Why Presentism Fails Your Readers

In sixth grade, I got a language arts worksheet about Jackie Robinson that had a sentence like "When Jackie traveled with his teammates, he had to stay in hotels that were just for African Americans." I might've only been twelve, but I could tell that line had been sanitized and felt irritated that we were being coddled by adults that way. Sure, I wouldn't have liked "Jackie stayed in hotels that were just for colored people" (or some worse term) but the writer could've gone middle ground and said, "Hotels were segregated, so when Jackie traveled for away-games, he had to stay separately than the rest of his team." 

That worksheet wasn't my first reading on segregation. It wasn't my first introduction to Jackie Robinson. But it was my first example of what I would later learn was called presentism-the fallacy of presenting the past through the lens of the present. For example, in 1909, the NAACP was formed under the name National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, so clearly its founders were okay with the name colored. A historian practicing presentism would look at a document describing the NAACP's founding and call all of its initial members racist because "colored" is a taboo term today. Except they wouldn't, because historians aren't stupid. 

Last year, I read a historical fantasy novel set in the Wild West with both Native and LGBT characters. Every white character who has a one-page interaction with Native people instantly becomes racially tolerant. A character who learns one of his friends is lesbian instantly trots out the twenty-first century aphorism "love is love." A character who is part of a stigmatized magical group hides her magical status from her friends, but as soon as she "comes out," literally no one cares. You walk away from the story with the idea the historical prejudices simply never existed. As a reader, I didn't walk away from the story with a newly enriched sense of justice and tolerance, which might have been the authorial intent. You cannot teach justice by crafting a narrative without injustice. 

Obviously some presentism is necessary to make a story palatable to modern readers. The same year I read the Jackie Robinson worksheet, I read a WWII novel where soldiers used racial slurs against Japanese people. I thought I'd read an unflinching portrayal of  wartime racism, but the author's note stated that the writer had toned down the historical racism as much as possible. Stripping historical prejudices out of a story entirely does a great disservice to the people your story portrays. 

One of my favorite elements of Mary Robinette Kowal's Glamuorist Histories books is that her characters don't, for the most part, have the sensibilities of modern people. In the fifth book, Jane, a white character, visits Antigua and meets slaves for the first time. Jane ponders her stance on slavery for a few seconds and remembers that she once signed an abolitionist petition and still owns a keepsake book with an abolitionist stamp in it. But then she reminds herself, "That's just how things are done here," and moves on.

That little moment moved me. I saw it as a parallel to modern people who sign online petitions and collect "stamps" in the form of retweets and profile frames, but when actually faced with a problem, can't be bothered to do anything. Jane, of course, changes her sensibilities over the course of the novel, befriending several slaves and helping free them. Jane's opinion pivot and actual action can be read as a call to arms for readers to match their clicktivism with real activism. 

The problem with presentism in narrative isn't that it's unrealistic, but that it leaves readers uneducated of the realities of the time and there is no call to action. Why would a reader be inspired to fight injustices in modern times if they never existed in the past? As characters become aware of their own biases, readers can become aware of theirs. 

In Prisoner of Time by Caroline B. Cooney, protagonist Devonny and her best friend, Flossie, are both wealthy Anglo-Saxon ladies expected to marry men of similar social status. The book opens with Devonny smuggling a love letter for Flossie from a poor Italian immigrant gardener named Johnny. While reading the letter, Flossie learns for the first time that his her boyfriend's name is actually Gianni. She squees to Devonny about how romantic the "spelling" is, but a modern reader should be able to figure out Gianni is, not, in fact, an alternate spelling of the American Johnny. It's a normal Italian name. A wealthy 1890's lady and an immigrant gardener  face many obstacles to marriage, but that external problem is less interesting to me than the internal one: Flossie's clueless romanticization of her boyfriend's exoticness. Flossie's only an introductory character and the story soon veers off to follow Devonny's time travel romance with a boy from the future, but I find myself wondering how her relationship with Gianni would play out long term. If she doesn't even know his name, are they really ready to get married? What other crucial background knowledge is Flossie missing about Italy and how is Gianni going to deal with that? 

