Whoever claims that young-adult books nowadays are shallow is dead wrong and must be fed to the dragons.
I just finished reading Rainbow Rowell’s “Carry On,” and I think it’s great. I’m in love with the book, not just because it involves a gay vampire/magician (Baz) and his half-dragon boyfriend (Simon, the protagonist), but also because it is rich in social and political subtexts.
Imagine this: magicians who can’t get their sh-t together to resolve their political differences. Very timely, right?
It is so easy to compare the politics of “Carry On” with the kind of politics in the Philippines. Most of us in this country thirst for change, but that thirst is the very reason the word “change” seems to lose its meaning. Perhaps we really want change, but we don’t really have any idea about the kind of change we want to achieve—because, frankly speaking, we are afraid of it. We hate the present system, but we reject blatant efforts to alter it. We lust after transparency, but we despise foul-mouthed leaders. We say we want change, but we also want it fast. We want magic and we want magicians in government who can set up trains in a day and reduce our taxes in a week. (But can they blame us for wanting it fast? No, because we’ve suffered enough. Can we blame ourselves for our sufferings? Uh, we don’t blame ourselves in this country.)
We are so desperate for change that we treat unconventional leaders as political prophets who we expect to save us rather than tell us how to save ourselves.
Real change requires real sacrifices. And in a country like ours, these sacrifices involve letting go of some of our outdated and unfortunately unnecessary traditions.
In “Carry On,” a character named Mitali asks a main character named Davy about how a revolution can protect the pixies from the Coven, the members of which come only from powerful families with very familiar names (read: political dynasties in the Philippines). Mitali huffs: “How is a revolution going to help the pixies? How is throwing aside centuries of tradition and institutional knowledge going to help any of us?” I love how Davy responds. “We’ll build better traditions!” he shouts.
Better traditions. More progressive and useful traditions. New traditions that respect equality and fair distribution of power. Those are what this country needs. We should rethink our futile pride in the cultural distinctions that have been stopping us for centuries from moving forward. We should start looking at the actual use and worth of things rather than their sentimental value. We should stop buying decorative plates and start buying actual plates for actual dining. We should always choose being pragmatic over being superficial and oversentimental.
I don’t really believe that change is coming. Change has always been there, waiting to be realized, willing to improve our lives. We’re just too proud to admit that, in truth, we’re not ready for it.
Ralph Revelar-Sarza, 26, is a metadata provider and editor for a television company.