It may not work out. Have hope anyway.

stories of hope

The destiny of the world is determined by the stories it loves and believes in.

-Harold Clark Goddard

If I have one regret about Hope: A User’s Manual, it’s that it doesn’t include a quote that’s come to mean a lot to me since I heard it some twenty years ago. This is the piece of wisdom that I probably call up the most, listening to it whenever I need it—which has been often in the past several years. But try as I might, I never found the right place for it in the manuscript.

Image by Soni Alcorn-Hender

Take it away Sam, speaking to Frodo midway through the Lord of the Rings trilogy when the task seems too impossible:

(You can compare the text of the speech above with how Tolkien originally rendered it here.)

This is hopepunk, a science-fiction genre and a philosophy that, I believe, provides the best sustenance for living in an age of creeping authoritarianism, mass shootings, climate catastrophe, and well, everything. 

The term was coined in 2017 by fantasy writer Alexandra Rowland. Vox has a pretty good explainer:

Hopepunk is as much a mood and a spirit as a definable literary movement, a narrative message of “keep fighting, no matter what.” If that seems too broad — after all, aren’t all fictional characters fighting for something? — then consider the concept of hope itself, with all the implications of love, kindness, and faith in humanity it encompasses.

Now, picture that swath of comfy ideas, not as a brightly optimistic state of being, but as an active political choice, made with full self-awareness that things might be bleak or even frankly hopeless, but you’re going to keep hoping, loving, being kind nonetheless.

Sam and Frodo embody hopepunk—persisting not because they have high hopes of success, but as a testimony to the good in the world, good that may not prevail, but is worth fighting for. This theme permeates the story, especially on the screen. King Theoden leads his people into battle, knowing the enemy outnumbers them, and says, “If this is to be our end, then I would have them make such an end, as to be worthy of remembrance.” 

Hopepunk is John Lewis on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, walking into potential doom in a necktie and tan trench coat, with a toothbrush, books, and fruit in his backpack. But Hopepunk is also the legions of unnamed people who housed activists in their homes, baked for them, attended meetings, did clerical work. (Some of them come to be named; listen to this wonderful reflection from Willie Pearl Mackey King, an administrative staff person for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, who had the daunting job of assembling scribblings on edges of newspaper, toilet paper, and whatever else was available, to put together what we know as the Letter from a Birmingham Jail.)

Hopepunk is what Heather Cox Richardson wrote about in commemoration of MLK day in 2024: “I came to believe that heroism is neither being perfect, nor doing something spectacular. In fact, it’s just the opposite: it’s regular, flawed human beings choosing to put others before themselves, even at great cost, even if no one will ever know, even as they realize the walls might be closing in around them.” [emphasis added] 

Hopepunk is in climate experts like Kendra Pierre-Louis, who advocates for action against climate change even if it’s too late to avoid the worst: “I’m very much shaped in the idea that there’s a right thing to do and a wrong thing to do,” she told an interviewer not long ago. “And why would I do the wrong thing just because doing the right thing may not get the outcome that I’m looking for?”

Hopepunk has trickster energy—when you’re outmatched, you still have your creativity to gum up the gears of power. It’s in the so-called Garbage Offensive, a demonstration by Puerto Rican young people in New York City to demand that the city start picking up trash in their neighborhood.¹ It’s in teens I know here in Virginia, flooding a tip line set up by the governor to report educators using “inherently divisive teaching practices.”

And yes, hopepunk is Jesus. Water into wine, the Good Samaritan, parables with everyday items at the center. The last shall be first, which he learned from his mama. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. The Last Supper: the final meal of a death row inmate.² Words of forgiveness from the cross. I share Kate Bowler’s love of the season of Lent, when the Church acknowledges what it’s like to be on the losing team. After centuries of colonialism and triumphalist Christianity, to say nothing of the current surge of Christian nationalism, we have a lot of deconstructing to do. Thankfully, all the ingredients are there. They were there from the very beginning; we’ve just forgotten.

Ayisha Siddiqa wrote, “What if the future is soft and revolution is so kind that there is no end to us in sight.” So begins a poem called On Another Panel about Climate, They Ask Me to Sell the Future and All I’ve Got is a Love Poem. In the end, that’s all we’ve got: a love poem. But it’s enough—not enough for success as we define it, but enough to fuel the struggle. And that, in the end, gives us a story worth giving our lives to.

Your Turn

• What books, songs, movies, TV–or maybe characters within those stories–come to mind when you think about this idea of hopepunk?

• What are you finding worth giving your life to these days? And what’s saving your life these days? 

1. With gratitude to Miguel de la Torre and his book Embracing Hopelessness.

2. Thanks to my friend Larissa Kwong Abazia for this thought.