lady business

Sidetracks - May 19, 2012

Sun, 20 May 2012 05:19:01 GMT

Sidetracks is a collaborative project featuring various essays, videos, reviews, or other Internet content that we want to share with each other. All past and current links for the Sidetracks project can be found in our Sidetracks tag.

➝ I watched The Avengers the Monday after opening weekend. It was a 10PM showing and the place was still packed, and I was exhausted from working but it was still super fun. It was so exciting and the energy was high. I was not a comic book kid, but I've loved these movies, and The Avengers is my favorite one yet. I thought Mark Ruffalo was fantastic, I want a Black Widow movie where Natasha and Clint are bros, fight evil together and possibly make out a lot. I've been reading tons of meta on the movies since I watched it and I want to talk about it all but there's so much and it's all so good:

Black Widow and Power by jimhines
Page to Screen: The Avengers (2012) by The Literary Omnivore
The Superhero Men Don't See: Evidence by Obsidian Wings
The excellent series of posts on Hello, tailor, about the costumes and characters of the Avengers.

➝ Wish I was a kid again so I could have a legit use for this awesome homemade jetpack.

➝ The Cast Of The West Wing Reunites For Wonderful Psa About Walking. I wish I could revisit The West Wing all over again for the first time. :(

➝ Keanu Reeves is a vampfire.

➝ Another article about how authors feel about fanfiction. One day these people will figure out that many fans (like myself) ultimately have run out of fucks to give about what authors think, except to maybe be mean and laugh at how little they get it and their insistence on erasure of another literary culture. ~feelings~ My favorite quote was one I've read before, by Charlie Stross:

"I am not a precious sparkly unicorn who is obsessed with the purity of his characters — rather, I am a glittery and avaricious dragon who is jealous of his steaming pile of gold."

➝ Starbucks Secret Menu, which is interesting but also straight up false. If you walked up to me and ordered The Nutella, I would stare at you blankly and by like "GTFO" inside of my head while asking you patiently for the ingredients in order to court the 4.0 you might give your service via your receipt and avoid the terrible score that will make the manager write unhappy things on survey score sheets in illegible handwriting even though I have repeatedly asked for print since I can't read cursive. *paperbag* Anyway, if it's not on the menu, be nice to your barista, because we can give you decaf when you ask for super strong coffee if you're an entitled butthead. Trust me.

Chip Kidd: Designing books is no laughing matter. OK, it is was a an interesting video. I don't like some of the language he engages in, but oh well.

➝ Lots of interesting reading suggestions on this list of genderqueer books and sites.

➝ The F Word asks, Are Libraries a Feminist Issue? My answer would be yes, as is generally the fact that predominantly female job industries are often disproportionately affected during recessions.

➝ The Guardian reviews My Sister Rosalind Franklin by Jenifer Glynn. I really want to read this book. And I'll also use this opportunity to plug Brenda Maddox's excellent biography of Franklin.

➝ Pixar: Are you "Brave" Enough to Just LET YOUR FILM BE ABOUT A GIRL?. I haven't been paying close attention to how Pixar has been marketing Brave and therefore I don't have a firm opinion on this, but I do like the Japanese trailer a lot more. I would really love to hear what others think.

➝ For Jodie: Seven Extreme Female Explores.

➝ According to Science Daily, a new study suggests that "both men and women see images of sexy women's bodies as objects, while they see sexy-looking men as people." As always with science news, I would love to read the original source, but I can't say I find this very surprising.

➝ Finally, this Lara Pulver quote about Irene Adler's sexual orientation has been making the rounds on tumblr. While I don't disagree with the general sentiment about fluidity and how human experiences don't always fit into neat categories, I have to say I'd be much more inclined to take this reading of her character seriously if people involved in the show didn't allude to sexual fluidity only when it's convenient. Irene says she's gay but falls in love with Sherlock? Well, sure. You can't neatly label everything! John + Sherlock, though? "They're NOT gay, can't you see they're not gay? See, they like women, look at John be attracted to women, NOT GAY, do you hear me silly fandom? NOT.GAY."

➝ Let me get all personal straight off this month. I just happened to see a guest post at Kate Elliot's blog, from Tansy Rayner Roberts called 'Looking for Women in Ancient Rome'(found via @fozmeadows). She lists a few of the areas where women could expect to wield power in ancient roman society. Awesome.

Some background — I'm an ex-history student, whose work was heavily focused on pre-nineteenth century society. Specifically, I spent a lot of time learning about classical Roman and Greek society, early medieval society and 16th/ 17th century Europe. I gained a reasonable amount of knowledge about the women who lived in these societies and I'm aware of at least some of forms of power that were available to these women. I'm really keen on the revisionist, feminist worldview that has influenced recent historical study.

