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• 1 media/Stars-NGC-290-Hubble-Space-Telescope.jpg media/octavias brood pic.jpeg 2020-12-16T17:37:37-08:00 "Hollow" by Mia Mingus 26 plain 2021-05-03T10:24:03-07:00

  Found in the anthology Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories From Social Justice Movements

  IDs: Physically Disabled, Queer, Sapphic 
  
  Author IDs: Queer, Physically Disabled, Asian, Transracial Adoptee
  
  CWs: Ableism, disability-based violence, mention of concentration camps and attempted genocide
  
  Mingus’s story, found in the anthology Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction Stories From Social Justice Movements, is set on a world called Hollow. Mingus opens the story with a new “Arrival” on the planet. The “Arrival” is a baby sent from Earth. In this world, people are separated into “Perfects” and “Unperfects” based on (dis)ability. “Unperfects” are sent to Hollow, while “Perfects” get to stay on Earth. Before they were sent to Hollow, “Unperfects” were taken to concentration camps and beaten, tortured, and killed. However, the “Perfects” had a change of heart and decided to forcibly capture all “Unperfects” and send them to Hollow, a recently-discovered world that “Perfects” hoped to make habitable, along with several hundred soldiers to “control” the “Unperfects.” However, things did not go quite as planned. The “Unperfects” rebelled against the “Perfect” soldiers and took Hollow for themselves. They have built a city/commune based in mutual aid and access, including adaptation for multiple disabilities that are represented (wheelchair user, crutch user, cane user, paralyzation, chronic pain, etc). However, with the latest “Arrival” came a note from Earth that more soldiers are on their way. The “Unperfects” must leave their home that they have built in order to go search for a group of “Unperfects” that left to form their own home several years prior. Mingus carefully balances a feeling of hope with a feeling of despair throughout the story as the narrator recounts both the beauty of the world they have built and the horrors they lived through to get there. Mingus asserts that such a world is possible, and that disabled communities are capable of rebelling and creating a just world together. However, she also demonstrates and explores the pain and horror of ableism, and the way it structures our world. Mingus utilizes a dual utopian/dystopian vision of the future to demonstrate that a just and accessible future is possible, but that we must fight in order to get it. In ending the story with the return of the soldiers, Mingus examines the ways that ableism and marginalization cannot ever be escaped, only held off. Yet, she also shows that we, as disabled communities, have the power within us to fight these injustices and create a better world.

  Discussion Questions

  1. How does Mingus empower the disabled community in this story?

  2. Why does Mingus have the soldiers return at all? Why not give us a utopian disabled community and leave it at that? What does the return of the soldiers contribute to the story?

  3. What is the meaning of the second community that left the base years ago? Why do you think they left?