A Time of Great Transformation

hear from next GENA Maguire. I have enjoyed so so much these conversations with these amazing, brilliant fiction writers in thinking about how they are reimagining our world and our climate future. Imagine twenty two hundred Fix Climate Fiction Contest recognizes stories that envision the next one hundred and eighty years of equitable climate progress, imagining intersectional worlds of abundance, adaptation, reform,

and hope. I've really enjoyed reading these stories and interviewing the writers who have such a clear understanding of the climate crisis that we are in, but the possibilities that we have. I think, oftentimes when we are locked in to a cycle of grief, of sadness, of rage, anger and look all things absolutely rightfully call for those emotions.

But then I want to present to you all the other side of that, the ying to the yang, if you will, which is, we cannot imagine a better world, a better future, not for ourselves necessarily because we may not see it, but for the generations that will come behind us. If we are locked into a place of rage and grief, that is a scarcity mindset. And in order to think bigger and greater and innovate and create, we must do so from a place of abundance. And

the only way that you get there is by rest. Right, is by rest, is by relaxation, is by tending to ourselves and what it is that we actually can control. Because here's the thing, friends, if there is nothing else that you realize over the last three years of living inside of a global health pandemic and the meltdown of our democracy, is that everything outside of us we don't really have control over. We vote, we march, we give money if we can, we volunteer, and we give our times.

But then after that we must put it down, put the weight down right, and do things that are nurturing, that are wholesome, that feel good for ourselves and those that we love around us. We can't marinate in despair and think that through that somehow by being committed to grief and misery, that change is going to happen. Rest

is part of the resistance. Imagination, creativity, love, joy is part of the resistance because when you think about what the opposition wants, they want cruelty, they want devastation, they want oppression. We don't have to give it to them.

So what I love about this story series and this contest was taking something that is so huge of a problem, so huge of an obstacle in our lives, which is climate change, and not just being focused on our impending doom, but imagining what happens when the systems that we believe that could never fall do what can come in its place? Right, I think about the phoenix rising from the ashes. I

think about a lotus flower pulling itself through mud. I think about you know how sometimes breakdowns make room for a breakthrough, and that what is required in this moment is a shift in perspective, is a shift and how we decide to take information in and what we decide to do with it. Because each of us are powerful, right, each of us are powerful in in our own ways. And the thing that we are able to control is how we show up right in all of the moments

of our lives. I want to give you an example and tell you a little anecdote. The other day, one of one of my friends received bad news that she had seriously broken fractured her foot, broken it and she had been walking on it and you know, there had been swelling, but she thought it was from a prior injury and not that she had had a new one. So she goes to the doctor. They do an X ray and lo and behold, Yes it's broken, and it

is a bad break. And all that is playing through her mind is the fact that she has finally been back in a workout plan, back feeling good about moving her body and really like excited right and proud of

herself about, you know, the moves that she's making. And as she sat in the doctor's office, she burst into tears because all she could think about was that all of the progress that she had made and the way that she was feeling good was now gone because she was going to be a mobile She couldn't even with a walking boot. The doctor is like, the break is really bad, and we need you to not walk at all for the next two weeks and then we can

assess whether or not you need surgery. So as she's relaying this to me, I hear the pain in her voice. And if you all remember earlier, you know, at the beginning of summer, I broke my toe, shattered it in two places. Most people that break a toe we're in a boot for four to six weeks. I was in one for ten the entirety of the summer, and then when I finally did get it off, I would get COVID the month later. So it was quite a shit summer. So I understood her angst and the pain that she

was going through, but I offered this. I said, you know, I recognize how upsetting this is. I know that you have been really excited about all the work that you've been doing, all the work you've been putting into your fitness, and I'm really proud of you. But I want to offer something. Maybe you get with your trainer and you do some chair workouts. Maybe you know, go on YouTube and you see what kind of seated fitness you can

