Al Drago/Reuters

President Joe Biden is escorted by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as he arrives to speak with the House Democratic Caucus to provide an update on the Build Back Better agenda and the bipartisan infrastructure deal at the Capitol in Washington, Oct. 28, 2021.

The moment of truth is here for both President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party. 

If congressional Democrats can pass both a long-promised, bipartisan infrastructure bill and sweeping social spending legislation – no small task – President Biden and the Democrats will live politically to fight another day. If the effort fails, the Biden presidency will have been dealt a near-fatal blow.

Mr. Biden himself reportedly said as much to House Democrats at the Capitol Thursday morning, telling lawmakers: “I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say that the House and Senate majorities and my presidency will be determined by what happens in the next week.” 

At time of writing, the president’s prospects were shaky. The leading House Democratic progressive, Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington, told reporters Thursday there were “too many no votes” to pass the infrastructure bill, but said she was committed to working through the weekend. Many House progressives are withholding a “yes” vote on infrastructure as leverage to secure support for their priorities in the Build Back Better bill. They want a chance to read through the 1,500+ pages of the just-released legislative text and say they need a commitment that all 50 Democratic senators will back it.

But even if Mr. Biden gains passage of both bills, his work is far from finished. Polls show Americans are more focused on immediate kitchen-table concerns, from inflation and supply-chain backups to jobs and the pandemic. And with public support for Mr. Biden in steady decline, now barely above 40%, he and his party must demonstrate an ability to govern. 

“No one got everything they wanted, including me, but that’s what compromise is.” Mr. Biden said Thursday at the White House, before flying to Europe for major multinational forums on the global economy and climate change. “That’s consensus, and that’s what I ran on.”

The national political implications of the Biden agenda’s fate are profound. If Democrats come up empty, that failure could help tip the close Virginia governor’s race to the Republican next Tuesday – a major blow to Democrats in a state that Mr. Biden won by 10 percentage points last year. Perceptions of Democratic incompetence could also fuel a Republican wave in next year’s midterms, making it all the more difficult for Democrats to defend their narrow control of both houses of Congress.

But if Democrats pass both bills, they can still claim a significant victory in expanding the social safety net, even if temporarily, as many of the provisions expire after a time. If Mr. Biden had hoped to be the second coming of Franklin Roosevelt or Lyndon Johnson, authors of the New Deal and Great Society, respectively, his narrow majorities in Congress have made that well nigh impossible.

The latest version of Build Back Better contains $1.75 trillion in new spending, including: a one-year extension of the child tax credit; free preschool for all three- and four-year-olds; expanded home health care for older and disabled Americans; clean energy incentives; enhancements to the Affordable Care Act; and a 15% corporate minimum tax and surtax on multimillionaires and billionaires.

Left out were a provision to negotiate lower prescription drug prices, dental and vision coverage in Medicare, a corporate tax increase, and free community college. 

The White House has also touted its $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill, which passed the Senate in August with support from 19 Republicans. It signals a once-in-a-generation investment that will update existing roads, bridges, airports, and pipes while adding new infrastructure needed for the 21st century, such as rural Internet and a network of electric vehicle charging systems. It includes $65 billion for Amtrak, $65 billion for clean energy transmission, and $55 billion for clean drinking water. 

And the White House has emphasized numerous provisions to create millions of new, well-paying jobs and support existing workers through union protections, better wages, and “made in America” provisions. 

Susan Walsh/AP

President Joe Biden speaks about his domestic agenda from the East Room of the White House in Washington, Thursday, Oct. 28, 2021, as Vice President Kamala Harris looks on.

A key challenge for Democrats is convincing voters that their bipartisan infrastructure legislation and the Build Back Better Act will substantially improve their lives, when Americans have more pressing concerns. 

A CBS poll earlier this month indicated that only 37% of people believe that Mr. Biden is focusing on the issues they care a lot about, while nearly a third said the Democrats were focusing on issues they don’t care about at all. Meanwhile, 60% said the Biden administration wasn’t focusing enough on inflation, and two-thirds cited U.S. government policy as a key driver of higher prices. 