However, I never really like to talk about historical women and power, with any kind of positive emphasis, in feminist circles which contain people who haven't studied the areas of history I'm talking about. This sounds weird, right, because I'd be expressing a view of a historical period, which emerged from feminist study, to other feminists, but somehow I always feel like if I start talking about the limited power of the vestal virgins, or the control nuns had over their nunneries in 16/17th century Italy, I'm setting myself up to be accused of denying patriarchal oppression. I know some feminists think revisionism is all a kind of fantasy, or women's desperate and false attempt to place their historical counterparts on an equal footing with the men of the past and over the years knowing that view is out there has had a silencing effect on me.

So, I wanted to take a mo and thank Rayner Roberts for writing this post, Kate Elliot for writing her own post 'Looking for women in historically-based fantasy worlds' and Aliette de Bodard for her post 'Female protagonists in historical fantasy', which inspired this whole post chain.

And I wanted to point you all towards Bettany Hughes excellent short series called 'Divine Woman', which is all about real historical woman who gained power by being involved in major religions. I think if you're outside the UK, I think you can watch it on iTunes.

➝ Sarah Rees Brennan expresses her love for Robin Scherbatsky and her dislike of Ted Mosby in 'How I Met Your More Awesome Friend'. "YES!", to this whole post.

Sometimes I hate 'How I Met Your Mother' SO MUCH. Like the post says, 'sometimes all the people in it are just amazingly awful for the sake of comedy' and I know a lot of sitcoms push their characters into saying stupid and inconsistent things, but — *whine*. Anyway, then Robin appears, with her casual subversion of gender stereotypes and her offhand self-confidence. Suddenly everything is better, because she is aces.

➝ It now seems necessary to make sure that everyone has seen Robin's Canadian pop star video, 'Sandcastles in the Sand':

ENJOY! Ugh, the episode where this video is eventually revealed is the one where Robin's old boyfriend turns up and he is a bald, fat James Van der Beek. I want to watch it again, because it is so perfect! Then she and Barney kiss, which, yay, even though Barney is a determined example of a retro-sexist character.

➝ I know Renay was looking for cool, 'Bookish Podcasts', so I thought I'd share Books and Bicycles post on that subject.

➝ As fantasy fans know, the first stage to beating your enemy is naming your enemy. Thanks to Phoebe North, I am now confident I can win 'The War on Kipple'.

➝ Bookshelves of Doom pointed me towards a useful chart, full of facts about the Hugo in 'Everything You Need to Know About the Hugo Award'.

➝ Musings from the Sofa provides a quick, feminist fist pump moment in Just Like a Girl:

'Oh, and you know what? When I earn more and have a better career, I do that like a girl as well.'

Yeah you do.

Also, if you vote for ME in @QueenofTeenUK, BAT CATS FOR ALL! Here is a SAMPLE BAT-CAT: tinyurl.com/44kgabq
— maureenjohnson (@maureenjohnson) April 6, 2012

Don't know what a Bat Cat is? Well, why don't you click on through and see?

➝ Finally, a cute and interesting infographic on e-books, titled 'E-book Nation'. (via estellasrevenge)

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Reading Women by Stephanie Staal

Wed, 16 May 2012 18:13:28 GMT

Reading Women by Stephanie Staal: I picked up this book by Staal largely because of Ana's review of the title that I found when going through her archives. However, I caused lots of problems for myself by reading it; great job, self! The beginning was rocky, as I found the opening pages of the novel almost too grandiose in its language and sweeping phrases. It felt very much like Staal was trying to paint a dramatic picture of an ordinary life to draw readers into a situation that otherwise was similar to many other situations except in the solutions Staal found to deal with it. To be blunt, she was overwriting and doing it pretty badly. It turned me off initially — it took me four weeks to get over those qualms and my initial reaction to actually read the book. However, once the beginning passes passed and we reach the true premise, I'm glad to say it levels out. I'm not the only one who felt this way; Ana did, too, which comforted me. I am glad we shared that in common, because unfortunately, we shared little else in common in our reactions.

I enjoy a well-told memoir. There's something about the insights of others that fascinates me, seeing their inner lives and thoughts, that makes them-as-humans more real and relevant. They exist in a way that other people don't most of the time when we're caught up in our minds. Unfortunately, this book had a downside, in that I've read one item on the list that Staal discusses: A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf. Even then, it's been almost eight years since I read that essay. Staal touches on Pizan, who I read some of, but was derailed from by trusting class notes and lectures in order to save time to pass another class. I walked into this book unfamiliar with the majority of the writers and the texts Staal engaged with, with no clue about their ultimate meaning or how they fit into the larger structure of feminism and feminist writing.

