Stolen Paradise

By Sophie Lyu

More dangerous than the Men in White, more dangerous than the poison that flows through our rivers, more dangerous than even the rebels-armed and ready at every corner-is disobedience. The status quo is strong, heavily armored, and iron-gripped. Do not dare try to break it.

Isle de Riqueza, once an ethereal haven sust

• Language: English
• Publisher: New Degree Press
• Release date: May 20, 2021
• ISBN: 9781637302590

Book preview

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New Degree Press

Copyright © 2021 Sophie Lyu

All rights reserved.

Stolen Paradise

ISBN

978-1-63676-815-1 Paperback

ISBN

978-1-63730-227-9 Kindle Ebook

ISBN

978-1-63730-259-0 Ebook

To the people who are sick of maintaining the status quo.

Contents

Author’s Note

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Acknowledgments

Appendix

Author’s Note

When I was a kid, I believed that good always beat evil.

It was the story I read in books, learned at school, and saw in shows and movies: the classic tale of the hero beating the villain and promising peace and prosperity to all. In the world that I envisioned, good people were rewarded, bad people faced consequences for their actions, and there wasn’t much gray area in the matter.

My ignorance suspended me in a safe but unsustainable bubble, and it took me years and years to realize that things were not so straightforward. Once I opened my eyes, I realized I was not living in a place of fairness and fortune.

This rude awakening began years ago, with the first memorable instance taking place in my high school’s US history class. My teacher, one of the many educators I credit with guiding my peers and me to the full and unflinching truth, shared the history of the United Fruit Company.

The United Fruit Company was an American corporation that exploited and destabilized countries across Latin America, the Caribbean coast, and the West Indies. The greedy entity, now operating as Chiquita Brands International, pedaled a predatory and monopolistic model that drove it to, among other things, depose Guatemala’s democratically elected leaders, install a military dictatorship via coup by the CIA, steal property from citizens, and launch the country into decades of civil war that the United States rejects responsibility for.¹

I remember my disgust as I listened to his words, incredulous that a corporation responsible for so much devastation, theft, and carnage faced not a single consequence. It was at that moment that I fully grasped that corruption is a widespread and well-funded system, and it kills. And in this story and many other accounts, evil wins.

This was a lesson that left me riled, but in my privileged space within society, I failed to develop a drive to inquire more into such abuses of power. I carried on knowing I would be okay, and that knowledge seemed assured enough that I rarely thought of the United Fruit Company again.

But in the spring of 2020, things changed. The COVID-19 pandemic raged through the world, and I watched as hundreds of thousands of people around us in the United States died, millions fell ill, and virtually nothing was done about it. The inaction from our government cost lives.

The disproportionate deaths of poor people, people with preexisting conditions, disabled people, and Black and Indigenous people were treated as an ongoing reality rather than a glaring failure of the many systems that let them down. Rich Americans seemed to be living in a different world. It seemed impossible that this was just the way things were. Everything became incredibly clear all at once: it may not have felt like it, but we lived in a country with a broken political system—and it was deadly for many people.

Suddenly, the thought of carrying on as usual seemed impossible and undesirable. I tried to keep up to date about what was happening close to me and around the globe, and I saw exploitation in nearly every pocket of the world, many of them a symptom of Western intervention. There seemed to be no hope.

Then, I learned about the Liberian Women’s Peace Movement. I watched a documentary titled Pray the Devil Back to Hell in which thousands of Liberian women, led by Leymah Gbowee, Crystal Roh Gawding, and Comfort M. Freeman, organized during the Second Liberian Civil War.

Through the power of sit-ins, protests, and eventually meetings with the president of Liberia, the Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace effectively changed the course of the Civil War and propelled Liberia to ending a fourteen-year war and democratically electing its first female president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.² These women were extraordinary: courageous, daring, and committed to effecting tangible change despite every odd stacked against their movement.

Behind this change was the dedication of so many people, so much organizing, and incredible unity. It was a huge feat and came despite incredibly challenging and oppressive circumstances. And it showed that change is possible.

The answer, as demonstrated by the Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace, is protest. It’s organizing. It’s listening and learning. It’s demanding attention from those in power, and then using it to send a message.