While a little over half said they approved of the Build Back Better plan, only 36% said they thought it would help them and their families, while a third thought it would hurt them.

The White House knows it’s under pressure on inflation. In a press release touting the Build Back Better Framework, it notably also promised to “reduce price pressures.” And Thursday morning, Mr. Biden opened his East Room remarks by noting that 17 Nobel-winning economists said his plan will “lower the inflationary pressure on the economy.”

Republicans have been hammering hard on inflation, which they equate to a “tax” on middle-class Americans, contrary to the spirit of Mr. Biden’s promise that they would not pay a penny more in tax as a result of the Build Back Better plan.

North Dakota GOP Rep. Kelly Armstrong says the state’s two utilities have already advised residents to expect higher energy costs this winter.

“When you say you’re not taxing anybody who makes under $400,000, people who are paying $200 more to keep their home warm in North Dakota in the winter will disagree with you,” said Representative Armstrong earlier this week. 

The price of meats, poultry, fish, and eggs was up more than 10% in September compared with 2020, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Economists say that’s due at least in part to supply chain issues related to the pandemic, but Republicans are placing the blame squarely at the feet of Democrats.

In floor remarks today, Senate GOP whip John Thune accused Democrats of fueling inflation by “dumping a lot of unnecessary government money into the economy” earlier this year. And now, he added, “they’re preparing to make things worse” by doing more of the same.

It’s not just Republicans who are worried about inflation. Harvard Professor Larry Summers, who served as secretary of the Treasury under President Barack Obama, strongly criticized the current Treasury position on inflation as unrealistic and out of sync with what everyday Americans are experiencing.

But some voters say they are willing to risk higher prices in favor of societal reforms that they feel are urgently needed. 

At a rally earlier this week in Arlington, Virginia, where Mr. Biden was campaigning for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe, voter Cindy Vasko – a statistician by training – says she checks the inflation statistics every day and is worried about hyperinflation. Yet the longtime Republican voter, who switched parties in 2016, still supports Mr. Biden’s ambitious package of social spending.

“You have to balance out the good with the bad. And I think the good outweighs the bad,” she says. “I think they can get a handle on inflation if they get the supply chain problem resolved somewhat.”

On the Build Back Better plan, most of the Democratic sales pitch centers on new programs they say will create a more equitable society and address climate change concerns.  

Progressives, who have driven a hard bargain – and, with a 96-member caucus, can easily make or break legislation – have relinquished some of their earlier demands and were touting the “phenomenal” progress they’d made over the past few weeks since forcing Speaker Pelosi to delay a promised vote on the infrastructure bill.

The drawn-out process in recent weeks has caused some angst among voters on the left. At a protest near the Capitol on Wednesday, Joan Steede, a hospice worker from Phoenix who makes less than $15 per hour after 30 years in health care, said she doesn’t see the country advancing without the Build Back Better plan.   

“Americans have lost faith in the government,” she says. “If we could see some movement in government, I think it would improve the entire morale of the American people.”

Staff writers Story Hinckley and Dwight Weingarten contributed reporting from Arlington, Virginia, and Washington.

Wearing a bright pink sash bearing her party’s name across her chest, Watanabe Teruko cuts a striking figure as she harangues an election campaign crowd of several hundred people outside a railway station in central Tokyo.

She stands for the working poor people, she declares, and she knows what she is talking about. Ms. Watanabe, a formerly homeless single mother, has relied on precarious jobs for decades.

A candidate for Reiwa Shinsengumi, a small left-wing party, Ms. Watanabe stands very little chance of being elected in Japan’s parliamentary elections this Sunday. But neither do many far-more mainstream candidates – unless they are members of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, and male.

The conservative LDP has governed Japan continuously since it was formed in 1955, except for two brief breaks adding up to four years. It is widely expected to win again on Sunday. Only 21 of its 276 members in the last parliament were women.

Japan has all the trappings of a democratic political system, such as opposition parties and regular elections. But it also has many barriers to a more diverse and modern political culture.

“I do not believe that a government led by the LDP can bring transformational change to the country,” says Satoh Haruko, a professor at the Osaka School of International Public Policy. “The LDP itself needs transformational change.”

