihoods to challenge injustice (and no, the petty revenge story line doesn’t count).
Life’s real heroes are often the most invisible, criminalised, mistreated folks, because what they stand for represents a threat, in some way, to the elites hogging the spotlight and power. They challenge the unaccountable environmental destruction by transnationals, or they are refugees embodying the right to free movement and inhumanity of borders.
My heroes, the people I admire, are those who read hungrily and curiously in order to arm themselves with the knowledge and critical thought necessary to challenge injustice, those with fierce souls who rage and march even after 40 years of marching and still no utopia, those who feel profound empathy and convert that into sustained solidarity for people who are far away, those who spend their lives listening, those who defend nature by risking their careers and by doing the most gruelling of work; activism and organising collectively, and those who journey – metaphorically and/or literally, against the currents and borders and walls and limitations. Even demotivated, tired, stressed, and hurting people can be heroic and beautiful to me, because they resist and persist against such hardships and manage to be tender and kind despite them.
These heroes walk among us. They aren’t born mighty and with powers. They develop their greatness slowly and steadily. The magical abilities they are acquire doesn’t come from the sun (like Superman) or from swallowing a pill, or using Bond gadgets and tech that no one else has, but from their humanity. Humans are wonderful in their ability to create, persevere, invent, imagine, and empathise, and heroes use those things for the greater good.
Life is hopeful when your heroes walk beside you rather than in seemingly other dimensions behind screens and in mansions. These very real and imperfect people become the tangible representation of what you yourself can aspire to, and what is possible for the world.
The profound impact of who the heroes are
It’s important to push back against elites as heroes because socially, who our heroes and villains are is very decisive in which groups we defend, and which groups are allowed to be repressed and hurt. So, in my novels, my heroes are the people I think really need to be featured, treated better, and that I genuinely admire.
In this unjust world, the parents braving rough sea journeys in flimsy boats to get to safety after fleeing danger in their countries are basic, obvious heroes that the mainstream media manages to skew into unsanitary criminals. Old people are treated as disposable and irrelevant because they aren’t working for the machine any more.
So, the hero in my latest novel, The Eyes of the Earth, is an old woman refugee, and she is so complex, scared, and beautiful. She has grown into her heroism and her magic through years of hardship, denial, and survival. By learning from everything, she has got to the point, at her very old age, where she is just starting to master life. Yet, she goes unnoticed by most and she struggles with difficult decisions and battles loneliness. She is an oppressed person, who may overcome.
resistance words 