Representation is Hospitality For the Shalomsick
Why a diverse cast in Amazon Prime's Rings of Power matters so much
Growing up, the stories that I got lost in would often crack between the collision of my imagination and the reality of my biracial Korean American face. As it goes for many people of color who grew up without mirrors in leadership, media, fairy tales, and other art forms, not seeing ourselves spoke a consistent, loud and clear message about our value in the world. Realizing how my skin color and hair texture would’ve stood out amongst the Pevensies, or how I wouldn’t have fit in on Prince Edward Island, in Rivendell, or at the Little House on the Prairie, was a constant reminder of my otherness and how it felt like a liability in life.
And isn’t that just how so many people of color have felt as we’ve lived with so little ethnic and racial representation for most of our lives? If you know me, you’ve heard me talk about why representation matters and you know how much this matters to me. I’ve written about it here and here .
Representation is a practice of hospitality. It’s an invitation inside, past the porch and the pain of tokenization. It’s a place intentionally saved at the table in the stories I grew up longing to be part of.
I’m no Tolkien expert, but I feel a connection to the tensions of ache and longing I felt within his works. Alongside of his creativity and brilliance, I sense a familiarity with sadness, a belief in the power of beauty and friendship, layers of shalomsickness, a desire to welcome strangers in, and be welcomed in as one. No one but Tolkien can truly say how Tolkien would feel about a racially diverse cast in a television series made about the characters and worlds he created. Based on a few letters he wrote, some believe his intention was to create a fantastical mythology for England in the stories that surround Middle Earth, but others disagree with that conclusion, uncomfortable with making it a rigid claim to cling to based on a few less-than-clear letters he wrote.
As a writer, a creative thinker, and a human being who is always learning, making mistakes and growing, I can attest to the fact that initial intentions for creative work are often fluid and change with time, growth, others’ involvement, what’s happening in the world, and experience. What I often sit down to write becomes something different than I expected — as if it was birthed into it’s own purpose.
Perhaps Tolkien would feel a little shocked by the creative renditions others have made based on his work. It’s fair to say that maybe he would be resistant or even afraid of it, the way my paternal grandparents were when my white dad brought my Korean mom to their home to introduce her as his girlfriend for the first time. For the first time, they were forced to consider the possibility of their family story growing into something they hadn’t imagined before.
Maybe Tolkein would need a minute to adjust to what he never imagined in his lifetime, and yet, I wonder if he would not only adjust, but maybe even become overwhelmingly happy about how far-reaching his stories have become. Beyond his life and the wide expanse of his vast imagination—his creativity, characters, and creatures, have stretched over oceans and through cultures and generations that aren’t his. Through his written worlds, our own imaginative worlds have been impacted. We’ve been fed stories with people who are diverse and sometimes hate and exclude one another. There are groups of created races in his stories whose divisions go back ages. There are friendships tested and forged through difficulty and deep division, despite hierarchies, systems of oppression, power, and evil at work — and sometimes the healing needed between them takes entire generations to be fulfilled.
I find deep ache for shalom in diversity strung throughout the worlds Tolkien created.
The sliver of representation of people of color on-screen lately, and truly, it’s only a tiny sliver or paper-cut in comparison to what it’s always been before, is an invitation sent straight to my younger self. It’s an affirmation speaking back to many of us from the mirrors we stared into, wishing we had different faces looking back at us. It’s a love letter sliding under the door of my childhood room where I read, sprawled out on the floor, wishing I could fall into the sentences on the page and be included in the story or be welcomed to share my own.
Seeing the diverse, incredibly talented cast in the Rings of Power is hospitality and healing. It’s an expansion of what was with creative edits of hope and vision towards all that can be.
Grateful and shalomsick (and ready to see an Asian elf),
Are you watching Rings of Power? Leave a comment and tell me what you think of it.
I’ve been loving Rings of Power and seeing more BIPOC in the cast and as extras! I did notice an Asian man in one of the scenes from this past episode!
(Spoiler: When Halbrand is buying drinks for the Númenoreans, there’s an Asian man smiling and drinking in the immediate background!)