be doing, seated pilate, seated yoga. You know, I told her that when I started to get really like frustrated with the fact that this boot was not coming off of my own foot, I started to do seated shadow boxing because it just made me feel better to just work up a little bit of a sweat. So today I received a text from my friend that said, my trainer and I did a really amazing seated workout today. Thank you so much for reminding me not to quit

and to just adjust. And that's the thing that that's the message, honestly that I'm carrying for the end of this year and for the rest of my life. Frankly, quitting should never be an option, not quitting on our democracy, not quitting on our planet, not quitting on ourselves. We just need to adjust. We need to adjust our perspective, open up our hearts and adjust, you know, our mindset and our ability to expand our thought and our way of being. And when we do so, things don't seem

so bad. You can take them in pieces. And so I think that the beauty of this series Imagine twenty two hundred offers us real insight through creativity, through fiction, the ways in which we can create a better and more symbiotic relationship with the planet. With the animals, with the air, with the water, with the land, and that

it doesn't have to be a zero sum probability. So coming up next, friends, my conversation with Gena McGuire about her story By the Skin of Your Teeth amid the Sharks and the Waves of Hawaii, Two people discover something important about themselves and each other, Folks. I am very

excited to welcome to wok F Daily. For the very first time, we have been in conversation, folks, with some of the finalist in the Imagine twenty two hundred uh fixes Climate Fiction contest, which recognizes stories that envision the next one hundred and eighty years of equitable climate progress, imagining intersectional world of abundance, adaptation, reform and hope. And today I'm very excited to be with the second place winner, Gina McGuire, whose story is entitled By the Skin of

Your Teeth amid the Sharks and Waves of Hawaii. Two people discover something important about themselves and each other. Gina, Welcome, joke Fum. You know I want folks who have been listening to your other Grist colleagues to get an understanding from you first about the themes surrounding your your story

and congratulations on your second place. When um, this story itself will be linked in the episode in the notes so that folks can absolutely listen to this interview and then go ahead, uh and read or listen to your piece. But can you can you talk to us about about the themes around your story? Yeah? So, UM, I love what Grist is doing about imagining the next one hundred

you know, eighty years twenty two hundred and UM. For me, when I was you know, when you think about climate futures, and that's like the basic prompt, right, and um, it's often I think fairly bleak futures that we often are envisioning, right. And so for me, I'm both Polish and Native Hawaiian. I grew up in Hawaii. But when I envisioned the future and and I and you know, you don't have that very hopeful feeling going into it, and you're like, well,

how do I write something that's not just dark? Um? And so when I understand doing it, well, I I'm thinking about you know, indigenous people's, about native people's, Native Hawaiian, um, a lot of Pacific islanders, and for us climate futures, I feel aren't in the future, Like, it's not. It's something that we're dealing with right now. And if we think about people in Boganville or Cure Boss, even in Hawaii, we're seeing it, and we have these histories of adaptation

and and resilience and strength. And so what I really wanted to bring forward into my fiction my future is what if we change the narrative from like, from putting Native people as like adapting to having some kind of sovereignty over their own future. And so in this story it's based in Hawaii and oev characters that I'm not talking about political sovereignty necessarily, but having the decision and the ability to make your own decisions for your own aina of land. And see, that was my hope for

that story. So yeah, that's kind of that was what drove it. And then in the midst of all of that, I bringing forward grief and unrequited love and angst and bringing that all together, So trying to speak across I write kind of on behalf of and for Native peoples. That's kind of my whole thing, But trying to create characters and emotions that are speak to the human condition and are kind of I don't want to say universal things that regardless of your background, hopefully you can like

you feel it. So, yeah, that's the story. I thought that your story was so beautiful one the imagery that it created. And again, folks, the story is by the skin of your teeth, the imagery that it created of being on this beautiful, vast ocean, of being a protector

and a guardian of the of the largest mammals. Right, there was a symbiotic nature that was being presented that I think, you know, I guess my question for you is this is that indigenous culture and practice is something that colonizers extinguished, right kind of in this way of eye alone can fix this. And so your primitive indigenous way of thinking primitive, I use in quotation marks, we

don't need. Yeah, And I think that what we are seeing and what we are living in and the reality that we're living in, as as as the climate crisis is now here, it was impending, you know twenty years ago. It is now literally on our shores, in our fields, you know, in these fires, hurricanes, tornadoes, in the warming seas.

