By now, it’s pretty obvious that the days when the fiction shelves were dominated by straight white males are long, long over. Women authors may feel that reviewers review them differently, or literary awards are unfairly distributed, but there’s no question that women authors are more than holding their own in sales in every bookstore fiction section there is. Even better, multi-cultural and marginalized voices are being published as never before.
Yep, there’s a protagonist for that.
When last I wrote of heroes and heroines in our multi-cultural, inclusive literary era, I suggested that heroism in stories has its basis not in heroic actions, in the traditional sense, but in self-awareness, overcoming self-doubt, hidden goodness, and the ability of a hero or heroine to rise. Those are durable and utile traits, I think. They explain certain craft puzzles. Self-awareness, for instance, explains what makes it okay for us to like dark protagonists.
More recently, though, I’ve come to believe that what makes a hero a hero, or a heroine a heroine, is founded not exactly in what they do, but in what we feel about them. If you think about it, characters do not assign themselves the label of “hero” or “heroine”. We do that. They may earn the role, but we award them the title.
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