Queer playwright and author of The Knowing speaks about the joy and representation that comes from LGBTQIA stories
BY EMMA HINDS, IMAGE BY J.MELIA
In her 2017 Reith lecture Can These Bones Live? Hilary Mantel described writing historical fiction as a resurrection process, moving lives out of the historical archives and breathing new life into them. It is a description that has always stayed with me since I heard it, throughout the writing of my debut novel and into my writing today. Mantel is a master of form and research, her words about her art almost as inspirational and valuable as the art itself, but the value of writing queer historical fiction goes beyond resurrecting the past – it reaches forward to give power, memory and voice to queer people in the present.
I remember reading The Colour Purple at school and being amazed by Celie, a gay person in history; as if somehow society had given me the impression they appeared in the 90’s with Tony Kushner. Or worse, given the religious upbringing I found myself in, that they were not even real at all and somehow, everything I struggled with inside my young bisexual self was terribly new and wrong. Queer historical fiction told me I was not alone. Like Alan Bennett described in The History Boys, it was as if these characters had reached out a hand through the veil of time and history and taken mine, showing me there was a way forward.
Learning about queer history in a straight environment is to learn about tragedy. It is to read textbooks about Alan Turing and his “fall from grace”. It is to watch videos of Princess Diana holding the hands of gaunt men. Learning about queer history in a religious school is to learn about a choice, one leading to isolation, to loneliness, to a gravestone, to flames. The message is, if these are your people, only sadness waits for you. Culturally, our queer history is represented in these terms but imagination is transformative; fiction gives flesh and blood to a reality that seems impossible and makes it possible. Makes it ours.
The best historical fiction writers do not hide from the prejudice and weight of the past, but they also recognise that just like today, there was joy. There is hope in those historical lovers, that they had normal jobs and lives, that Celie found her children, that they were whole people. The insurrectionary wonder of historical representation is that it validates us. There was joy then and joy now. The knowledge that we have always existed reminds us that we will continue to exist; that the entirety of human history has not yet erased our voices or our stories. It cannot do so. We continue to speak.
The Knowing by Emma Hinds (Bedford Square, £16.99) is out now.
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