An expensive proposition

In only a few constituencies are more than two candidates running in Sunday’s vote, the result of a century-old law setting a high bar for would-be politicians. Candidates in single-seat districts must put up a three million yen ($26,300) deposit, which they lose if they do not win at least 10% of the vote. Candidates for proportional representation seats, such as Ms. Watanabe, have to deposit twice as much.

Sakura Murakami/Reuters

Kenichi Hosoda, standing for parliament on the ruling Liberal Democratic Party ticket in Sunday's elections, gives a speech during his campaign run in Nagaoka, Japan.

“Six million yen?” Ms. Watanabe asks the crowd rhetorically. “That’s three times more than I used to earn in a year!” (Her party is paying her deposit with funds collected from the public.)

Japan’s election deposits are “by far the most expensive in the world,” says lawyer Utsunomiya Kenji, who filed a constitutional challenge against the system and lost.

The system is “undemocratic and unconstitutional because it takes away one’s freedom to run for office,” argues Mr. Utsunomiya, a former president of the Japanese Federation of Bar Associations.

It poses a major stumbling block to independents and new parties trying to make a foray into politics, and favors existing parties and incumbent lawmakers, he adds. “We need to democratize the election system.”

The LDP benefits from this artificially narrowed field of electoral rivals, and does not lack for funds; in 2019, according to government figures, the party received $21 million in corporate donations. The main opposition party, the Constitutional Democratic Party, has made a policy of refusing such funds.

The LDP also benefits from being a key element in the “iron triangle” among the ruling party, the bureaucracy, and big business that controls much of Japanese life. That is a system in which many leading party figures, as members of hereditary political dynasties, are heavily invested.

Thirty percent of LDP members of the last parliament were children or grandchildren – often both – of earlier LDP lawmakers. Prime Minister Kishida Fumio, who is leading the LDP into the elections, is himself the son and grandson of parliamentarians.

In those circumstances, says Mr. Utsunomiya, “naturally, politics does not play a role in invigorating society.”

Dull candidates, apathetic voters

The lack of women in Japanese politics is striking, and not only among LDP ranks. Despite a 2014 pledge by Abe Shinzo, Japan’s longest-serving prime minister who stepped down last year, to create a society in which “all women shine,” he changed little.

Issei Kato/AP

Leaders of the main political parties contesting Sunday's parliamentary elections in Japan pose for a photograph. Women made up only 10% of the last parliament's lower house.

In the last parliament, only 10% of the 465 members of Japan’s lower house were women, and only 18% of the candidates in this weekend’s elections are female. Japan ranks 165th out of 190 countries for female representation in parliaments, according to the Inter-Parliamentary Union. (The United States ranks 72nd.)

The sluggish pace of change in Japanese political life appears to owe something to public apathy, which reinforces the status quo. In the 2017 parliamentary elections, which saw a turnout of only 53%, the LDP won 75% of the single-seat constituencies at stake with just 25% of the electorate’s votes.

Some observers attribute this apathy to Japan’s postwar history, when the LDP oversaw Japan’s rise as a major economic power, encouraging Japanese companies to catch up with their Western counterparts. As companies took good care of their employees and their families, offering lifetime employment and seniority-based wages, many men dedicated their lives to their jobs and gave little thought to politics. Neither did their wives.

Others trace the phenomenon back further, to the Constitution and political system largely drawn up and imposed by U.S. Gen. Douglas MacArthur and his occupation staff after World War II.

“Japan was forced to accept democracy because of its defeat,” says Takashima Nobuyoshi, a historian and professor emeritus at the University of the Ryukyus on Okinawa. “As basic human rights were not gained through the sweat and blood of the people, many Japanese people lack a real appreciation of their own rights and are often unaware when they are infringed upon.”

Professor Takashima admits to feeling that he and his fellow social studies teachers are partly to blame. “We failed to thoroughly impart democratic ideas and behavior to younger generations,” he regrets.

At the same time, suggests Hatakeyama Michiyoshi, an award-winning author and journalist, voter apathy is unsurprising given the dearth of attractive candidates with innovative ideas.