And for many of us here, in our safe bubbles in societies that do not seem to present imminent threats to us, it is first and foremost recognizing an issue and listening to the people it affects most to devise a way to approach it.

Stolen Paradise is a culmination of the lessons I’ve learned. The story is one of individuals versus systems, the blurred lines between evil and complicit, and the ease of forgetting untold accounts. But most of all, my story is one about the status quo, which is something I struggle to fight day in and day out.

In Isle de Riqueza, Adria is forced to battle the norms that shape her everyday life: norms that tell her to sit down, stay in her lane, and stop asking questions. She is told this is the way things are, despite how miserable and objectively unfair. Nearly worked to death at nineteen, helpless as she watches her country continually devastated by an unknown enemy but forced to feel its consequences, and struggling to get by, she feels there is no escape and no point in hoping for change. But this story is about learning to challenge this status quo. And so she does.

I wrote Stolen Paradise because I believe its characters are real and deserve to be heard. I believe fiction has the incredible power of giving you something living—a character, a conversation, a challenge—to connect with that opens your eyes to otherwise vague and abstract themes. Hearing buzzwords such as neocolonialism, corruption, and exploitation is often unhelpful in conveying the consequences of these concepts. But hearing Adria’s, Bellona’s, and Fidal’s stories puts them into perspective.

Books have unspeakable power in this way. And I hope this one demonstrates the need for change in this world.

After reading Stolen Paradise, I encourage you to read literature written by underrepresented communities in publishing, particularly those that are #OwnVoices.

For bringing me into the light, I thank my mentors, my educators, and the people at the margins of society who put in the emotional labor to inform us of your stories. You are heard.

---

1 Daniel Kurtz-Phelan, Big Fruit, New York Times, March 2, 2008.

2 Pray the Devil Back to Hell, directed by Gini Reticker (2008; New York, NY: ro*co Films Educational, 2009), DVD.

Prologue

We are controlled by unspoken rules.

Keep your head down and your guard up. Avoid attention at all costs. Obey the Rebels, no matter what they ask of you. Drop your eyes when the Men in White come around. And remember that whoever you were before the war, you lost them after the First Drop.

More dangerous than the Men in White, more dangerous than the poison that flows through our rivers, more dangerous than even the Rebels—armed and ready at every corner—is disobedience. The status quo is strong, heavily armored, and iron gripped.

Do not dare try to break it.

Chapter One

At 8:00 a.m. in Villa Flores, the haze hanging low and the sun casting a red glow on everything it touches, the streets roar with a hopeful energy I haven’t felt since the First Drop.

The music of a rarely uplifted people filters through my ever-cracked windows: bike bells shooing children out of the street, neighbors yelling loud exchanges at one other, distant car horns honking to get where they need to go.

Like clockwork, I sit up, throw my covers off, and rub the last traces of sleep from my eyes. I push the windows open further to listen to the commotion outside as I pull myself together hastily. Papa tells me to leave them shut—the humid, grime-filled air is bad for me and worse for him, but it’s my one selfish indulgence. The warm breeze that filters through the screen is therapeutic in a way. Through the air, my neighbors’ voices provide soothing background noise, and the mundane conversations they loudly carry almost restore a sense of normalcy to my every day. The chatter is unusually boisterous today.

It must be because of the holiday.

I dress myself quickly—all long, loose garments, all murky, neutral colors—then take a rare moment to meet my own eyes in the mirror. On a normal morning, I would be scrambling to pull myself into work-ready shape, barely giving myself a second look before stumbling out the door, not to be seen again until the last traces of the sun vanish. Today, my state-mandated day off gives me the luxury to pause. Observe. I tilt my head with a scowl at the look of me, rearranging the bulky fabric of my clothes in an attempt to smooth over my frazzled appearance.

She looks a bit . . . threadbare, a voice in my head critiques.

Spending your whole life working at nineteen years old would do that to you, I murmur under my breath, blowing a curl off my face and turning away. I pull my hair into a bun at the back of my head and cover it with a hood that casts enough darkness onto my face that I feel safe in the low light. Now in the mirror, I’m merely a shadow.

