Watching Dune, I felt myself reminded of several old childhood memories. Paul Atreides was reminiscent of young European explorers from the Age of Discovery, heroes charged with a royal mandate to explore, albeit they ultimately harmed the existing inhabitants of the locations they would visit. These explorers begged the question of why they could have a heroic adulthood filled with travel and adventures, when people like me — young, female, Asian — were told that life’s greatest adventure was to bear children? Growing up these ambitions did not feel acceptable and there were no models I could lean on. Today I try to be one of these models and show young people that the can be the hero of their own stories.   

This article is published in the CBC as part of the CBC’s First Person stories.