“Realists of a larger reality”
To resist oppression, we must also re-imagine the future.
If you’re young, the odds are good you don’t know the work of the writer Ursula K. Le Guin. You should.
When Le Guin was honored with the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, she took the podium to call for a recognition of the power of writers and their words when dark days loom:
“Hard times are coming, when we’ll be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope. We’ll need writers who can remember freedom — poets, visionaries — realists of a larger reality.”
I’ve thought a lot about these words. They’ve been one of my guiding stars as I’ve prepared The Nearly Now. I aspire to be a “realist of a larger reality” — in my work, the reality of humanity on a planet in crisis.
You can watch the whole speech here:
I really recommend you do.