Many Japanese voters think that “only a particular group of people” can run for office, he says. “But we have a legitimate right to be involved in politics,” he insists. “We need a diverse group of candidates to reflect society. Even if some candidates are not elected, at least it would mean that diverse ideas were shared and discussed.”

When protests in 2018 and 2019 ousted Omar al-Bashir, Sudan’s dictator of 30 years, the charge was led by the country’s women.

“This revolution is a women’s revolution,” they chanted, marching through the streets of Khartoum and other cities with hijabs wrapped around their noses and mouths to protect them from dust and tear gas.

Now, after the country’s military seized power in a coup early Monday morning, they are once again mobilizing.

Sudan’s women had many good reasons to want Mr. Bashir gone in 2019. His fundamentalist Islamic regime made them second-class citizens, forcing them to dress according to strict “moral” standards and seek male permission to travel or work.

Two and a half years later, Sudan is in many ways a different country. Women can go out with their heads uncovered. They can wear pants. Female genital mutilation (FGM) is outlawed, and, for the first time, the country has a national women’s soccer team.

“What’s remarkable is the space that women have managed to own and occupy in such a short period of time,” says Hala Alkarib, a Sudanese women’s rights activist and regional director of the Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa.

But many fear the military takeover means that progress could all be rolled back. And so this week, women have once again poured into the streets – as they have at every uprising in the country’s history – determined to secure their newly gained rights.

“What is happening at the moment, if it continues it will present a serious threat to women’s human rights, our well-being, and our basic security,” says Ms. Alkarib. “The military has a long history of violence against women in this country.”

Like in 2019, as protests have built against the coup over the past three days, women have been on the front lines, walking with linked arms toward police barricades and enduring beatings from soldiers dispersing demonstrations.

Hussein Malla/AP/File

A Sudanese protester chants slogans against the military council, in Khartoum on June 19, 2019. Sudan’s uprising ushered in a new era both for the nation and for Sudanese women after three decades of autocratic rule by Omar al-Bashir. This week's military coup threatens those gains.

“Give up ... Burhan,” chanted a group of women in Khartoum Monday, referring to Lt. Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the head of the country’s military and now its head of state. “We have a country we need to rebuild.” 

Indeed, the coup came in the midst of a moment of massive transition after Mr. Bashir’s ouster, much of which directly affected women. A civilian transitional government took power in Sudan in 2019 led by Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok. One of its first acts was to repeal the country’s notorious Public Order Law, which had been used largely to control women’s presence in public spaces. For more than two decades, women had been terrorized by a “public order court” that punished them – often by whipping – for crimes such as dressing indecently, speaking to the wrong man, or begging on city streets.

The transitional government also ratified international conventions protecting women’s rights, including the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women.

The repeal of the Public Order Law and other policies benefiting women were widely accepted, says Ms. Alkarib, aside from scattered opposition from the religious right wing.

“These were huge steps forward,” says Amel Gorani, an international development and inclusion specialist and human rights activist from Sudan who is based in Virginia. They kick-started an important process of legal reform that began to do away with some of the most discriminatory laws allowing for the systematic oppression of women, she says.

And as policies began to change, women began to become more visible in public spaces in Sudan from which they had previously been barred, performing mundane but radical acts like forming sports teams and singing at concerts.

Then, in April 2020, the government outlawed FGM, a practice to which around 90% of Sudanese women had been subjected, making it punishable by up to three years in prison.

Other change has been slower to come. The FGM law, for instance, only criminalized the women who performed the procedure, not the parents – often the fathers – who ordered it. Much of the criminal code, which had been used to harass women for acting out in public spaces, has remained unchanged.

AP/File

Sudan's women's soccer league plays a match in Omdurman, Khartoum's twin city, on Dec. 11, 2019. The league was established after the fall of Omar al-Bashir's dictatorship in 2019.

On a political level, the Sovereign Council, an 11-member group that served as the collective head of state from August 2019 until this week, had only two female members. Women who had been on the front lines of the protests in 2018 and 2019 found themselves suddenly sidelined when it came to running their new country.