Talk to me about this, this symbiotic relationship that you created, UM with these guardians, Um and these and these waterways and how it is entwined in both the world that you were creating but also the world that you that you live in as a as a as a native. Yeah, now that's a really beautiful question. And um, all different, I mean, indigenous culture is all very different. So I'll just talk about it from an OIV kind of standpoint. But, um, this idea of kinship, and I don't even like I work.

I'm a PhD student and I also work for the Four Service, so I work in environmental science and then create. I'm trying to be a creative writer. But I love it. I love that. That's amazing. Thank you trying to juggle these um these different worlds and like you just said, like you know, I don't want to call it Western science, but often not being able to speak to or understand necessarily that the way that the story ends, right is

the ocean itself. The waves are kind of acknowledging the characters and their ask for help, and then we have these really kin based relationships and ancestral relationships with sharks in the story. So that doesn't translate very easily when we're talking about environmental science. Um, but I think we need more of it and we need more dialogue between the two. Also, just this idea I like the word that you use, but this idea of like a symbiotic relationship.

I want to say win win, But there there has to be ways right that people aren't like the bad guys an environment quite often, you know, it's like we talk about pollution and deforestation over fishing, they're all and

those are all anthropogenic harmships on the environment. And So what I love about fiction and what I love about writing as opposed to doing maybe hardcore science, is that like we can imagine these futures or kind of be a little bit more radical with thinking about care based relationships and what it means to have one on one relationships with individual places and creatures and things like that.

So yeah, I love that question. I don't know how we bring more of that into like the real world, but that's what I would love to keep writing about and see happening, you know. I it's so interesting to me because I feel like we always tend to look at the problem as being too big to be able

to imagine possibilities outside of what we can see. And I think that the beauty of fiction writing, particularly around futurism, is giving a freedom, um to the reality that you exist in as a PhD student, Like this is the reality, right, and if I had the ability to imagine something different, something great, or something beyond fear right, which I think is also something that you, um that is talked about in in in your story is this you know, what is fear? Um? And and how fear how fear is

translated differently among people. So I want to also like ask you, you know, with your main characters and this and this, um, what becomes a love story? UM? What what was it about? You know? And trying not to give too much away, but what is it about the conversation around fear and around love that you felt necessary for your peace? I love that question. UM. I think personally I have me but like um, you know I was,

I have been going through unrequitted love. So identifying both on the other on the um our male character side of like you know, I loved this person for like forever and you don't know it. And I think that is also almost a metaphor for the the the sea and the land and like having all of that love for us um, and then my female character UM, just chalk full of grief and rage and just like I'm not I don't given like just like I'm not afraid

of anything because I've already lost it all. And so I think, UM, kind of having these two clashing kind of narrative between this hopeful romantic energy UM, and I think that reflects some of of my own like hopeful romantic energy for our futures and then this awful grief and rage UM. And I feel like I've been in that state for a while thinking about, you know, our environmental futures. And so it's kind of a battle of

the two UM metaphorically and like big picture UM. And so then the coming together at the end and the having the ocean and her husband having passed away like picking opehe so like him being a part of that UM and having the ancestral realm and the spirit realm and the ocean realm all kind of acknowledging that union of both of those energies. I think big pictures kind of telling for what we need both of those things going forward, UM, in in our interactions with the environment

and with each other. So yeah, I don't know if I answered that, no, you did, you did in the stark reality of what we are being presented with, which is catastrophe, right, like that is. I don't think that I'm hyperbolic to say that when every hurricane, fire and tornado season is more historic than the last, that we

