Alex Mell-Taylor interviews Su J Sokol. Xe is an activist and writer of speculative and interstitial fiction. Cycling to Asylum, xyr debut novel, has been republished under the title Invisible Line along with its sequel, Five Points on an Invisible Line. Today, we are discussing the fantastic story ‘Children of Mitzvah,’ which is set in an alternate future where Zionism doesn’t emerge in the Levant, and instead, there is an exodus into space.
The conversation was edited lightly for readability.
Alex Mell-Taylor
So, let’s just jump into it. What’s the inspiration for the story?
Su J. Sokol
Well, I heard about an anthology that had a call for alternate Jewish history. And usually when I hear about a call for an anthology, my immediate reaction is, ‘nah, I don’t have anything for that.’ I don’t usually write on demand in response to an anthology, but it often does get me thinking. And I thought, what if instead of having the State of Israel, the Jewish people built a space station?
But the thing that happens with me sometimes when I do respond to a call for submission is that I end up writing something that can be seen as subverting the theme of the anthology, or at least, responding to it in a way that perhaps the editors did not have in mind. The first time I did this, I just ended up getting the story published elsewhere at a magazine that had a take on politics more similar to my own. So I thought, ‘okay, well, if this doesn’t get published in the alternate Jewish history anthology, maybe I could find another home for it somewhere else.’
But what ended up happening is that at a certain point, I decided to trunk the story. I wrote the story seven or so years ago. I don’t know if you folks know that over there at the magazine, but I wrote it quite a while ago. At some point, I became convinced that the story would not be published as it was. I felt as though a lot of editors who were sympathetic to Zionism or were Jewish—I’m Jewish, by the way–would perhaps have a problem with the premise of the story, although it’s not really what the story is about. At the same time, I thought that editors who were, say, not Jewish or not that interested in Jewish stories, might feel it was a story that was of less interest because it’s too centered on the Jewish experience.
And with all those concerns, I eventually decided to stop trying to submit the story. And then after October 7th, I was like, ‘no, no, no.’ But then, earlier this year, I read this powerful story that a Jewish trans author had written, and I found it to be very courageous, and it made me want to try again to get my story published. And that’s why I ended up submitting it to After the Storm this year.
Alex Mell-Taylor
That’s really interesting because it’s a fantastic story, in my opinion. Obviously, we accepted it. I want to dive into [your critique of Zionism]. Although this is not what the story is directly about, it’s very critical from my perspective of Zionism in Israel. There’s literally a line where your characters are talking about history, and I think one of them is like, ‘Oh, we should have settled there. We should have taken the deal.’ And someone else is like, ‘Well, people were already living there.’
You’re tackling head-on this topic that a lot of people are hesitant to take on. I’m in the United States. Right now, criticizing Zionism has been legally classified as anti-semitism. How do you navigate that tension?
Su J. Sokol
I mean, to me, it’s very, very clear that being against Israel’s policies or politics or even its very existence, depending on where you are on that spectrum, is not the same thing as being anti-Semitic. That’s quite a different thing. I mean, it’s not to say that there aren’t people who might be both those things, of course, but they are not the same. Zionism is a political issue, and the other is just hate for a certain identity. And I think that’s why it’s so important how many Jewish people and Jewish organizations have stood up to speak out against the genocide, just to kind of underline that difference.
So many of those people are still called anti-Semitic, even if they’re Jewish themselves: self-hating Jews, which is another term that gets thrown around. But it’s not out of hatred. It’s kind of more out of love, honestly, a love of justice and a love of peace and of wanting to do right in the world, which I feel like is part of what I was taught growing up about being Jewish–that you were supposed to try to heal the world through acts of social justice and kindness.
Alex Mell-Taylor
And I think you mentioned that directly in the story when you talk about Tikkun Olam and how that is an important principle in this culture. Can you go into that a little bit more?
Su J. Sokol
It’s actually a mystical idea, Tikkun Olam, meaning the healing of the world. In Jewish mysticism, when the world was created, there were cracks that appeared. The world became damaged, and it’s the responsibility of people to try to fix those cracks through acts of social justice.
The main character in the story is going through a b’nai mitzvah. People say bar mitzvah, bat mitzvah, which is gendered, but b’nai mitzvah is the plural form, which some people use as a gender neutral way of putting it. It’s about learning how to become an adult in one’s community. And it’s often part of that ceremony in many communities or congregations to do some sort of community project to show that you’re thinking about the world and your place in it. So for this particular character, xe is trying to reconcile how to do that. And specifically, how do you choose one community over another community? Xe wants to figure out a way to serve all communities. There’s a tension that develops between this character and xyr partner in the ritual, who wants to return to Earth. And even though there are many different communities now in space, living on different space stations in a confederation or communities, they see leaving Earth as an abandonment, almost a moral failure.
