The Presidential election is over. There was a winner, and there was a loser. 48.1% of U.S. voters, or nearly 72 million people, are devastated. 50.3% of U.S. voters, or just over 75 million voters, are thrilled. Campaign signs are still up, although in some townships and neighborhoods, they are required to be removed within a certain amount of time, though that time varies. I’ve noticed the Harris signs are gone; the Trump signs seem to still be hanging around. I’m a first amendment guy, so whatever. It means nothing to me. That we live in a country of 335 million and only 147 million people voted is unfortunate (not all 335 million are of voting age, but a lot are). No one, as we know, has to vote. No one has to participate. It’s a shame, but it is what it is. We move on, as we do every four years. Bankers move on. Marketers move on. Blue collar workers move on. Teachers and law enforcement and builders and pretty much everyone else in this country moves on. For writers and artists, that can be a little harder to do. We’re a sensitive group. The things that drive us, that call to us, that fester within us, need to get out. We need to express ourselves. As writers, some of us continue whatever it is we were working on—romance, sci-fi, crime fiction, whatever. Some of us, however, can’t move on. We protest. We chronicle. We get on paper the things that pull at our heart strings the way writing—any writing—pulls at the writer so they write. This is how it is, how it was, and how it will be until the last writer dies and no one’s left to translate history for the rest of us, save the other artists out there working with the mediums they use to protest and chronicle what we, us writers, protest and chronicle with our words.
In 2023 Paul Lynch won the Booker Prize for his novel The Prophet, a dystopian novel about a mother trying to save her family as the Republic of Ireland falls into totalitarianism. The concept is familiar, prescient (for some countries, anyway), and, in many ways, represents how many of us in the U.S. and abroad feel the world is already and has been becoming—a place where strongmen and nationalism are winning the war against democracy and democratic societies. Women’s rights are vanishing. Decency has been pushed aside. Violence is becoming the norm, rather than the exception. Racism and bigotry appear to have gained acceptance not only on the streets of America and abroad but in the halls of congress and, with little exception or ambiguity, soon (and once again) the White House. People are afraid, and rightfully so. Roe is gone. The Supreme Court has been hijacked. Loyalists rather than intelligent, good-meaning politicians are filling out the paperwork as I write this to join the next cabinet to act as a rubber stamp to a President-elect who is not only a felon but someone who’s been found guilty of sexual assault. But while the ship is sinking, the violins keep on playing “Nearer, My God, To Thee.” And we, as writers and artists, must keep those violins playing. We must chronicle the events of the day so they are not overlooked and forgotten. We must protest the injustices that seem to have taken hold of this country and the world beyond our borders. We must, for while history is written by the victors (a declaration attributed to Winston Churchill), document what we see, what we feel, and what we experience, so that, if history is just, the world will know the darkness we’ve gone through, even if lesser than the past, but especially if greater than the future.
1984. It Can’t Happen Here. American Woman, A Grain of Wheat, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Beloved, Brave New World, The Color Purple, A Thousand Splendid Suns, Dr. Zhivago, Mary Barton, Oliver Twist, Les Misérables. The writers of these works of fiction have forever chronicled the miseries and wrongs perpetrated by those in power against the powerless. We know their names. Victor Hugo. George Orwell. Khaled Hosseini. Aldous Huxley. Toni Morrison. Charles Dickens. Boris Pasternak. They have, in their ways, protested and chronicled, brought to light and examined, warned and alerted us to what they experienced, to the things that touched them, to the fears and histories that have befallen their friends, their neighbors, their relatives, their countries. Writers can write what they want—that is what freedom of expression is and has always been. Its importance to a nation is why it is the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America rather than the twenty-seventh, which forbids any changes to the salary of Congress members from taking effect until the next election concludes (I argue this particular one, while needed, should have been preceded by others). Writers have lost their lives for centuries, that is how strongly our fellow writing brethren, past and present, believe—and believed—in the need to create their art. To document the times within which they lived. To ensure, or at least to try to ensure, that we do not repeat the past, that we learn from our mistakes, that we realize and are aware of the signs of the evil men do in the name of patriotism, under the guise of freedom, and with the help of those who fall under the spell of those wicked tongues who promise the world while simultaneously stealing it away.
While fiction cannot (and does not) always enlighten or change opinion or educate or motivate one to get involved, to attempt change, to right a wrong, to help expose to the world the bad things going on, the sometimes that it does is often good enough. Perhaps not now or tomorrow or a hundred years from now—that may be too much to ask of not only fiction but of art itself. Like anything, art is but a piece of the larger puzzle. It is ignored by many. It is dismissed by some and extolled by others. Politicos in this day and age and in days of yore have tried to ban books and art and silence the voices of those who would and do call attention to injustice. To murder. To bigotry. To fraud. To sexual assault. To racism. To conspiracy theories. To classism. To economic injustice and poverty. To gender inequality. To ageism. To environmental justice. To democratic rights. To gun violence. To slavery. To labor exploitation. To war. To child abuse. To climate change. To healthcare. To the refugee crises around the world. As people, we have a voice. As artists, we have a platform. I argue we must use it, especially now, for this is our time to make a difference. We are alive. We are the chroniclers of our times. No one else can capture what we know must be communicated to the world, for the emotions are raw. The blood—literal and figurative, is spilling before our very eyes. History has taught us many things: that it is cruel. That it is often unjust. That it repeats itself. That there are winners and losers and many people in between. It’s also taught us this: art can make a difference. We have Guernica. We have Sam Cooke’s “A Change is Gonna Come,” and Elizabeth Catlett, “Target.” We have Barbara Kruger, “Untitled (Your Body Is a Battleground).
So, pick up your pen. Open that laptop. Scribble some notes. But if why you write is to say something, anything, then get started. Right now. Today. And keep going. Get to work. The time is now for protest literature.
Already on it!