I discovered Tamora Pierce’s books as a girl, in my library, after school.

By then, I had read loads of epic and heroic fantasy…and I had internalized a pattern: boys got to be the Chosen Ones who would ride dragons and defeat evil, while girls—common-born or royalty or exotic foreigner—were merely the pretty (always, always, they were absurdly beautiful) trophies the hero collected at the end.

That sucked.

Here I was, fortunate enough to be born in the 1980s, living in a country and society where women had the same rights as men, demonstrably just as smart and capable as any of the boys in my class but also demonstrably not conventionally attractive. Constantly being bombarded by popular media and teen magazines to only care about “being hot” to “get a guy” and to swoon over boys.

(Because what else was I supposed to do? Have life ambitions that weren’t marriage and children? Pffft! What a waste of a perfectly good womb!)

I hated that. I would retreat into my fantasy books in hopes of finding escape and STILL end up in secondary worlds where all sorts of impossible things are real—except, apparently, for who got to be the hero.

Heroes: Still male. Still white. Still the center of the universe.

The girls: Still perpetuating the same tired Disney-fied gender roles.

That all changed the day I discovered Alanna: The First Adventure.

(Sidebar: can I just highlight how wonderful it was that the book was subtitled “The First Adventure”? It was a subtle but important word choice I didn’t notice back then, but I appreciate now.)

Alanna of Trebond, Keladry of Mindelan, Veralidaine Sarrasri—they proved girls didn’t have to be meek and demure and sit at home waiting for boys and men to save the kingdom. They stepped up when they needed to, and they got the job done.

Tamora Pierce’s books are full of girls with ambitions greater than the roles their society allowed them. Girls who refuse to be limited by their gender. Girls who grow into women who will not be defined by one dimensional labels, like “daughter” or “mother” or “wife”, but who also do not outright reject societal ideas of femininity for the sake of being “not like other girls”.

Pierce also didn’t just handwave away all the inconvenient parts of being born female. Periods got page time—and not as the inciting incident for an arranged marriage plot, or as a plot device to avoid sexual assault! Periods were bloody (hah) and painful (double hah) nuisances that actively interfered with her protagonists’ studying and career opportunities and Alanna and Kel and Daine couldn’t simply snap their fingers and get rid of their periods, no matter how much they wanted to, because that was biological reality so they just had to cope—like I had to cope!—and get on with things.

I idolized all of Tamora Pierce’s female characters. Thayet, Buri, Rosethorn, Lark, Sandry, Tris, Daja—yes, even Berenene. They’re all vivid, fully fleshed, and relatable. I still idolize them, to this very day. 

Girls can be heroes. Girls can slay monsters. Girls can adventure to far-off places where boys and men daren’t tread.

Girls do not have to marry the handsome charming prince even when he and the entire kingdom expects it—not even when they’ve been sleeping together, not even when she’s in love with him—because sex is one thing, love is another, and marriage is something else altogether.

Girls don’t even have to end up with anybody at all because women can be happy, leading fulfilled meaningful lives on their own—without any husbands or children, thank you very much.

I don’t think I can understate how influential Tamora Pierce’s works have been on SFF, and how important her books are to me, and countless others. I’ve read pretty much everything she has published, and if there’s one thing I’ve taken away from her books it’s this:

You can’t control who you’re born as. That’s life. The world will try to use that against you, to put limits on who you are and what you can do. That’s life too. Fighting against that is hard—but fighting to become the person you want to be, and fighting to make the world better is worth it.

Thank you, Tammy, for writing your stories. They were exactly what I needed as a girl. Your heroes were the examples that gave me the conviction I needed as a young woman. Your courage to write books with unconventional protagonists is what inspired me to write books from the perspectives that weren’t getting published.

And, some thirty years on from the moment I stumbled across Alanna’s story in my library, your books are still exactly what my daughter needs in her life.