This other character is like, ‘we need people going back [to Earth] to help.’
One of the things I was talking about here was the question of deciding to leave a place and go to a new place for a better life. From my work and from my activism, I’ve learned a lot about immigration and about crossing borders. It’s one of my obsessions. And I, myself, am an immigrant. I’m from the United States originally. I’ve lived in Canada now for about 20 years. There’s this tension between, ‘well, the place is messed up, shouldn’t you stay and try to help fix it?’ and ‘maybe it’s better to go somewhere else and try to do something good there’ People sometimes have to flee the places they’re in because they’re in danger. Other people can’t, they don’t have the means. They don’t have the ability to flee to even save themselves, or they’re rejected by the places they’re trying to flee to. Obviously, that’s a very, very big issue right now.
One of the characters in the story is a more recent immigrant to the space station from an Earth that’s really in very, very bad shape. And the first character, xyr family left a long time ago, and xe is much more well-placed in the new community and is doing better in a certain sense. So there’s that tension between the recent immigrant and the person who’s been around for a while. Obviously, we’re talking about a space station, so there is no indigenous population there.
Alex Mell-Taylor
I want to transition a little bit to the conversation of gender. There’s a huge message in this story that’s in the background. You mentioned that there are gender-neutral terms for the coming-of-age ceremony. I noticed a lot of neopronouns for David and Ariel’s characters, xe/xyr. Can you describe your inspiration for that?
Su J. Sokol
I guess I should start by saying that those are very close to the pronouns I use myself. I use xe/xyr pronouns, spelled XE and XYR, slightly different spelling than what I use in my story, but they’re pronounced the same. Like I said, I wrote this story seven or eight years ago, which was before I fully settled on the spelling for my own pronouns.
One thing you might notice in this story is that it’s not necessarily about people being non-binary or being trans. We don’t know anything about that, about these characters’ gender or genders, because they live in a society where they just use gender-neutral pronouns for everybody.
I feel like sometimes things would be simpler and make more sense if we didn’t genderize everything. For instance, you’re filling out a form to get a ticket to take the ferry, and you’re being asked your gender. Why? Why do you need to know this when I’m just trying to get on a little boat that’s taking me from one place to another, and we’re going to be there in 20 minutes? People seem so obsessed with putting one another in categories that really don’t matter for the context they’re in. So I wanted to do a thought experiment involving a world where they’ve dispensed with gendered pronouns, where everyone is just using the same pronouns, and where you read about the characters and you’re not really sure. Is this a girl? Is this a boy? Is this a non-binary person? You just don’t know.
Some years ago, around the time when the books first came out, I read Ann Leckie’s Ancillary series. I found it so interesting because in those books, everyone from a particular planet or culture uses she/her pronouns regardless of their actual gender. When I read that book, I spent the first fifth of the story trying to figure out the characters’ genders, looking for clues. And then I was like, ‘Why are you doing this?’ Why are you obsessed with knowing this? Because our society is obsessed with knowing this, and often I just think it’s kind of useless or gets in the way of more important considerations.
So anyway, that’s why I decided I would write a story where we had these gender-neutral pronouns instead.
Alex Mell-Taylor
That’s fantastic. I want to talk a little bit about the end of the story. So I don’t want to give too much away for people that haven’t read it, but there’s this interesting point where a character is given a pen. I think it’s a pen. What is the significance of that? What is your understanding of that?
Su J. Sokol
Part of it is just funny, because in a typical, traditional bar mitzvah, the gift that you get is a pen. It’s just this thing. And it’s just funny for that reason, because they don’t actually use pens on the space station. So anyone reading it who’s aware of that will hopefully smile.
But what I meant symbolically is for the pen to represent study and thinking, communication and writing, and reading: Ideas. It’s supposed to stand for that. This is a first step. These characters are going through an adulthood ritual. Their community isn’t saying ‘boom, now you’re an adult,’ although that’s the way sometimes people imagine it. The ceremony is more like the start of your journey. And if you’re going to continue on this journey of becoming the most whole person that you could become, you’re going to have to keep on reading and learning and thinking and writing and communicating. That’s what the pen is supposed to signify. And, not coincidentally, that was the profession, the direction that the main character, Ariel, had chosen in xyr adulthood trial.