Modern people can marry whoever they want, so they have little to gain by watching the wokest lover of the nineteenth century triumph over the tyranny of racist parents stopping their progressive-minded daughter from gallivanting off into the sunset with her one true love. But language barriers and differing social norms are still a very large part of cross-cultural dating. I once had a relationship that ended because my Congolese boyfriend was not a native English speaker and I didn't speak any of the other four language he knew. My parents have nothing against Congolese people. His family have nothing against Americans. But our relationship was peppered with "Gianni" moments. Watching historic characters learn more about a love interest's culture, rather than intuitively knowing about it already or having all the conflict stemming from outside characters' prejudices, gives modern readers a playbook for their own cross-cultural relationships. 

There are many problems with presentism. It infantalizes readers and modern people can see right through it. But it's also a way of grasping low-hanging fruit and missing out on richer, more meaningful stories. Ultimately, history's messiness of colonialism, of war, of racism, of discrimination, of immigration, naturally leads to rich and compelling stories if you don't make artificial efforts to simplify the narrative. Give me a clueless Flossie or a "that's how things are done here" Jane over historic characters with modern sensibilities any day. 

Interview with Lani Forbes, author of The Seventh Sun and The Jade Bones

I'm not exaggerating when I say The Seventh Sun is my favorite fantasy novel from the past few years. I read some Mesoamerican time travel in elementary school, which first introduced me to the world of obsidian swords and calendars that end in apocalypse. But I'd never seen a fantasy book set in that kind of world, and man, did this deliver.

Every morning in the Chicome empire, the emperor must shed his blood to make the sun come up. This sun is the seventh one to hang in the sky, each one born when a god sacrifices themselves to stave off apocalypse. To repay the gods, animals are slaughtered at feasts and special ceremonies. 

And sometimes people. Prince Ahkin loses two parents in the space of one night when his otherwise healthy father suspiciously passes away in the night. Hot on his heels, his mother plunges a dagger into her chest to join her husband in the underworld. Now it falls to Ahkin to raise the sun every morning and pick a wife to rule at his side.

Mayana hasn't been able to stomach sacrifices ever since her father killed her pet dog to please the gods. She knows she is a descendant of the water goddess and pricking her hand calls forth a very real power to command the waters. But do the blood offerings of animals and ordinary people really placate the gods, or are they the desperate acts of apocalypse-minded people to feel some sense of control over their lives? Mayana has learned to keep her doubts quiet to avoid being branded as a heretic, and that's never more important than when she's summoned to the Chicome capital as bridal candidate. Six girls from divine bloodlines compete for Prince Ahkin's hand. One will be crowned empress. The other five will be sacrificed to bless the marriage. 

Time is running out in more ways than one. Ahkin only has a few days to pick a wife before the unlucky period at the end of the calendar cycle. A few days to condemn five girls to death and marry a stranger, a stranger who will eventually meet the same fate as his own mother. And ever since Ahkin took the throne, the sun isn't staying in the sky as long as it used to. 

From the beginning, the premise is naturally set up for a twist ending. On the surface level, the stakes are "Will Bachelorette #6 die or get married?" but the deeper ones are, "Do they find a way to sabotage the contest or does apocalypse come first?" So there were really four possible endings on the table and I felt a very real suspense. Though the premise is dark and their entire culture runs on sacrifice, I actually enjoyed this book on a very spiritual level and it felt like a light in dark times. I've watched a lot of people settle into apocalyptic moods as a result of covid culture and recent social upheaval, so the motif of humans practicing ritualistic behaviors to tell themselves they had the end of the world under control really hit home. Ultimately, it comes to a beautiful, hopeful conclusion.

