A Wild and Unremarkable Thing
Guest Post
The Struggle of Identity and Self Acceptance in YA Fantasy – AWAUT
In AWAUT, Cayda is living in a patriarchal society, which is fairly typical in historical fantasy. After her family is thrust into poverty, her father decides to raise her as a boy and train her to slay a dragon, so she can one day bring home riches as a dragon-slayer. (Girls aren’t allowed to register as champions, and their rewards will be revoked if their gender is discovered post-slaying.) So from a very young age, Cayda is trained not only to be champion, but also to be a boy. Her gender is essentially assigned by her father, and her identity struggle goes into overdrive when the feminine aspects of her identity begin to emerge, particularly after she leaves home and gains some distance from the family she’s trying to save. To deal, she essentially separates herself into two separate people, calling her feminine self by her true name, Cayda, and her masculine self Cody.
For some people, gender identity is very clear. For others, gender is a more fluid concept. I would say Cayda falls into the latter category, but she struggles to appreciate the fact that she can converge the masculine and feminine aspects of her identity into one, congruent sense of self. On the outside, she’s capable, callous, self-assured, but beneath the surface, she’s struggling. For Cayda, an enormous part of her journey to self-acceptance involves expanding her cultural experience (leaving her small town), and meeting other characters who accept and admire her.
Raven C. Eckman 