I grew up in church.
The child of ministers.
Good people with good hearts submerged in a culture that never stops breaking my heart and subverting my best wishes for them.
And here I am, doing everything in my power to create a saint from someone who has sex for a living.
Using words to sculpt this awe-inspiring female character who is queer and honestly believes she’s helping people.
I can just imagine critics—feminist and conservative alike—accusing me of trying to make an icon out of a whore.
It’s certainly something I think about.
In fact, last week, as I walked home from the train, I was deep in agony over it.
I thought: Why?
Why are you investing so much of yourself—infusing the best parts of your talents and abilities—into a prostitute?
And you know what?
A part of me that can never escape my roots answered:
Rahab. Tamar. Mary Magdalene.
These were women operating outside every social boundary their world drew—and yet there they are, load-bearing figures in the most widely read text in human history.
That’s the lineage Leela comes from.
So why should any part of you feel any kind of way?
If the institution that spent centuries building walls around who deserves dignity couldn’t manage to scrub those ladies out—because their stories were too good and too true—then I’d say there might be something worth sharing here.