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another fic based on a short story you've never heard of
So I posted a new fic. It's actually new, in that it's never been on the internet before. I wrote it a while ago, though. My recent writing hasn't been of a publishable quality. It's about forced cultural assimilation of indigenous children in the Americas, with a side of reclaiming religion after spiritual abuse. The title is "Esther's God" and it can be read on AO3 here. The original short story is in the public domain, so I linked to the full canon text in the fic summary.
This was an uncomfortable story to write and edit for publication. It feels somehow arrogant, even disrespectful, to express rage on behalf of the victims of a genocide that did not target me. But rereading the story, it may not be perfect, but it is honest and it is art. Any piece of honest art engaging with horrific events is another illustration of another facet of what happened; another chance to resonate with the experiences it draws on. Refusing to publish it would not be humility, only fear. Reasonable fear. Fear I could not fault myself for. But fear, nonetheless, and unproductive.
Author's interpretation of the themes of the fic under the cut.
Esther is an indigenous woman and fiercely aware of that. She speaks English while feeling the absence of Cree, and Christianity while feeling the absence of her spiritual heritage as it should be reflected back to her from her tribe. She's been forced to look upon the Christian God from a very particular angle, and speak the English language polished down to submissive politeness. And when she breaks out of that she is still looking at the Christian God, still speaking English. She can't go back; she can only go forward, and use the language she has to describe what she believes, what she knows, what she thinks, what she feels, and try to make of the language a person she can inhabit.
She is her family's prodigal daughter and that is how she would describe herself. She knows her parents will worry about her, that her frame of reference has been forcibly separated from theirs and she can't even fully comprehend how much she's lost. But she also knows herself, knows that although she doesn't necessarily worship the Christian God she still knows so much about Him that she can't just forget, knows that even as she repudiates Father Paul she is still in large part what he made of her. She rejects him utterly, and abhors the poison which he have given her, yet the elixir she has brewed from it is hers and hers alone.
It's actually as I was writing this post that I hit upon the title Esther's God. The turning point of the fic is the point where she articulates that the God she has been speaking to as an equal in secret and intends to go on conversing with after her escape and as she's reintegrating into her tribe is meaningfully different from the distant, all-powerful God she was ordered to worship. Even though Esther's God is based in significant part on the God of the Christian Bible, He(?) is not filtered through Father Paul, but rather, through Esther herself. The previous title, Man of God, failed to engage with the fact that the fic is primarily about making men of God irrelevant to Esther's life.
Anyway, I think it's a pretty good fic and it's under 500 words so if you like trauma recovery narratives you might as well check it out.
+1
That's such a relatable image with regards to what it's like to be abused and groomed. It's such a freeing feeling to be helped, but it's also so frustrating and agonizing to know that everything is hypocritical and conditional and against your ultimate best interest.
Reclaimed/personal religion is soooo important and this is just. Yes. Reclamation of something that is important to somebody else is such a good fuck you.