I often feel disengaged from feminism as a movement. It doesn't seem very welcoming to me and quite often, it feels like you have to sit down and study it to make it relevant to your life, which if you're busy in the trenches of living day to day, can be a real downer. This was a frustrating problem to have, because the whole book was about reading the texts so Staal could reconnect with a part of her identity she felt was being subsumed by marriage and motherhood. It was a positive, life-affirming movement, yet I often came away from various parts of the book angry and bitter and humiliated. I hadn't read this book or that book as a teenager. I would have had no clue how to even parse some of these things at 16, 18, or even 21 — how was she doing it? I didn't have that insight about that piece when I read it! With books like this, I feel like feminism as a movement is an elite, academic club that you have to be a certain type of well-read to fit into, in order for your voice to be heard and respected, you have to read all these things, and all those critics, and understand the feminist critics of the critics, and understand why those critics are maybe not the best because they were part of whatever wave is now no good and bad because we've finally learned not to erase X group of people. What wave am I a part of? Do you have to identify? Are we supposed to be forming teams? Can I get a degree for this?

This type of academic feminism is alien and unfriendly and hard work that I don't even know that I can do or that I want to do. My relationship with academia in general is frigid at best and at worst, actively hostile. To see these classes described, with these smart people who have all these tools and resources and multiple classes and multiple libraries to pull books from is both a joy and ultimately a disappointment, because I don't have access to those things and never did (never will). The one Women's Writers course offered went from the 12th Century to the early 18th and no farther — it was enlightening, but no replacement for the history and weight of the 19th Century, of all these waves people talk about in the 20th Century, for the muted outrage and silence I see in the 21st Century, where anger just isn't cool anymore.

That's the one section I did ping to when reading was when Staal's class studied radical feminism. Staal quotes a classmate:

"I guess anger can be useful," conceded Sarah, a moment earlier one of the more vehement critics of radical feminist tactics. "But only sometimes," she added quickly.

Staal and the teacher both share a silent commiseration at this point, because something vital has been lost to cast anger as an ineffective tool. For once, I sat with Staal and understood, because although we were considering different times and different angers, this runs true to my experience. You can't be angry anymore, not if you want to be heard. Sometimes you can be, but that time isn't up to you at all — it's up to the person who you're having a discussion with, and they might decide they don't enjoy that, so why don't you just sit down.

Out of one moment in this book, that's the only part I marked and that's disappointing. This book didn't make me want to read the texts Staal pulls from. If anything, it made me realize that if I do read them, without a collaborative environment I will never get out of them what others do. I am trapped in a position of constantly needing things explained to me, put into a context that seems insurmountable on my own. I had no context for Staal's journey and her insights. It makes me feel stupid and I really, really hate when books do that. I came away from Staal's book bitterly disappointed that while most of the explanations of why a particular title renewed her belief in herself, her life, her choices or gave her guidance through a tough time they just kept reminding me I'm not knowledgeable. They reminded me that I'm not that wise, that I'm not so well-read, that I'm a woman from the South with a terrible public education who took until adulthood to realize these things had a name and I could reach out for them, only to find mountains to climb. Mountains with falling boulders representing big words I still don't know. Who wants to read a book at their computer with dictionary.com open? Feel free to muster a show of hands.

People who are grounded in feminist theory and the myriad of texts covered in Staal's book will get the most out of this memoir. Even though it was readable for me on a personal level with regards to Staal's life, I was a passenger that was never going to reach the destination Staal did, or be able to compare her findings to my recollections, because I had no recollections to draw from. On top of that, I'm not a mother, with no particular desire to become one right now, and so that also passed me by.

This is not a bad book, but I was not the right reader. I'm never going to be the right reader for a book about books that are common canon, because what's common for everyone else wasn't part of my young adulthood, my early education, or my life through thoughtful mentors. The books that were never urged me to go seek more. I'm angry about this book, because all it did was remind me of everything I missed out on, and how hard it would be to catch up now, on how much harder I'll have to work than everyone else to be able to speak with any kind of authority due to circumstances outside of my control based on my class. It makes me feel lazy on top of it all, for not being overjoyed by going out to pick up bunch of titles I ultimately won't understand because I don't have a teacher.

I'm not sure what Staal was going for, but it was probably not to make me angry about the lack of feminist education. That's ultimately where I ended up, though: angry, disillusioned, embarrassed and discouraged. It's been a few weeks since I finished this book and I'm still no closer to a resolution for all my thoughts. But maybe that's a point in the book's favor, regardless of my engagement with it.

Other reviews: things mean a lot, Regular Ruminations, Amy Reads, Iris on Books, yours?