are in a problematic zone. I don't think that it's crazy that at the time of this recording, I woke up to seventy two degree temperatures in New York on November in November, right, and that is and that is that has been the norm. It's my birthday month and my birthday week. It has been the norm over the last ten years. I don't remember wearing I haven't worn a coat or a scar for anything on my birthday for the last several years. Wow, Because it has been

roughly in the high sixties or seventies in November. So when I when I say that, to say that, you know, we're living at a time of great transformation. And I guess I want to get a sense from you where you live in a place that, in many people's minds, right is the idealic you know, center of beauty and of environmentalism and a forestry and waterfalls and rainbows and all of these things. Are what are the sentiments, right, the lived realities of a place that is both a

part of and removed from mainland. And so because of being removed from mainland and situated in the sea, will be the first part, you know, of the United States outside of Florida and you know, in the Key and the southern coastal regions to be adversely affected. Yeah, by this great transformation that we're in. So can you give

us a perspective or some insight into what those feelings are? Yeah? No, I love your I mean talking about New York being seventy two degrees this morning, I'm like, oh my goodness, Yeah, it's real, and yeah, I think you know, I struggle. I go back and forth because we are removed from the mainland. We are very We're one of the most isolated places in the world. We're surrounded by this amazing ocean, which is both kind of a climate stabilizer, but then

we're also dealing with sea level rise. And then when you put that like reality into conversation and combination with the legacies of I don't want to say colonialism, but the legacies of why Kiki used to be a wetland like to be a marsh kind of area, and they brought in sand. They continue to bring in sand to make this little fairy tale place for tourists, which is awesome that it's kind of concentrated in one place, it's everywhere. But you know, um, when you do sea level rise

projections for Waikiki, it's that whole area. Um, you talk about parking structures being underwater. And so we've dramatically altered, altered these island spaces in ways that are not compatible, are rigid and just not not right. And then we put it into combination with things like we've got some of the nations I think, um, I don't quote me on this, but you know, thousands of cesspools which we don't have centralized sewage treatment in a lot of places

in Hawaii. So then we're thinking about our groundwater resources and sea level rise an inundation of our ground water. Um. And if we're talking about you know, rainfall, a lot of people are on catchment here. So there's a lot of like decentralized systems that I don't think are prepared to to live in that future yet. And so being in a way and being remote, I think we have awesome opportunity, and like you said, it's kind of this

ideal place. I think we are one of the people who people states in the US that are we have a carbon neutrality goal trying to like start on this pathway. But yeah, it's gonna be rough, and there's a lot of um legacies and histories that are gonna contribute to it being a really rough transition for sure. Yeah, so it's not it's not as maybe ideal as maybe people think it is. But yeah, and I think I mean but that that you know that that's kind of the point.

And I'm so glad that you brought it to the forefront because I think that oftentimes we look at these areas that mainland people in many countries go to visit, right, and and think like, oh, it's a respite for them from you know, the inundation of city life, mainland life, you know, what have you. But we are not connecting the dots when we're talking about climate change where we're talking about the climate crisis to actual people, yeah, and to how it is affecting actual people and how it

will ultimately affect all of us. And so I wonder, like in your PhD program, um, you know, as and your work with UM with the forestry. Like, as you're looking at how we are dealing with these issues, do you see any optimism? Yes, yeah, yes, yeah for sure. And I think kind of going back to like the creative writing lens, but then also the for street lens. I think for me, it's about looking backwards to look forward.

And so I am optimistic. I think, you know, the we've got some really great minds thinking together, and but I think the shift that needs to happen that hasn't happened yet maybe is I feel like it's easy to

be like, oh, yeah, it's big corporations. I don't have control over it, like it's beyond me, or you know, getting political will to make certain things happen, like getting the funding for a sewage treatment plant or something like that, or stopping before station that all of these issues are very can be very abstract and even for like a government agency or a nonprofit that's trying to tackle these issues.