But many activists had remained hopeful. “Yes, the speed at which our demands have been responded to has been slow,” Ms. Alkarib says. “But at least we have had the space to keep pushing for those changes.”

That changed abruptly Monday morning, when the country’s information ministry announced on Facebook that Prime Minister Hamdok and his wife had been arrested by the military and pressured to accept a coup. Around midday, Mr. Burhan – a crony of the former dictator, Mr. Bashir – appeared on state television to announce that the military had taken control of government and declared a state of emergency.

In Khartoum, protests began immediately, with demonstrators – many of them women – pouring into the streets demanding an immediate return to civilian rule.

“The biggest threat now is to freedoms and human rights in general under a military regime,” says Ms. Gorani. “And within that, repression tends to come down harder on women in very specific and gendered ways.”

Sudanese women, she notes, have been at the forefront of protest since the colonial period. And the country’s women’s movements have been equally ferocious, winning women the right to vote, the right to equal pay, and the right to maternity leave – often decades before other countries in the region.

And so far this time around, Sudanese women seem once again unwilling to accept an end to their revolution.

“Women have so much to lose – we can’t afford to go back,” wrote Mayada Hassanain, a researcher and activist in Khartoum, in a text message to the Monitor Thursday. (The government has cut internet and cell service frequently throughout the week.)

On Tuesday, Sudanese journalist Reem Abbas tweeted a photo of herself and two other women near their home in Khartoum holding a handwritten sign.

“Total civil disobedience,” it read in Arabic. “The decision of the people.”

Henry Nicholls/Reuters

An Anglo-Iranian community member belonging to the National Council of Resistance of Iran leaves flowers at a memorial and wall of condolence for British MP David Amess, who was stabbed to death during a meeting with constituents at Belfairs Methodist Church, outside the Houses of Parliament in London, Oct.18.

On his weekly one day off from his job as an Uber driver, Mohammed Rahman would often swing by the office of his local elected member of Parliament, Sir Keir Starmer, to say hello and air his concerns. More than anything, the visits provided “a sense of connection,” he explains, “that my MP cared for me and my community, and not just those in a position of influence in Westminster.”

Those weekly face-to-face meetings, known in Britain as “surgeries,” have been as ordinary as their settings – this one tucked away on the ground floor of an unassuming block of social housing in North London, between a laundromat and the British Somali Community Centre.

But now a routine part of British democracy could become increasingly rare. After the brutal killing of Sir David Amess, a Tory MP who was stabbed to death Oct. 15 while holding an open “surgery” at a local church, lawmakers have been forced to shut the door on their constituents. 

The slaying of Mr. Amess is the second killing of a sitting MP in five years, after that of Labour MP Jo Cox at the hands of the far-right in 2016. And it’s raising concerns over the current safety plans around elected members of Parliament and whether meeting openly in the kind of “office hours” they offer is worth the risk.

Security concerns come at a time when the pandemic had already closed doors on in-person meetings, as the globe shifted to virtual settings. Many MPs who had returned to their surgeries have opted to do so by appointment only. And now many are shutting down altogether as the government undertakes a security review.

For citizens like Mr. Rahman, who is originally from Somalia, and politicians alike, it creates a sense of disconnection that experts are concerned could lead to more disillusionment in the political process. In some ways, in fact, the surgery acts as a bulwark against extreme populism.

Jonathan Brady/Reuters

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Labour Party leader Keir Starmer, and the Scottish National Party’s Westminster leader, Ian Blackford, attend a service to honor slain British MP David Amess at the Church of St. Margaret, in the grounds of Westminster Abbey, London, on Oct. 18, 2021.

When the political class “falls into disrepute,” says Andrew Russell, professor of politics at the University of Liverpool, one of the things people talk about is “the distance they feel between rulers and the ordinary person.”

“Technology can’t be used to replace old-fashioned meetings. ... The distance might lead to the impression that politicians are a breed apart and not like us,” says Professor Russell. “That populist rising that we’ve seen across the world in recent times comes from a sense that people feel that politicians aren’t really carrying out their business on behalf of the people.”

