Historical Fiction Has Something to Teach Us
Readers are searching for clues on how to cope with the stress of today’s challenges
A few years ago while working on a novel set in the late 1960s, I was surprised to have it referred to as historical fiction. In my mind, “historical” conjured tales of medieval kings and castles, the adventures of the Lost Generation in the Twenties, the great World Wars. Surely not my college years.
But the reality is the country and world have changed to such a degree that now even four months ago — the “before” time — seems of a different era.
We’re being buffeted by an uncontained virus to which no one seems to know how to respond, but which has changed the way we live. I can no longer have my grandson spend the night. I walk with friends and we all keep our distance and wear masks. A trip to the grocery store means an extra 45 minutes to wipe down the packaging before storing the goods. No movies, no eating out (unless it’s take-out in the park), no plays, no strolling into shops to see what may catch my fancy. Family dinners are on the deck, six feet of separation, hoping the fog doesn’t roll in because we shouldn’t be inside. No planning trips or vacations, because who know when it will be safe?
Meanwhile, protestors are calling out the atrocities inherent in our past, and rightly so. They’re opening our eyes and minds to the changes we need to make as we go forward. No more taking racial differences casually, we need to examine our thoughts and actions. No longer ignoring the killing of black Americans by police. No more cultural symbols that raise one group above another. No more shrugging of accountability.
COVID-19 and righteous civil unrest sounded our wake-up call.
Within this context, I’m certain I’m not the only fiction writer who questions the value of what I’m doing. But I’ve come to appreciate that our lives, our communities and the greater societies we inhabit depend on each of us doing what we are meant to do, whether it’s working as a chef or a teacher, a construction worker or a medical researcher, a server or farmer or politician or, yes, a writer.
It helps a fiction writer to remember the purpose and value of reading to appreciate our role in the whole, big, messy business of life.
A year ago May, Megan O’Grady wrote in the New York Times:
“(A)s we near the third decade of the 21st century, the urge to look back feels different: Making sense of our lives and of the unfathomable world in which we find ourselves has necessitated an understanding of what has come before — a clarification of the game and its stakes but also its rules and positions. A new kind of historical fiction has evolved to show us that the past is no longer merely prologue but story itself, shaping our increasingly fractured fairy tales about who we are as a society. (“Why Are We Living in a Golden Age of Historical Fiction?” New York Times Style Section, May 2019.)
Fiction helps us develop empathy with those who may be different from us, different because of race, gender, language, experience, geography, or whatever. While our sometimes fiercely held belief systems make it difficult, even impossible, to openly talk with one another, reading can give us an opening to peek behind the screen and maybe, hopefully, to learn something about human interactions.
Maybe you learned more about slavery from reading Beloved, or Underground Railroad. Maybe Lord of the Flies revealed the horror of bullying. Exit/West involves the reader in the reality of displacement refugees experience. Or maybe you were inspired to pursue your dreams from Little Women.
Reading can transport us to worlds we haven’t yet imagined and in doing so can expand our interest in and knowledge of new places, new ideas, new people.
Imagine the adventures inspired by Wild (ok, not fiction) that takes us to the High Sierra, or A Fine Balance in India, or about Spain from For Whom the Bell Tolls.
Historical fiction (and fiction that may have been contemporary when written, but now historical in time), can teach us how problems have been created and dealt with before we tried. We can, with knowledge, learn from our mistakes.
Farewell to Manzanar certainly has something to say about how we treat immigrants. Books like Pale Rider and They Came Like Swallows show us the devastating impacts of past pandemics — and maybe remind us to wear our masks! (For more on these examples, you may want to read, 1918 Pandemic ‘Infected’ Literary Imaginations.) Kay Boyle’s Death of A Man exposes the rise of fascism in Austria. Reading about palace intrigue in Hilary Mantel’s trilogy — Wolf Hall, Bring Up the Bodies and The Mirror & The Light — reminds us of the dangers of unfettered power and an impetuous monarch.
Reading can give us hope. By learning what others are coping with, we learn we are not alone. We find out we’re not the only one who has faced homelessness, domestic violence, lost love, abandonment, fear. We learn how to reach out for help to overcome and thrive.
What can you share about what you’ve learned from fiction, historical or otherwise?
It helps me to think about fiction in general and historical fiction in particular in these ways. I hope it stimulates you to think about what you can learn from reading deeply and in a wide range of themes of topics.