There is the myth of being forever young — but what about the forever that comes after that? P.H. Low has given this some thought in These Deathless Shores, and in this Big Idea, is here to speculate about what comes after, and what it means for those who live it.
P.H. LOW:
Our culture is obsessed with childhood. The romantic ideal of it, anyway—as this innocent, pure, magical state that’s a tragedy to lose. You hear it in the wails of book banners (think of the children!); see it in intense skincare routines and workout regimens and TikTok wars where millennials are burned for looking (gasp!) older than twenty.
And it’s everywhere in fiction — at least the books I read growing up, which pitted downtrodden but plucky kids and teens against adults who were, if not dead parents or outright villains, then dull bureaucrats, cruel teachers, or neglectful guardians, too cowardly or stodgy or just disappointing to be heroes — or even fully people. As J. M. Barrie, the original creator of Peter Pan, learned when his older brother David died in a skating accident at age thirteen — when little James dressed in David’s clothes to comfort their depressed mother, despite his own inevitable growing-up, year by year — to die as a child is to stay perfect forever. To become an adult is to stop deserving love.
But what happens when your childhood falls short of the ideal — especially, as Cathy Park Hong writes about in Minor Feelings, if you’re queer and/or BIPOC and/or have a disability,* and your youth is refracted through the lens of an idyll you’re told you should have but never receive? What happens when you age straight from victimhood into villainy?
Do you deserve magic at all? Do you even deserve your own narrative?…
These Deathless Shores: Amazon (US)|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop| Powell’s|Blackwells|Waterstones
Source: The Big Idea: P.H. Low
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