I adored the lush Mesoamerican worldbuilding. The Mayan-inspired names, the incorporation of myths, the tropical flora and fauna, the warfare, the food-it all just sings of research. Ahkin and Mayana's magic also gave me an Avatar the Last Airbender vibe.They remind me of fire and water bender respectively. There's a cute moment in Mayana and Ahkin's initial meeting where she points out that water and light together make rainbows. In addition to raising the sun, Ahkin's magic lets him bend light, so he can turn himself invisible in battle when he needs to. I was so excited to read this book that I refunded another book's audible credit to get it. Now I'm pumped for the release of the sequel next month (February 2021), which is set to incorporate what I think it one of the coolest figures of Mayan mythology: the return of the god Quetzalcoatl. 

And now, for an interview with author Lani Forbes:

1. Where did you get the initial idea to write a Mesoamerican fantasy? Once you had that initial spark, how did you flesh out the idea to build the story?

My stepfather had lived in Mexico before my parents got married and he and my mother decided to move back to start a drug treatment center after my sisters and I all graduated. They live there now and my sisters and I try to go down and visit them as often as we are able. When I was growing up, he shared so many stories of his time living there and I always held a fascination for ancient civilizations, so Mesoamerican history was of particular interest to me. I read about the creation myth of the Five Suns and the idea for the story began to take shape from there, specifically from the idea of the world being destroyed and recreated multiple times. 

2. How did human sacrifice catch your interest?

I think what captured my interest is the fact that it’s often so misunderstood and misrepresented. When studied in context, any kind of blood sacrifice was extremely important and significant to ancient Mesoamerican thought. They believed strongly in the idea of giving in order to receive, and as the gods blessed them with gifts of life and sustenance, they owed the gods in return. Blood contained the power of life and fertilization, and one of the many creation myths believed that the gods sacrificed their own blood to give humanity life. So in their view, they were repaying a debt. Human sacrifice itself is often misrepresented as well. Most ritualistic killings were captured soldiers of enemies and no different from our own cultures killing enemies on the battlefield. The main difference was just when the killing happened. In fact, the purpose of many battles was to capture, not kill, the enemy, making their battles likely less bloody than warfare in Western cultures. You will notice that other than the selection ritual in the story, the only other instance of human ritual killing in the book is with captured enemy soldiers after a battle. 

3. What are some of your favorite research tidbits you picked up  that you incorporated into your story?

A fun random bit of research I found fascinating was in some of the beauty rituals and routines that women used. For example, in The Seventh Sun, when Mayana is being prepped for her journey to Tollan, many of the beauty products and rituals are from my historical research (including the face cream with pigeon droppings!). 

4. Without spoiling anything, there's a twist at the end of Seventh Sun. Was the ending in the initial outline, or did it evolve as you kept drafting and revising?

The major twist at the end was always part of the story from the very beginning. In fact, it was one of my first ideas that got me excited to write the rest of the story! In the earliest drafts, the events of book two were actually shortened and included at the end of book one. As I got closer to the end of book one, I decided to save the events of book two for their own book. 

5. Were there any specific myths or folktales that influenced Seventh Sun or Jade Bones?

The main myth that influenced The Seventh Sun was the Mexica creation myth of the five suns. The Jades Bones and its portrayal of the underworld is influenced by the Popol Vuh texts of the ancient Maya populations in Guatemala and Belize. 

6. Without giving too much away, what can readers look forward to in your second book, releasing next month?

Mayana and Ahkin got significantly caught up in the drama of the selection ritual, but now that it’s over, they have to deal with the fact that they don’t really know much about each other. I had a lot of fun seeing how their dueling personalities came out in the hardships they face in book two and how they really deepen and mature their relationship through their various trials. The other exciting part of book two is that I introduce a new POV, which is Yemania, Mayana’s close friend. Yemania gets her own exiting storyline and love interest in book two that I enjoyed writing just as much if not more than Mayana’s! I love that Yemania really learns a beautiful lesson of self-acceptance through her story! 

7. How many books can readers expect to see in the series?

The Age of the Seventh Sun series is a trilogy, so there will be three books total! 

Thank you for joining us! Jade Bones releases on February 16, 2021. Seventh Sun and its sequel are also both available for download on Audible. I plan on reading it before studying abroad in the Yucatan Peninsula this summer to learn more the ancient history and mythology of the region.