There’s an argument to be made for that statement, but I’m not going to make it.
Especially since my realm is writing for young readers, I’m not going to opine about whether Creepy Pair of Underwear, in which Jasper Rabbit deals with a glowing pair of underwear that won’t go away, is politically motivated. Even if it is, (is that glow radioactive?) what a joy-sucking situation it would be if all literature for young people was politically motivated. And yet, a quick look at the NYT bestseller list for YA turns up, for instance, The Hate U Give, Stamped, and Dear Justyce.
It was George Orwell who stirred up the “all writing is political” conversation in the first place with his statement that “no book is genuinely free from political bias. The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is in itself a political attitude.” This reason for writing—one of four, according to Orwell—stems, as he says, from “a desire to push the world in a certain direction.”
Rather than argue the point, I’m just going to skirt the whole question by saying I don’t know about anybody else, but my writing is political, in the sense that I do have a desire to push the world in a certain direction.
That said, I don’t set out to write about issues. I set out to tell a story.
But in stories, as in life, issues arise. As a writer (and as a human being) I can choose to ignore those issues, try to tackle them, or at least acknowledge that they exist.
In some of my books the issues take center stage: Village of Scoundrels (Amulet Books, 2020) is about a bunch of teenagers standing up to fascism in WWII France. Shadow on the Mountain (Amulet Books, 2012) has similar themes but is set in Norway. Sometimes issues aren’t at the center of the story, but still raise their ugly little heads. Even the very light-hearted The Littlest Voyageur (Holiday House, 2020) acknowledges that because of the fur trade (in which the voyageurs were engaged) beavers were driven to within a hairsbreadth of extinction.
The Silver Box—and the other two books of the Enchantment Lake mystery series, Enchantment Lake and The Clue in the Trees—take place in northern Minnesota, a wild place, full of lakes and forests. It is a resource-rich area, and consequently suffers from its share of issues: copper-nickel mining, pipelines, lakeshore overdevelopment, corporate potato farming (think water pollution from herbicides, pesticides and chemical fertilizers the next time you order fries at MacDonald’s), plant theft from public lands, climate change, and probably some other issues I’m not remembering at the moment.
These stories are not about these issues. Rather, the issues are an inherent part of the stories, because of the setting, but also because of me. Because I have a desire to push the world in a certain direction, and that direction is to take better care of our planet and each other.
Author’s note: This post was first published on www.ladyunemployed.com.
