Originally published In Izzie Price’s Newsletter No Price Limit (2020)
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The first time I step through a doorway into another world, I am seven. The books come bundled in a handsome collector’s box. Dad tells me to start with number two: “That one’s the most famous.” Before I’ve even changed out of my piña-embroidered communion dress, I’m captivated by the books as surely as Edmund is captured by Turkish Delight. I read all seven Narnia books in one whirlwind week, journeying from the lamp post to the edge of the world, through the lands of Calormene and back.
There are others after that. Together, Dad and I pore over maps of Middle Earth as I work my way through The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, and then, quite ambitiously, The Silmarillion. The lack of female characters prompts me to create my own, inserting a version of myself into the Fellowship’s travels in an early and entirely conceptual foray into fanfiction. I devour Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Materials and end up reading The Mortal Instruments on the train home from University during Christmas break. Well into my late teens, I wonder whether, perhaps, if I simply found the right doorway, I could transport myself elsewhere.
But it turns out anyone in New York City who hints I might be the chosen one is trying to sell me something. More and more, I notice the differences between myself and the heroes in all the books I’m reading.
“Every teenager in the world […] feels broken or out of place, different somehow, royalty mistakenly born into a family of peasants,” says the warlock Magnus Bane to red-headed art student Clary Fray in City of Bones, just as she’s beginning to come to terms with her demon-slaying inheritance. “The difference in your case is that it’s true.”
But across all the worlds in all the books that I explore throughout my teenage years, not once does the magical guide say anything like that to anyone remotely like me: an olive-skinned Filipino-mestiza girl with immigrant parents. Heroism, it seems, is for the white boys, or in a minority of special cases, for a very specific subset of doe-eyed white girls.
Too often in fantasy fiction, the lines are clearly drawn between good and evil, between worthy and unworthy, between light and dark. In Lord of the Rings, the Men of Harad hail from the south east and are dark-skinned servants of Sauron. In Narnia, the Calormen are exotic foreigners, who also just happen to be slavers and enemies of Aslan. As much as I try to tell myself that these are rogue elements, anomalies from the time in which these pieces were written, the all-too-convenient appearance of Cho Chang does nothing to put my worries to rest.
But now, years on, this finally seems to be changing. Even as creators are being called out for using their platforms against inclusivity, the covers in children’s and YA fantasy are dominated by Black, Brown, and Asian girls wielding magic and kicking down the barriers. The Gilded Wolves, Flame in the Mist, Legendborn — recently, YA fantasy has been experiencing a sort of renaissance.
The difference is that this time around, we’re building our own worlds and leaving the wardrobe door wide open. This time around, I hope there’ll space in these new worlds for everyone.
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