Seanan McGuire's Wayward Children series is in some ways grappling with the Narnia tradition of fantasy. The children in those books have all traveled to different magical worlds, some of them to become rulers and heroes and some of them just to belong in that society, and then have unhappily ended up back home on earth. The kids themselves are fairly diverse and this sometimes does and sometimes doesn't have anything to do with their experiences traveling the worlds (there's a Mexican-American kid who traveled to a world of living skeletons, for instance, that sounds very Día de Muertos, and a trans boy who got kicked out of fairyland when he told them he couldn't be a princess). They're mostly stories about home, belonging, alienation, and finding your community; I can't decide whether this is actively an alternative to imperialist narrative or if it's sidestepping the whole question.
I like Ursula Le Guin's Ekumen novels (though they're science fiction) as an alternative approach: there's an interplanetary organization, and they would like new planets to join for everyone's mutual benefit, but they will exert absolutely no force to make that happen. Their emissaries just have to go to the new world all alone and allow themselves to be changed by what they learn there.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2019-03-11 12:47 am (UTC)I like Ursula Le Guin's Ekumen novels (though they're science fiction) as an alternative approach: there's an interplanetary organization, and they would like new planets to join for everyone's mutual benefit, but they will exert absolutely no force to make that happen. Their emissaries just have to go to the new world all alone and allow themselves to be changed by what they learn there.