Thanks to Elena Arranz Alonso for sharing this TED talk with me. I’ve seen a few talks, but this one, so far, is my favorite. She gets at the heart of why I love to study the traces of politics in literature at the very same time as she reminds me that doing so must be a recursive act. After all, sometimes fiction is just fiction, and identity politics have nothing to do with the author or his/her characters. Taking in that messiness is part of what I feel we need to do better as scholars.