And so thinking more on what is my kuliana, which in Hawaiian is just you have a right but also you have a privilege to something, but it's dependent on hard to translate, but your responsibility and so I think for me is kind of each person has a kuliana to something right, and so that's hard to do when people are working forty hours a week and like they've got their kids and bills and jobs, and but yeah, I think it's gonna have to start on a much

more individual, ancestral and place based kind of arena. And then the question for people like me who work in environmental science is how do we empower and make that possible for other people? But that's where I see the optimism inclinment futures. But yeah, Gina, why do you think that it is important for contests like Grists, Fixed Labs contest around imagining an abundant future? Why do you think that that is important, particularly around futurism science fiction, to

imagine abundance in our future. Yeah, I mean, I think it's really easy to go for the dystopian. And I think, you know, even in this kind of competition, we we all, myself included, kind of have some kind of dystopian future, like we're all like it's not it's dark, but something like Grist where they're genuinely in the prompt saying we need to be hopeful, we need to be creative. Let's think about how our futures can be abundant, abundant in not just resources or but abundant enjoy in spirit and

thinking what that looks like. So I think it's super important. And I think when we need to be radical first and then by doing things like this, having that creative energy or these ideas, whether they're insane contraptions or different kind of conservation programs or companies that are business smart

art not business smart, climate energy smart. So I think once we have that radical, creative like energy out there, maybe we can inspire people or there's a spark from one of them that can can lead to something tangible and concrete action. So I think we need the I don't want to say the crazies, but we need the visionaries out there to come up with these creative, awesome ideas. And I'm so grateful that Grist does this because it's

so exciting. Like I'm still reading through everybody's stories. I haven't gotten through everybody's but like Seven Sisters by m Susan K. Quinn, I was like, I'm never going to drink a cup of tea the same way like again. Ever, it's just like you three stories alter you. And that's what good art does. So I think, UM, yeah, I'm

super grateful for Grist for doing it. You know, I think that what is really important in times of great angst uh and instability is to really dive into art, is to really like when the present finds itself UM at a place of great friction. It is really important to get to a place of imagination UM. Because I think that it's I think it's really easy. I say this to my listeners all the time. I, you know, uh, vacillate between rage consistently and rest. And I think that

that I do all the time. And and rest is where the creativity comes. You can't create in a place of rage because it is restricting. It is it is moving from a place of scarcity. And I think that what I've loved about your story, what I loved about the stories of the last few authors that we have had on UM is I finish feeling abundant. I finish

feeling I finished feeling really power. So my last question for you is what are you hoping that folks you know listening to woke up and deciding that they want to delve into all of the amazing Stories a part of Imagine twenty two hundred. But what are your hopes that people take away from this kind of this kind

of abundant, radical futurist storytelling. So many things, but I hope that people, I hope they do dive into the collection and read these stories and then realize that they everybody, we each have our own story and our own contribution

and our own hopes for the future. And so I think just acknowledging, like what do you even want to see and pick envisioning that because I feel like a lot of times it's hard to look past this year or five years, but when you start pushing that timeline to two hundred years, your grandchildren's grandchildren, like, you know, thinking, I hope it helps people to think long term, big picture, both forward looking and backward looking, thinking about their genealogies,

who they are, their stories, their kupuna, their ancestors, elder stories, because there's value there and then and and thinking about their own, yeah, their own narratives as having value and meaning. And so I hope that's what this collection empowers um and just I hope it gives people hope because I feel like it's so easy to lose hope UM. And yeah,

I just I hope. I hope other people find some kind of some threat or star that they can follow and navigate towards something big, big feature UM thinking So yeah, Well, Gina, I just I want to thank you for making the time to join us on weka APP. I want to thank you for this beautiful for this beautiful writing, UM, and I hope to read more of your work well into the future because it left me uplifted. M folks.

The story is by the skin of your teeth and it is part of Imagine twenty two hundred fixes um Futurist Creative Writing Contest, and we will link to to the story to Gina's story in the in the notes and Gina, thank you so much and I hope that you'll come back having me. I appreciate it. That is it for me today, dear friends on woke a app as always, Power to the people and to all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck.