Q&A: Samantha Ellis

Iraqi-British author and playwright Samantha Ellis revisits the influence of her favorite literary women in her new book, How to Be a Heroine. Books, she explains, helped her to grapple with the trauma of her diasporic family, and even more urgently, her youthful desires and dreams.

You seem to approach literature as more of a how­-to than an escape.

I was looking for women who were doing different things, because the women in my community were all doing the same thing. They were all wives and mothers, and they did it brilliantly, but I wanted to do something different when I grew up.

Who are your favorite contemporary heroines?

I love Girls. I’m very interested in what Lena Dunham is doing in terms of representing women who are uncertain. So often you see characters who are sure about everything, and that’s not anyone’s experience. We all make mistakes. In Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth Bennet is forever realizing that she’s made a terrible mistake and looking into herself and trying to be better.

Is there a tension between wanting to see dreams come true and acknowledging the real obstacles women face?

To an extent, books can and should reflect the constraints we live under. Elizabeth has to get married at the end of Pride and Prejudice. It’s not that I want Jane Austen to say, no, she discovers that she would rather go and, I don’t know, climb the Himalayas with Jane. I’m not asking books to take the people out of their time. But I think you can show constraints and also show how people find accommodation in them.

Do you see fiction as a middle ground between reality and something that doesn’t yet exist?

I think it can be. I’m not going to be able to kill a vampire, but Buffy the Vampire Slayer opens up ways of talking and thinking about being a woman that are really exciting and empowering. Some of the most interesting heroines are written in fantasy and science fiction because the writers simply change the world to make it possible for women to be the way they want them to be.