A rise in hate

Politicians are no strangers to a disgruntled public. One of the main points of the surgery is to provide a space to air grievances. But in a context where hate crimes are on the rise amid divisive politics driven by Brexit, social media, and the pandemic, risks to politicians have grown. Elected officials who take stands on those divisive issues on the national stage, or represent their party’s stance, often face angry individuals at the local level. 

Mr. Amess, whose funeral will be held at Westminster Cathedral next month, was killed at the Belfairs Methodist Church Hall in Leigh-on-Sea, about 40 miles from London. A suspect has been charged, and authorities are preparing terrorist charges, but no clear link or motive has been determined.

Ms. Cox was also killed by an extremist in 2016, which, amid the divisiveness of the Brexit debate, rocked the country. Another Labour MP, Stephen Timms, survived two stab wounds in 2010 perpetrated by a woman who claims she was adhering to the ideology of Al Qaeda.

British Home Secretary Priti Patel is now reviewing security measures for all lawmakers, which could lead to more police security – and increase perceptions of distance from leadership.

That wedge has an impact on how well politicians fulfill their jobs, says Patrick Diamond, former head of policy at No. 10 Downing St. “It is the point of connection with their constituents that keeps them grounded with the issues affecting people’s lives,” he says, “whether it’s benefit changes, housing, or education.”

While they may come across as old-fashioned in an increasingly virtual and scheduled world, political surgeries are a relatively recent shift in the last 20 years as MPs focused on delivering at the local level. 

“It was not common as recently as the 1980s for MPs to hold regular surgeries, particularly in areas where there was not likely to be a significant change in elections,” says Dr. Diamond, now a politics lecturer at Queen Mary University of London. Where once they employed a part-time secretary, MPs have teams of up to 10 people making such meetings happen.

A limited virtual world

While the pandemic opened up new opportunities in virtual gathering, it also revealed the limitations of email and Zoom conferencing. Psychotherapist and drama coach Andre Radmall says that being in the same physical space is a vital component of both democracy and human connection.

“When you see people face-to-face in the same space, you can take in more information. You’re taking in the context around the person, through their body language,” he says. “That builds trust.”

Surgeries also act as an equalizing force, whether that’s for newcomers with limited English, low-income communities with limited access, or older people who can’t navigate the virtual world as easily as their younger counterparts. For urban seats with lower-income and multiethnic households, “there is a demand for support and advice from the MP,” says Dr. Diamond.

For widow and retiree Barbara Grossman, speaking to her MP “is a lifeline” for older people without technological literacy. “It keeps strong the bond with my community, but more so, them with us,” she says upon leaving her allotted appointment time outside a Labour Party office in East London.

She says that, after one meeting, her MP helped with a complicated visa situation for her son. This time it was her damaged roof that made her set an appointment. She’s not seen many people during the pandemic, so seeing her MP is an opportunity to speak to somebody in person, even if it’s brief, she says. And they see her, too.

“If they can see our emotion upfront, and not forget little old me, then long may it continue.” 

Jane Austen’s unfinished novel “Sanditon” recently gained a fan following after PBS broadcast a series based on it. (The second season premieres March 20, 2022.) But when author Vanessa Riley encountered the novel, she became more than a fan. One of its minor characters not only stood out to her, but changed the direction of her career. 

Austen’s Georgiana Lambe is an elegant, wealthy, biracial heiress who travels from the West Indies to the fictional seaside resort of Sanditon. Miss Lambe is enigmatic, and Austen’s narrator describes her as precious, “always of the first consequence,” and “chilly and tender.” 

Dr. Riley immediately took notice. Her own heritage is of the West Indies – Trinidad and Tobago – and South Carolina. And along with a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from Stanford University, she has a repertoire of novels in the romance and historical fiction genres that elucidate the stories and histories of women of color. 

“Where are my people? And where’s the representation?” Dr. Riley says she’s often asked herself those questions when reading Regency and historical fiction, especially considering the enormous financial underpinnings of commodities like sugar and cotton, and the labor of enslaved people, that fueled 18th- and 19th-century colonialism. 

