No more hate
I've been saddened by the recent news of all these amazing kids killing themselves as a result of non-stop bullying. I don't understand the hate. I've never understood the hate. Nor, do I understand the "they're just teasing/they're good kids" defense of the schools, the other parents. As Kate Harding so eloquently put it, they are assholes. She says it much better than I can.
As I read through Blood Heat while I'm working on Blood Sacrifice (book 5), I began to realize that the main contemporary storyline was about hate crimes–a certain type of hate crime. In each of my books, along with the long term story arc, I choose to write about a topic that resonates with me and is part of our "real" world. Blood Heat is about being different and unusual and out of place, and how that difference results in cruelty, hatred and yes, even death.
Being different is something that my protagonist, Keira empathizes with greatly. As a child, in Faery, she wasn't like the rest, and therefore bullied, ignored, treated horribly. She never fit in, even when she was saved by her father and brought Above, to live amongst the other side of her family. They accepted and loved her, but she was mainstreamed into the human population where she was odd in too many ways. It's the love of her best friend, Bea, who gets her through her childhood. Keira's experience isn't exactly mine, per se, but I get being different, being bullied and teased, being the outsider.
My family immigrated to the US from Cuba when I was not quite three years old. I spoke no English when I got here. By the time I was enrolled in kindergarten, I still spoke very little English, though my parents took to only speaking English to us at home so we'd assimilate. This was in the days before ESL and special classes to help immigrant children. To top it off, we tended to move every year, my father's job taking us from city to city, state to state. Not a great way to become a part of a social group. In many ways, I learned a great deal–about people, about humanity. Somehow, I managed to get through junior high and high school. I learned how to watch and observe people. How to become "normal", at least, how to keep my head down. It wasn't until late high school, in Lago Vista, Texas (the town I based Rio Seco on), that I came into my own and became a stronger, independent person.
It's no wonder that this is reflected in Keira's life as I write. Though I don't go into Keira's specific background so much as the main throughline of Blood Heat, the same thing is happening to a werewolf pack in a nearby town. I'd not realized just how on target and current I was until this past week–as I continued to read horrific news items about teen suicides and bullying. Sadly, this isn't a new thing, but just something that's come into the news cycle–perhaps because of social networking, which shares information so quickly, reaching so many people. I'm glad that through my fictional works, I can address some of these issues, but sad that my fictional solution won't work in the real world.
The only thing we can do is spread the word. Help stop the bullying in our own backyards. Teach tolerance, live tolerance, BE tolerant. To be different is to be amazing, unique, wonderful. Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations–a principle from Star Trek – more than 40 years ago. Why then do we continue this hatred? This fear of being different?
Let's celebrate our differences. Do something this week to show your uniqueness. Show you care.
