The Eyes of the Earth By Tamara Pearson Tehom Center Publishing, 2024 Empire and injustice are not abstract concepts — they shape our daily lives. Awareness alone won't change that. We can read the news, digest the facts, but change requires more than information.
It demands emotional connection, imagination, a vision for something different and a willingness to dismantle the systems that uphold these injustices. Storytelling is crucial in this process. It allows us to understand and challenge the status quo, to resist and to create the futures we need.
In this conversation, we explore the radical potential of fiction for resisting empire and injustice with Tamara Pearson, an Australian-Mexican journalist, editor, activist and author whose work spans investigative journalism and literary fiction. She has long written about the intersections of global inequality, imperialism, migration and ecological destruction, with a particular focus on the United States's unhealthy relationship with Latin America. Her newest novel, The Eyes of the Earth, is a heart-opening and captivating work of magical realism set in Mexico City, where the story of an elderly refugee — unnoticed, quietly heroic and determined to find a bed to finally rest in — unfolds amid a city beset by the forces of empire.
In the novel, Pearson invites us to witness unseen magic and beauty as the protagonist navigates a world built on systemic violence, surprising everyone by turning it upside down. The Eyes of.
