Guest post written by Toto author A. J. Hackwith
A. J. Hackwith(she/they) is a queer writer of fantasy and science fiction living in the woods of the Pacific Northwest with her partner and various pet cryptids. A.J. is the author of a number of fantasy novels, including the acclaimed Novels from Hell’s Library trilogy. She is a graduate of the Viable Paradise writers’ workshop and her work appears in Uncanny magazine and assorted anthologies. Summon A.J. at your own peril with an arcane circle of fountain pens, weird collections of rusted keys, and home-brew D&D accessories.
About Toto: The true hero of The Wizard of Oz takes center stage in this brilliant, delightfully snarky reimagining from the author of The Library of the Unwritten.
When Frank L. Baum sat down to write the The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, his country was in a state of turmoil which might seem very, very familiar to us these days. Economic and international pressures were ripping apart the perceived stability of the middle class. Hotly contested initiatives like the silver standard are referenced in Dorothy’s own silver shoes (changed to ruby for the technicolor movie). Populist leaders are lambasted in characters like the Cowardly Lion and the Emerald City itself can be read as a giant allegory to the capitalist power of Wall Street in Baum’s era. Oz was never a sterile product of pure imagination. The books reflected Baum’s opinions on the realities of the world.
Because storytelling is, by its nature, a political act. There is no such thing as a value neutral story devoid of statement. Anyone who tells you otherwise has simply always had the gracious luck to be the protagonist of their story, to the point the decision has become invisible.
I wrote TOTO because I think some of the most interesting stories lie in the invisibility.
Storytelling is Perspective
In order to tell a story—any story—you have to assume a world. (I say ‘assume’ here rather than create because even the most brief, visceral story must assume a world for action to occur in.) Do you assume a world that is familiar to you? If so, which version of familiar, the world of your childhood, the world of your tired maturity, the world you hope it will be? And once you have a world, your powerful acts are not done. At the very least, any storyteller will have to decide: who has the power to change things in this world? Who has the agency to change—themselves, their fates, the fate of their community?
And after that is all done, you must make the most powerful statement of it all: who do you privilege to be the point of view (often, but not always, the protagonist) in this world? Whose eyes are worth seeing through?
Privilege is a decision about your audience and which character’s experience they will prioritize. Who do you decide is the person whose perspective the reader will experience the world through? Who do you present as worthy of the reader’s empathy, if nothing else?
Even an antagonist, even a wrong-headed antihero or grimdark survivor, has their desires and dimensional characteristics fleshed out by virtue of being the point of view for the reader. You may insist this character is not written to be liked by the reader, but choosing them for the POV is a statement that validates—and values—these character’s experiences. The story of Beauty and the Beast, told from the perspective of one of the enchanted castle servants, would have very different things to say about cruel princes and the redemptive power of love. The story of Icarus, told from the perspective of the birds whose feathers went to his wings, would have slightly different things to say about the folly of ambition.
TOTO is no different. Oz could never stay the same, revisited by a different writer 124 years later because our world did not stay the same. And certainly, there are large differences between Baum, a family man and business owner who ‘dabbled’ in chicken breeding and theater, and myself, a queer woman whose dabblements are more likely to include tech and D&D.
So, perspective in TOTO is a challenging one. Our ‘eyes’ for the story is Toto, Dorothy’s canine companion. Of course, it takes skill to write from an animal’s perspective, but they’re also excellent outsider narrators. Think about it: what’s more portal fantasy than the average dog’s predicament: being adopted by another species and forced to integrate and form relationships in an alien society where you don’t speak the language? Dogs are the perfect fantasy protagonists in that way. Toto isn’t just an outsider to Oz—he’s an outsider to Dorothy’s world, too.
Storytelling is Power
So let me be clear: every story is political, in that it is a series of decisions about power and voice.
My favorite retellings always flip the script. I love nothing more than seeing an old story as new again via the eyes of a background character, a fridged woman, a sidekick, an NPC. To me, that’s where the interesting parts of retellings lie—what did we not see, not feel, not experience, the first time around? What would happen if we gave the ultimate agency of the protagonist to different characters in this world?
When I was in the research phase for TOTO, I naturally re-read the original first 14 Baum Oz novels. (There are upwards of 40 canonical ‘Oz’ novels, but I stuck with the originals written by Baum himself.) I found lots of the delight and cleverness that I remember as a younger reader, but I also found beats of the story (or the absence of) that were discordant in a way that I couldn’t stop thinking about. The Lion’s ‘kingdom’, the rule of the Wizard, the differences of the Emerald City. The army of ‘girls’ who stage a revolution but are treated trivially in the narration. In later books, one character experiences a gender swap by way of magic, and when he indicates a preference for one gender, his desires are dismissed to ‘fix’ it in the finale. Why? What if it didn’t? There’s a story there.
Revisiting older works like this isn’t (solely) an act of criticism—it’s an opportunity.
Power + Perspective = Political
TOTO is an Oz story, written by someone living in this world, this time. Alongside a cozy fantasy, you’ll also find the struggle and challenges of the years I was writing it. You’ll find displaced people, fascists and those that oppose them. You’ll find revolutions and wrongs and the too-comfortable upper class. Disability exists in Oz. Queer & trans people exist in Oz. Differences exist in Oz, and many of the struggles that go with that.
But, to borrow a phrase from Mister Rogers, Helpers exist in Oz too. Hope exists in Oz. Beauty, too, in ways that go deeper than a fairy’s coifed hair and pink dress. History exists in Oz in a way that shows the world hasn’t been waiting around for some outsider from Kansas to come and fix everything. Mutual aid and community exist in Oz. Activism exists in Oz. Small kindnesses exist in Oz. Change exists.
I hope that complexity comes through the pages as you read TOTO, in an Oz that contains both the familiar good and familiar bad. Perhaps that’s the way I hope TOTO is most political. Whenever you struggle with the overwhelming uncertainty and are hurting. Whenever you can only see the over-abundance of bad things…
Remember you’re not in Kansas anymore. And remember there’s good here, too.