I slip outside before Papa wakes up to lecture me on the dangers of traveling alone, a wide cloth bag slung over my shoulder. My neighbors, Reina and Luis, spot me immediately, shouting their good mornings to me with the typical joyous timbre of their voices. I flash them a smile, wave back, and wiggle my fingers at their children playing in their brown dirt yard.

It’s a beautiful morning! Happy Liberation Day, Adria! Reina shouts before recoiling in a coughing fit. The haze is especially thick today.

Happy Liberation Day! I echo, trying to inject some energy into my brittle, raspy voice. The words taste bitter coming off my lips. I’m off to the market now. Do you need anything? She shakes her head, batting her hands in a dramatic gesture.

You’re too kind. Nothing for us! Just enjoy yourself tonight, and tell your father we say hello. She waves me off, and I continue along my way, pulling my hood lower and wrapping my arms around myself once our street bows open into a dirt main road bare of homes and watchful neighbors’ eyes.

As I walk, I keep my eyes fixed to the ground, aware I may trip if I don’t keep my eyes low. My ratty shoes pass over loose dirt and scattered waste. It’s a grim image. I once took my time to pick up each piece plastic wrap or shard of glass I would see, rattled by the destruction I saw in each of the villages’ neighborhoods. Back then I believed my actions, however small, made something of a difference. Now, I scan the ground numbly, my stride steady.

After the First Drop, our once-pristine, colorful neighborhood devolved into something of a science fiction wasteland. Broken glass, decaying food bits, torn paper, and crushed cans decorate each street and sidewalk, coated so heavily in dirt that sometimes they appear to be part of the ground until you hurt yourself stepping on them.

I curse as I nearly trip over a tangled root growing out of a gaping crack in the ground: another living reminder of IR’s unrest.

The First and Second Drops were comprised of chemical and ecological weapons that devastated the native agriculture, flora, and fauna in each of our villages, leaving our lands stripped and infested with invasive species for the past five years. They crippled our economy. Rendered our land nonarable and our air unbreathable. Hundreds died, and thousands fell ill, suffering from the toxic compounds in our water and air.

And nobody knows who is responsible.

Once considered a paradise to tourists and onlookers alike, IR became the picture of a living nightmare to the outside world. Once coveted, our warm climate only spurred the rot of the garbage-filled land we now possessed. Once envied, our sprawling snowfruit empire and travel industry crumbled into nothingness. And all without a tangible enemy. We know only two things: they are cowardly, and they are out for blood.

I pause, my entire body tensing before I let out a sneeze. The haze is thicker in this part of town, seemingly darker too, and more potent. Its earthy, foul scent burns through my nostrils.

Bless you, barks a distant, gruff voice.

I startle, my gasp piercing through the otherwise-silent air as I look around, shoulders raised. Despite the burning in my eyes, I keep them wide open, trying to detect movement around me.

Hello? Through the thick haze, two lanky figures emerge, clad in signature brown and olive camo clothing. My heart sinks.

It’s the Rebels.

* * *

I clench my fists, my body draining of warmth as they creep closer. This is Papa’s worst nightmare. A montage of his disappointment, guilt, and shock passes behind my eyelids as I immediately jump to the worst-case scenario of what this encounter could lead to.

God, he’d be furious with me for traveling this route alone. The Rebels run this part of town, and what they say, you do. I’ve been lucky enough to have avoided interaction with them up to this point, but with the holiday and the amount of foot traffic there is, they must have been on the hunt for someone as naive and vulnerable as me to cross their path.

I keep my face impassive as they draw closer, frozen in place.

I think the proper response is ‘thank you,’ girl, one of them sneers, his face covered with dust, teeth glimmering yellow. It takes everything in me not to sneer back at him; he’s scrawny, cheeks hollow and gaunt, and if he weren’t armed with backup, I’m almost certain I’d be able to take him down with a swift kick between his legs.

Don’t be too hard on her. From the looks of her, she didn’t learn her manners in primary school, the other—tall and stocky—says before they laugh, closing in on me. His smile drops suddenly. Say it.

Thank you, I dutifully repeat, my voice just a hair louder than a whisper. When their faces don’t change, I add, officers.

"It’s okay.