I read The Handmaid’s Tale when I was in high school, not too long after Margaret Atwood published it. I remember my teacher being really excited about it, how it was an honour to read a social commentary by none other than Atwood herself. And a CANADIAN!! Oh, well, my teacher’s eyes just lit up when she said that. At the time, I wasn’t really into Canadian literature, but this particular book really changed the way I saw the world and the North American political (and cultural and religious and … ) landscape. I became an immediate fan of Atwood’s.
Now that I am teaching this speculative fiction to my IB students, I feel like Atwood’s work has come full circle. Some of my students snickered when I began to draw parallels between the current political climate in America and the Republic of Gilead, but as we discussed it further, they began to see that there could — maybe, kind of, possibly, partially — be some foreshadowing in what Atwood has to say.
I am reminded of an article my friend Tricia shared with me recently. I was moaning about a Tweet I read recently and forgot to “like” (which makes it, of course, more difficult to find in the future). The Tweet in mention made connections between past fascists and the current U.S. president. She shared with me an article she found from The Guardian. It’s nearly 11 years old, but boy, does it ever apply today.
This is why literature is so important.
It secures the yesterday to today.
It makes assumptions, predictions, and prophecies.
It tells us stories to entertain, but also to help build resilience and resistance.
It coaches and coaxes.
It is a mirror into our past and a lens into our future.
Read. The Handmaid’s Tale. Now.
About the Author
“Margaret Atwood was born in 1939 in Ottawa and grew up in northern Ontario, Quebec, and Toronto. She received her undergraduate degree from Victoria College at the University of Toronto and her master’s degree from Radcliffe College.
Throughout her writing career, Margaret Atwood has received numerous awards and honourary degrees. She is the author of more than thirty-five volumes of poetry, children’s literature, fiction, and non-fiction and is perhaps best known for her novels, which include The Edible Woman (1970), The Handmaid’s Tale (1983), The Robber Bride (1994), Alias Grace (1996), and The Blind Assassin, which won the prestigious Booker Prize in 2000. Atwood’s dystopic novel, Oryx and Crake, was published in 2003. The Tent (mini-fictions) and Moral Disorder (short stories) both appeared in 2006. Her most recent volume of poetry, The Door, was published in 2007. Her non-fiction book, Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth in the Massey series, appeared in 2008, and her most recent novel, The Year of the Flood, in the autumn of 2009. Ms. Atwood’s work has been published in more than forty languages, including Farsi, Japanese, Turkish, Finnish, Korean, Icelandic and Estonian.”
(from Goodreads)
