In Allison King’s The Phoenix Pencil Company, stories are powerful, double-edged tools, capable of forging intimate bonds or serving as instruments of control. The novel investigates the profound ethical weight of storytelling through two contrasting methods, the magical act of Reforging and the data-mining app EMBRS. King argues that the preservation and sharing of a narrative is never a neutral act. By juxtaposing a magical, embodied form of storytelling with a digital, algorithmic one, the novel suggests that the storyteller’s intent—whether to foster connection or to exert control—is essential.

The novel first presents storytelling as an act of profound empathy and connection. The magical process of Reforging offers a “perfect connection,” allowing the Reforger to experience a writer’s words and emotions exactly as they were intended. When Monica Reforges a simple note her grandmother wrote, she is overcome by an undeniable feeling of love and pride. This idealized form of storytelling is mirrored in Louise’s academic pursuit of “memory work,” an approach to digital archiving that seeks to preserve the histories of underrepresented communities. Both methods are rooted in the desire to understand and honor another person’s lived experience.

However, the novel complicates this ideal by revealing how easily storytelling can be weaponized for surveillance and political suppression. The same magic that facilitates intimate connection becomes a tool for state control. Yun recalls how, during the Chinese Civil War, both the Nationalist government in Taiwan and the Communist government on the mainland used Reforging to purge dissidents. Yun and her mother were forced to Reforge pencils to uncover incriminating secrets for the Nationalists while her aunt and cousin Meng did the same for the Communists in Shanghai. In this context, storytelling is an act of betrayal, wrenching private thoughts from individuals and turning them into weapons. This demonstrates that the power to access a story doesn’t guarantee an ethical outcome. Instead, it makes the narrative a contested site where personal truth can be co-opted for political power.

This ethical dilemma is updated for the digital age through the EMBRS app. At first, Professor Logan’s philosophy of “radical sharing” appears to echo the ideal of Reforging. However, like the governments that co-opted the pencil company, the app has a hidden agenda, and Logan intends to sell its users’ most intimate data. Monica’s decision to sabotage EMBRS highlights the novel’s deep skepticism toward any system that claims to capture truth without acknowledging its own power. This skepticism is further explored in a conversation where Monica teaches Louise about git rebasing, a coding practice for creating a “clean history” that is not “true to what actually happened” (177). Ultimately, the novel suggests that whether the medium is a magical pencil or a digital server, the act of storytelling is fraught with ethical peril. The pursuit of a pure, objective truth is elusive. What matters more is the conscious, ethical handling of the subjective stories people choose to share.