Imagination vs Reality in Literature

Imagination vs Reality in Literature “Aren’t grown-ups supposed to read realistic fiction? What good are these wild tales, anyway?” (“Speculative” 200). In author Vandana Singh’s “A Speculative Manifesto”, she describes how important speculative fiction is in the education of students in literature. Speculative fiction is combination of several different genres of literature, such as mystery, science fiction, historical fiction and fantasy. Vandana Singh asks in her manifesto if education is based on the truth then “[w]hy not discard the old myths, legends, tall tales, and their modern counterparts, as we discard other childish things” (200). Vandana Singh believes that both children and adults need the literature for their imagination. In the manifesto, she describes who imagination allows us as humans to dream. Although science fiction and fantasy can also help ones with their imagination, through our imagination we can make up “ingenious thought-experiments, through asking ‘what-if’ questions and attempt[] to answer them” (202). According to Vandana Singh, speculative fiction allows us to question our lives and “live out possible futures before we come to them” (202). Speculative fiction and feminist literature can be intertwined together to make stories as well. Vandana Singh uses a blend of these two literature genres in order to write her short story The Woman Who Thought She Was A Planet. Although these two genres may be viewed as two separate pieces of literature, Vandana Singh uses her imagination and her background in her Indian culture to create the story.
In one of Vandana Singh’s short stories, The Woman Who Thought She Was A Planet, she uses her speculative fiction beliefs and her imagination to describe a story about a woman going through “changes”. This story starts off at the kitchen table where Ramnath Mishra is partaking in his usual morning routine when his wife announced, “’I know at last what I am. I am a planet’” (39). Shocked

Cited: Singh, Vandana. A Speculative Manifesto. Framingham: n.p., 2008. 200-04. Print. Singh, Vandana. The Woman Who Thought She Was a Planet: And Other Stories. New Delhi, India: Zubaan, in Collaboration with Penguin India, 2008. 39-54. Print. Tan, Charles. "The World SF Blog." The World SF Blog. The World SF Blog, 2012. Web. 10 Oct. 2013. .