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Frankfurt Book Fair

Poets of the apocalypse: Catherine Hernandez & Waubgeshig Rice's new works
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What’s it like to release a post-apocalyptic book in the middle of a global pandemic?

Toronto-based writer Catherine Hernandez, whose 2020 novel Crosshairs describes a climate-related societal collapse followed by the rise of a fascist regime, can tell you that it makes it hard to ask fellow authors for feedback.

“It was, like, ‘Hi, I know that you’re fearing for your life, but can you read my book about fearing for your life and then write something nice about it,” says Hernandez, laughing but then quickly turning serious. “The book felt like a warning. I do think that writing is a form of mediumship, and what my ancestors wanted to say to the world was: this is a warning, but it’s also a model for hope.”

Though of course Hernandez had no way of knowing about the havoc that covid-19 was about to wreak on the world, she did foresee some of the forms of social unrest that might follow a modern-day disaster, especially those centred around dwindling resources. Journalist and author Waubgeshig Rice, whose 2018 dystopia Moon of the Crusted Snow received a renewed wave of attention as the first coronavirus lockdowns swept the globe, foresaw similar divisions but from a different perspective. Moon of the Crusted Snow tells the story of a remote northern Anishnaabe community’s struggle for survival after a widespread and seemingly permanent power outage. The story was born out of Rice’s experience of the 2003 blackout, and his desire to explore how Indigenous peoples might react in the face of a similar upheaval.

“Indigenous nations everywhere have already survived the ends of their worlds,” says Rice. “I knew the Anishnaabe closeness to land and more broadly the Indigenous perspective of land, and how it supports and sustains us in the face of catastrophe. I wanted to put that sort of lens on surviving something like that.”

Hope & survival within the apocalypse

But while both Crosshairs and Moon of the Crusted Snow contain some pretty grim scenes - they are, after all, books about apocalypses - they’re also ultimately hopeful books. One of the things Hernandez set out to do in her work was provide a “blueprint for hope.” Though the dystopian world she brings to life is characterized by anyone who is not white, able-bodied and cis being driven into hiding by an oppressive regime, she also writes about privileged characters who are willing to join the fight against the fascists. Specifically, she imagines “allies who really want to learn allyship [...] on their own dime, on their own time, and in their own bodies, so that QTBIPOC people can do whatever the heck they want to do with their lives while they figure themselves out. It felt hopeful to give ourselves rest while allies learn allyship.”

For Rice, it was important that narrative showed the possibility of survival and renewal after a world-changing disaster, especially through the cohesion of a community. Part of his inspiration came from his early experiences with classic dystopian novels like 1984 and Brave New World.

“I liked their ability to comment on the ills of modern society and show the reader how bad things can get if we don’t address those things,” says Rice. “But as years went on and I became more familiar with literature by people of colour, and I started to think about my own experiences as someone from the rez, I got to thinking about how all these books that we hold up in this so-called canon are written by white dudes, and they have this grim outlook on the future. I think it’s because [these authors] knew generally what colonizing white people are responsible for around the world, so there is that inherent knowledge of destroying things. I wanted to show how we see the world, and with that experience of survival already, how we can frame things differently. We’ve always looked to the future.”

Hernandez, a queer woman of colour, similarly relished the chance to write a dystopia that doesn’t focus on white heteronormative experiences. For her, that felt like another facet of her activism.

Says Hernandez, “Someone did a post when Crosshairs was released and said, ‘isn’t science fiction a form of organizing?’ That’s what feels so empowering about writing this kind of work, that I get to imagine into being a world that feels good to me, that centres our stories.”

Storytelling for a purpose, and a moment in time

Both authors also believe in the power of art to change perspectives, and even lives. Rice remembers reading Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man shortly after arriving in Toronto for his undergraduate degree. Up until then, Rice had lived in the Wasauksing First Nation near Parry Sound, and his knowledge of the Black experience in North America was limited. But while he learned a lot from Ellison’s book, he also saw the parallels between structural anti-Black racism and his experiences as an Indigenous person in a colonial society. He felt a camaraderie with the book’s protagonist right away, and he hopes to create similar feelings of empathy for Indigenous people with his own work.

“I want to humanize Indigenous people in whatever way I can,” says Rice. “I just want people to remember that there are beautiful, vibrant, complex Indigenous people living everywhere, people with the same hopes and dreams as anyone else. In that sense, fiction helps me get closer to the truth than journalism ever did.”

For Hernandez, it’s her Filipino heritage that provides one of her favourite examples of how art can have a real-time impact on the world. She describes a traditional practice in villages in the Philippines where local conflicts would be resolved by spoken word artists. Each would write a poem arguing one side of the issue, and then the community would decide what the outcome was based on the quality of the poems.

“I tell people that’s why I won’t get into governance,” says Hernandez. “Because I’m already the poet.”

As Canada and the rest of the world continue to try to figure out how to live through this pandemic, we’re fortunate to have storytellers like Rice and Hernandez to fill a similar role to those poets. Their blueprints (as Hernandez would say) for how to survive are beyond timely, even if that timing was accidental.

Catherine Hernandez & Waubgeshig Rice are both members of the official literary delegation at the Frankfurt Book Fair from October 20th to 24th, 2021 where Canada is the Guest of Honour. Learn more about them and other Canadian authors and illustrators.

To get the books, click here:
Catherine Hernandez : Original language
Waubgeshig Rice : Original language