The Magdalene Feast Reading Series
Sci-fi and fantasy writer Sapha Burnell, the cover of my dark fantasy novella, My Heart is The Tempest, dark fantasy writer Sacha Rosel.My book is officially out! My Heart is The Tempest, inspired by Shakespeare’s The Tempest, published by Vraeyda Literary. Meet me and sci-fi writer Sapha Burnell talking about the feminine and the strange on Twitch/Youtube on March 27th, 2022 at 5 pm PDT.
Cover by Lis Goryniuk- Ratajczak
ON MY HEART IS THE TEMPEST
My Heart is The Tempest describes an imaginary place made of ice and snow, Niveal, metaphorically covered in a shroud of silence. Inhabited by ghostly-white creatures who have no connection to the human world despite their outer appearance may look familiar, it is a fantasy realm suspended out of space and time and characterized by a bare landscape which perfectly mirrors society’s inflexible rules of conduct.
In this land where light is synonym to cruelty and blindness, emotions are muffled and inhibited. Despite the narration constantly shifts from one main character to another, providing relevant insights into their deepest motives and secrets, much of what happened to them in the past or is happening to them in the present is often left unsaid, because reality is ultimately shown from the protagonist’s perspective, Sycorax, a young girl whose naïveté and ignorance of the world influences the way the story is presented to the readers. Besides being at odds with everything and everyone surrounding her, she doesn’t understand much about Niveal and its inhabitants’ rules, consequently what the reader knows relies on her blurred, imperfect point of view. This in turn leads to many events and characters remaining out of focus or simply on the background, so that many of Niveal’s mysteries, such as the genesis of the insect-like creatures or the way they reproduce, are left unspoken, hidden and unclear.
The main inspiration beyond the novella being a theatrical work, namely The Tempest by William Shakespeare, many elements in the story are simply suggested and left to the readers’ imagination also as a tribute to the play, so as to both allow for the unfolding of the events to take place in a stage-like dimension and to enhance the general sense of suffocated, indirect oppression the world of Niveal is characterized by. Besides, as it happens in theatre, only some characters are given preeminence and full focus in the story, while others function as a backdrop against which the main characters’ moves become possible and are thus enacted.
Indeed, discrimination and oppression are among the main topics explored in the story: as the only dark-haired, dark-eyed and olive-skinned human girl in a school of ghostly white insect-like creatures, Sycorax is the main target of bullying of her antagonist Tliyel and his faithful servants, Klin and Naklin. Myself a victim of psychological bullying at a very young age, I decided to explore the possible ramifications of violent behaviour towards physical difference, perceived both as possible token of spiritual corruption and as a threat to the sanctity of socio-cultural norms, because I believe this is a core issue our human species constantly struggle with. No matter which country of origin, cultural, religious or political background people may come from, difference is too often seen as a synonym to abnormity and deviation, thus likely not only to be criticized but silenced down or even erased from the conversation. As a woman and a feminist coming from a country where femicide rates are insanely high and women’s dignity and competence are constantly questioned or ridiculed by both mass media and institutions, I feel it is my duty to use writing as a form of resistance against monoculture, machismo and misogyny and as a way to explore possible strategies of empowerment for women as an underrepresented or misrepresented minority. Giving a voice to Sycorax, the “foul witch” whose absence resounds throughout Shakespeare’s play as a dark underwing to Prospero’s flight towards magic and towards The Tempest, was my very personal and special way to reclaim an agency for all those women who are silenced by male culture and its bullying attitude towards anyone who doesn’t conform to the sacred light of rules.
