These past few weeks I’ve been getting back into what used to be one of my greatest hobbies—reading. It’s been a while since I’ve had the time or energy to lose myself in a novel like I used to find myself doing so often. It’s honestly been liberating. I'm rediscovering my love of literature.

So, here’s a poem I wrote about my favorite genre of fiction—dystopian.

Dystopias

My favorite genre of fiction is dystopian.

Give me your Brave New World,

your Anthem, your Fahrenheit 451,

your Maze Runner, anything written by Octavia Butler.

Make me fall in love with some misguided hero

subjected to a world that makes them feel other.

Build me a world that evokes as much

awe as it does unfiltered hatred.

Navigate plot lines and

capitalize off fictitious oppression

Until I’m a believer of your revolution.

Some may say my fixation on these societies gone bad is

detrimental--sad, too negative--

but I say they aint reading what I’m reading

because where they see despair, I see hope.

You see my favorite part of the story isn’t in the corruption,

It’s not even the cherry picked salvation at the end—

it’s in how humans can endure much more than we think we can.

How regardless of beginnings, middles, or ends,

we continue to exist

and some of us always find new ways to live.

No amount of brainwashing by

aggro-imperalist figureheads can

stop the rise of a revolutionary.

Because you see, even my favorite genre largely isn't

written for or by women who look like me.

I don’t have the luxury of

fully seeing myself in the characters I adore.

My story is written already erased,

even in the future tense

but it stills feels damn good to know

that even if my future’s tense,

I can rise above whatever lowers my spirits and

spirituality isn’t my strong suit

but damn, I think God may be the

greatest science fiction writer yet.

There are so many real-life stories,

so much destruction,

that on paper seem like they could be

pulled from a page of one of the novels I find so dear

and it’s easy to get stuck in our ways,

allow our oppressors to rewrite history,

make it seem like this is how it’s always been

and always should be

or that we should sit docile

and appreciate the progress already made.

They call us greedy because there’s

only room at the table for one

and they’re already kindly throwing us scraps.

Whenever I feel at a loss in this world,

I turn to the literature of lands far away,

aching at the core

and remind myself that if this is my story

and those are my villains,

I’ve got to choose if

I’ll be a background character,

complicit in the pillage of souls,

or the hero that I need.