Alex Mell-Taylor
Now, that’s fantastic. It makes a lot of sense. I want to talk a little bit about the society you created, because it almost feels like a meritocracy. Our characters are doing these tests to almost affirm what types of labor they can provide for their community. They’re not necessarily forced to do one type of labor. They can do other things, but it’s harder. And I find that very interesting, because in a lot of futurism, you will almost get stories that are overly optimistic, and everyone is doing what they want to do all the time. But here, you’re seeing limitations.
Su J. Sokol
It’s actually kind of a critique of a meritocracy, because the society I present in this story is not perfect, by any stretch of the imagination. In my opinion, it’s doing some things better than the societies we actually live in, but that’s one of the things that they may not be doing so well.
The main character, Ariel, is one of those kids who does well in school, who’s good at taking tests, mastering information, obeys the rules for the most part, and usually manages to do pretty well. In xyr mind, that means something, that it makes sense that if you do well on a test for a certain area, that you should do that kind of work. It’s not that I’m saying that’s nonsense either, but is that the only thing that matters? I’m questioning a little bit the way you test for someone’s abilities in an area. We know how flawed that is with IQ tests, and the questions of privilege and societal biases that taint the result.
People who communicate well can also bullshit well, and end up maybe seeming to merit things they don’t really deserve because they’re just good at talking and being convincing. So that’s who this character is. Xe is asked to consider David, a character who doesn’t do so well with that kind of thing, who has something that they’re good at, but it’s not necessarily the thing they want to do. And so is that the way it should work? Do you only do the thing you’re good at? Or can you get to do something that maybe it’s not obvious that you’re good at, but maybe you could be good at it?
That’s why at some point, there’s a line I say, ‘I wonder if there’s some way to measure someone’s passion for work, instead of just if they test well for the work.’ Maybe that should be part of our test of what people get to do. I’m kind of questioning both the meritocracy and being a little bit too closed off and not letting people reach their goals or reach their ‘levels’ because of the gatekeeping involved, because of the fact that tests are flawed sometimes, and maybe are not measuring all the right things.
From the perspective of this character, they get to start questioning their assumptions about stuff. Maybe they’re not as good at certain things as they think. Maybe other people could be better than xe is, even though xe does better on the tests. It’s kind of a learning moment for this character.
Alex Mell-Taylor
I love that. I want to transition now. We’re coming to the end of our interview. Do you have any recommendations for futurist media people should check out? It can be yours, it can be other people’s. If they’re interested in better futures, what should they read?
Su J. Sokol
I mean, I could tell you one of my favorite books in the whole world. and that had a huge influence on me at the time I read it many, many years ago. It’s Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed, whose subtitle is An Ambiguous Utopia. I love that book so much because she had the courage to try to show what a more utopian society would look like in detail. And then also show some of the flaws, some of the challenges, and kind of play it all out in a way that was just marvelous. I don’t think I ever read anything that covers so many aspects of building a better society in such an immersive and thoughtful way.
I remember this really impressed me as a young person thinking about writing, how the characters spoke differently, because of their society and beliefs. For instance, they didn’t use possessive words in the same way. So, taking the example of the pen for my story, they wouldn’t say, “This is my pen”, it would be, “This is the pen that I am using.”
That’s definitely something I would encourage people to read if they haven’t read it yet, if they’re interested in social and political speculative fiction and exploring utopian ideas.
Of course, the other one I might as well recommend as long as I’m plugging Le Guin is the short story, “The Ones Who Walked Away from Omelas” which also touches on some of the things we’ve been talking about today in terms of certain questions like, what’s your responsibility for the costs of a utopia? And on whose back is it built? And also, what’s your responsibility towards that place? And when should you just actually walk away?
If it’s alright, I’ll also take this opportunity to mention that I have two books coming out at the end of the summer: the republication of my very first novel and its sequel. The books are called Invisible Line and Five Points on an Invisible Line, and both are works of socio-political speculative fiction. Readers can watch for news of the launches on my website: www.sujsokol.com, and on social media like Blu Sky and Instagram. You can follow me as well as my publisher, Flame Arrow Publishing.
Alex Mell-Taylor
That is fantastic. It’s been a wonderful conversation. And you can find it at the magazine. We recently published a novella called Bone Rush about a PHd student, trying to prove their thesis by going to a distant, lost colony in outer space. Our next issue, I believe, will be in July. Stay tuned for that.
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