“And yet you read romance, you read a lot of historical fiction, and this is not mentioned,” she says during a recent Zoom interview.

As historians unearth stories of Black lives of the Regency and 18th and 19th centuries, novelists like Dr. Riley are adding works of imagination, with stories featuring adventure and love. The combination offers not only a more accurate understanding of the past but a more three-dimensional view of human experience, both factual and fictional. 

When she encountered Miss Lambe, Dr. Riley says she felt driven by a pressing question: Was Austen being consciously progressive? Or was she simply describing the world she saw? 

While the answer contains a little of both, for Dr. Riley it was the search that mattered, leading to a discovery of real Black women’s lives from British colonial and Regency eras.

Courtesy of Vanessa Riley

After researching Dorothy Kirwan Thomas' life, author Vanessa Riley wrote the novel "Island Queen," which chronicles Thomas' struggles and triumphs. “Dorothy was very human,” says Dr. Riley. “She went through a lot of suffering, but she had a will to survive that I haven’t read about for a long, long time.”

Getting to know Dorothy Thomas

For Dr. Riley, one life in particular – that of Dorothy Kirwan Thomas – stoked her imagination. She found that Thomas was born to an Irish plantation owner and an enslaved woman in Montserrat but had become a wealthy, influential person by the time she died in 1846, having lived at least into her 80s. Known as “the Queen of Demerara” (part of present-day Guyana), she’s thought to have had 10 children and multiple grandchildren, some of whom were privately educated in the United Kingdom.

The more she learned, the more Dr. Riley was hooked. In fact, Thomas is the basis for her latest novel, “Island Queen,” published in July, which spans Thomas’ life, encompassing her beginnings in slavery and chronicling her journey to achieve freedom and a business empire, all while shepherding a huge family across countries, islands, and continents.

“This woman is phenomenal,” Dr. Riley says, “that she’s able to just restart her life in these various colonies. She does it with children!”

“Some of us have struggles taking our kids to Walmart in the backseat of a minivan,” laughs Dr. Riley, “and she’s taking 17 [children and grandchildren] from Demerara … all the way up to Glasgow, Scotland. Because of this world of money that has opened up the world to her, she wants her grandkids to see this. And to feel this. And she’s paying for the education of these children. And she’s funding schools for the education of colored girls in London.”

An avid reader of Regency romance, Dr. Riley wondered why she hadn’t encountered entrepreneurial women of color beating the odds in colonial islands before.

“I mean, this is an enormously fabulous woman who rose against all kinds of odds,” says Dr. Riley. “For her to be completely wiped off the books just blows my mind.”

That same bafflement drove Gretchen Gerzina’s research. The real-life stories of women of color in the Regency era are not always easy to find, even for trained historians like Dr. Gerzina, who has teased out histories from fragments and written books and BBC radio programs documenting Black lives in historic Britain. 

“I wanted to make people see … that these people are walking the same streets, we’re living in the same neighborhoods, and I wanted to make it a living, breathing history,” Dr. Gerzina said on “The Austen Connection” podcast in July. “People didn’t quite realize that there had been a Black British history that goes back as far as the Romans. ... So it’s become quite a well-known issue now. Although there’s still a great sense of many British people wanting not to understand or believe that past.” 

Dr. Riley says Dr. Gerzina’s work inspired her as she dug for Thomas’ history, drawing on scraps – wills, historic newspaper reports, and legal records – to reconstruct her life. But there is much more work to be done in documenting the real lives of women of color, specifically in the West Indian colonies, she says.

Staking a claim to “happy every after”

Writing Thomas’ reconstructed life involves a lot of active words not usually associated with women of color under 18th-century colonial oppressions: words like entrepreneurship, manumission, agency, and status. 

Also present – importantly for Dr. Riley – are love, romance, and “happy ever after.”

Thomas’ life is adventurous, including her fascinating relationships with men – possibly even one with a sea captain prince who would later become England’s King William IV. Such experiences, woven into Dr. Riley’s book, make it highly romantic reading, and an awful lot of fun. 

But Dr. Riley says despite the adventure, she resists the urge to make Thomas superhuman. She wants readers to see a real person in all her complexity, including the pain Thomas endured and the compromises she made, like owning and profiting from enslaved people as her businesses and influence expanded. 

