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When Sylvie disappears, Jules is lost, bereft, inconsolable, as Sylvie was even more essential to Jules’s idea of home thane even their mom was. But when their mother passes away, each of the sisters grieves differently: Jules hunkering down, Sylvie running away. In Maybe a Fox, Kathi Appelt and Alison McGhee’s ugly-cry middle-grade novel, Jules and Sylvie are sisters and, even better, best friends. Whatever home means, now or ten years from now, we must, each of us, find ours. Stories assure us that it’s okay to need that place, that person, to fill our hearts, guide us back to our north star, remind us that we can-and will-do whatever it is we set out to do. Stories of revolution and quests, combat and peace, all present some notion of home. Whether we battle of our own accord or war comes to us, whether we adventure readily or reluctantly, whether we reclaim or transgress or simply get through the day, our lives are not so different from our stories. Somewhere or someone that can help you re-focus, re-group, re-imagine where you want to go next, the next time you feel ready to leave the warm and comfort and safety of home.Īnd so, in the speculative space that is Sirens, our sixth mission statement is finding home: to create a place or discover a person who makes you feel especially warm and safe. Somewhere or someone that reminds you who you are, what’s important to you, what you’ve lost in the daily bustle of living your life. People can keep us warm, keep us safe, make us whole.īut whether your home is a location, a pet, a person, it’s vital that you have something, somewhere, someone that means home to you. Just as much as locations, with all their memories and attachments, people can conjure home for us just as indelibly. Other times, that’s a person: in the arms of your lover, by the side of your best friend, at the feet of your forebears. Anywhere that keeps you warm, keeps you safe, makes you whole. Sometimes that is another physical location: a desert or a lake, a library or a bookstore, a favorite chair or a porch swing. Sometimes that is even a house or an apartment, yours or someone else’s, a family member’s or a friend’s. Where there’s no need to reclaim, no need to transgress, no battles to be fought.
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We need somewhere where we feel warm and cozy and safe. Despite that this is, one supposes, where you spend most of your time, where your family or friends reside, where you keep you most treasured possessions.
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Our societal interpretation of home is terribly impersonal, almost technical, a legal domicile, an investment. We’re taught that home has a very specific meaning: your house, your place of residence, on which you pay your utilities, a place to keep your belongings. We go and go and go, so often at others’ behest but occasionally for our own growth and happiness.īut we all, sometimes, need to come home. We seek new experiences and expand our horizons. We go adventuring, on grand quests and smaller travels. We reclaim and we transgress, we battle and we hope, and we save ourselves.
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Today, in the last of our series, we discuss how crucial, how necessary to find our own unique embodiment of home. Our first five posts discussed finding and sharing those speculative and nonfiction works that, respectively, reclaim what it means for us to be from somewhere, to transgress boundaries, expectations, and limitations for all people of marginalized genders, to revolutionize our world through collective action, to resolutely, radically hope, and to save yourself from a world’s worth of others’ expectations.
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Since we featured works on this year’s villainous theme last year, this year’s Sirens Reading Challenge instead showcases 50 works by female, nonbinary, and trans authors that envision that better world-and we’re exploring what that means to us in a series of six posts, using those works as reference points. Sirens is a conference that actively seeks to amplify voices that are pushing boundaries in speculative spaces-and specifically, are pushing those boundaries in the direction of a more inclusive, more empathetic, more just world. But it also gave us the gift of time: a chance, after more than a decade of work, to take a breath and consider what Sirens is today-and what we want it to be tomorrow. Not being able to gather in person with the Sirens community in 2020 was heart-rending.