“Dorothy was very human,” says Dr. Riley. “She felt a lot of pain. She went through a lot of suffering, but she had a will to survive that I haven’t read about for a long, long time.”  

Readers looking for Regency adventures on the screen might not be surprised, especially after the record-breaking success of the Netflix/Shondaland series “Bridgerton,” that “Island Queen” has been optioned for the screen. Dr. Riley confirmed reports that “Bridgerton” director Julie Anne Robinson and star Adjoa Andoh have optioned the movie rights to the novel. 

A “Bridgerton” fan, Dr. Riley says flipping the script of the usual narrative of pain, putting a free woman of color at the center of the narrative, and making that narrative romantic and joyful give the story its power.

She says she never thought she’d get a chance to tell this story, precisely because it’s a historic tale where pleasure overwhelms the pain. For a long time, she adds, publishers expected and seemed to commission stories featuring Black pain. But she feels a turning point occurred in May 2020.

“Something happened, something changed, and unfortunately we can trace it to George Floyd,” she says.

Dr. Riley finds the publishing business more open to complex and true narratives now, so she is channeling her passion for Regency era stories into illuminating, through historical fiction, the real lives of historic women of color, even when those histories are hard.

“That’s why I’m a big advocate of Black romance,” she says. “Because you just need to be safe, and have a ‘happy ever after.’ And I’m just so thankful that now ‘happy ever after’ includes everyone.” 

Janet Saidi is a journalist who’s assigned herself the Jane Austen beat. When not working on her podcast and newsletter, “The Austen Connection,” she is producing at NPR-affiliate KBIA radio and lecturing at the Missouri School of Journalism.

Reuters

People from the Yazidi religious sect, persecuted by Islamic State, stand in line to vote in Iraq's Oct. 8 election.

Growing up in Dallas as a devout Muslim decades ago, Rashad Hussain noticed only a few mosques in his Texas city. Now there are dozens, an affirmation, he says, of the American freedom to worship. On Tuesday, a Senate panel welcomed him as the president’s nominee to be ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom. If approved by the full Senate as expected, he would be the first Muslim to hold the position, marking a strong break from past bigotry against Islam in the United States.

Major Christian and Jewish leaders endorsed the nomination, noting Mr. Hussain’s work under two previous presidents in seeking religious harmony in troubled countries and finding ways to prevent young Muslims from joining terrorist groups. As he said in his testimony, “In an era of vigorous partisan debates, Americans continue to be largely of one mind regarding the importance of defending international religious freedom.”

His appointment would affirm a recent finding by the Institute for Economics and Peace. In a global survey, the think tank found that religious plurality in countries can have a pacifying effect, countering the notion that religion is a driver of violence and the main cause of conflicts.

The post of envoy for religious freedom, created by Congress in 1998, reflects both a basic right in the U.S. and the country’s long and hard struggle to protect it. “Our own experience, our own example, is what compels us to advocate for the rights of the marginalized, vulnerable, and underrepresented peoples the world over,” said Mr. Hussain.

His past work includes working with Middle East religious leaders on a 2016 document, known as the Marrakesh Declaration, that laid out Islamic principles for protecting the rights of minority religious groups. As someone who memorized the Quran and earned a Yale law degree, he relies on positive ways to end religious discrimination.

During the Obama administration, for example, he sought to create constructive paths for young Muslims to express their faith rather than being tempted to join the Islamic State group. He worked in Muslim countries to offer alternatives to media that dehumanized non-Muslims.

His main diplomatic tactic is to convene people of different faiths for heartfelt dialogues, pushing them to rely on each religion’s concept of love. As the late Jonathan Sacks, the former chief rabbi of Britain, wrote, “To insist that being loved entails that others be unloved is to fail to understand love itself.”

Many people of minority religions, from Muslims in China to Christians in Vietnam, share a common experience of persecution. “I am committed to fighting, day in and day out, for their rights,” he told the senators. It is a right he knows well from the days when he freely worshipped as a Muslim in Dallas.