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Some of Our Ladies Are Missing

Sat, 12 May 2012 20:49:36 GMT

One of the nicest things about the end of 2011/early 2012 for me has been the ability to switch on British TV at regular points in the week and see ladies, lots of them, hanging out in shows where they’re the main focus. Seriously, it’s brilliant! I’ve always been y’know, generally fine watching mostly TV programs that centre around men, catching the odd, miraculous female focused program once or twice a year, or buying DVD box sets of program that we don’t get on the channels I have. Sure, I wanted more ladies on TV; give me an hour to talk about that subject and I would fill it easily. And, I thought that seeing women represented on TV was both important and fun to watch. Generally though, I like stories, I like TV and if the only shows on offer were about men I felt I could cope with that. Until now I never quite realised just how fucking magnificent it could be to base a large portion of my regular viewing schedule around female focused programs, which were being shown live on TV. It is...it just makes me happy, ok? TV, you are on a warning, I expect a lot more of you now.

Here’s a quick summary of the top four, female focused TV programs I’ve enjoyed watching recently¹:

‘Borgen’

At the end of last year I got sucked into ‘Borgen’ in a way which totally defied all my expectations. Generally I (quite unfairly) keep away from TV shows with subtitles, but as ‘Borgen’ was about the journey of a fictional female Prime Minster I settled down determined to power through a few episodes on catch up. I would say I had a slightly Marty-like, dutiful attitude towards ‘Borgen’ when I first began watching. The opening titles rolled

....

and at the end of the first episode I emerged, hooked on the adventures of female politician Birgitte, female journalist Katrine and dreamy, yet awful, spin doctor Kaspar. When the first series ended, I hunted Twitter for ‘Borgen’ fans and ended up dragging Ana from The Booksmugglers into a loooong e-mail exchange about ‘Borgen’. Yes, I pulled one of the busiest YA bloggers into a surprise, day spanning discussion of every aspect of a Danish political drama!

‘Homeland’

Next came ‘Homeland’, the thriller drama which features Claire Danes as CIA agent Carrie Mathison. Despite this show being billed rather misleadingly as a ‘grown up 24’ ² it is excellent and I am a huge fan. The main character billing is shared between Carrie and Brody (the suspicious, returning soldier, played by Damien Lewis) and both Danes and Lewis give commanding, but disturbing performances...but Danes character is still the focus of the show, if that makes sense.

Lewis’ character, is as I said suspicious. The viewer is supposed to be unsure about whether he has been turned while held hostage in Iraq, or whether he is a good guy traumatised by torture who is being unfairly persecuted by Danes character. He is required by the narrative to play things shifty and hides things from the viewer (at least until the appropriate big reveal points of the show), to increase dramatic tension. The consequence of this narrative necessity, coupled with the fact that Carrie’s secrets and misdemeanours are revealed to the viewer early on, is that the viewer is able to feel more connected to Danes’ character than to Lewis’. Carrie is both the viewpoint character and the person the viewer feels most secure with; despite her sometimes rather loose canon approach to her surveillance of Brody. She is the lead character on the program, the one we invest in because even though she might break the rules it’s unlikely she’s going to turn out to be a secret terrorist.

Carrie, you are just the best.

‘Scott and Bailey’

Then there’s Scott and Bailey, a female police procedural that is just fab. I actually originally gave up on this program after watching two episodes of the first series (one of the main characters was involved in some seriously weird, unprofessional antics) but ended up seeing the first episode of the second series by chance and was totally won over. This program has a whole cast of prominent female characters ladies: there’s Scott and Bailey , two female police officers who work as a team, their female boss Jill who is the absolute best thing about the show and her friend/sparring partner, the female coroner. They’re all brilliant at their jobs and professional (if still flawed characters). They’re also realistically torn between commitments at home and work, in a way which emphasises the difficulties working women face, without removing the possibility that these women can have careers and personal lives.

‘Once Upon a Time’

I imagine Amy is well surprised to see ‘Once Upon a Time’, the female focused fairytale offering, on this list of programs I’m in love with. Honestly, despite this program being perfect, fluffy Sunday night TV, I thought I’d stop watching after I saw the first episode. The fairytale costuming is kind of cheesy and the main idea of the plot (that fairytale characters are trapped in a modern town called Storybrooke and must be set free by a super special saviour) strangely didn’t grab me. Still, I kept watching, because I need easy TV on Sunday night before going back to work and there was nothing else decent on at this time.

The more I watched, the more I noticed something Amy had highlighted – that this program really emphasises the activeness of the female characters in fairytales. Five episodes have been shown in the UK and so far Snow white, Cinderella and their modern incarnations, have been in episodes where they were the stars of the show. These female characters make things happen, lead princes on merry dances and showcase a diverse range of female agency. Emma, the saviour I mentioned above, becomes more interesting with each episode, I’m desperate to see Ruby/Red Riding Hood get her chance in the spotlight and the wicked queen character could not be more dastardly and excellent (although I do feel oddly sorry for Regina Mills, her real world counter-part and totally want Regina to get together with Emma).

So yes, recently I’ve had the chance to watch and enjoy four big name, original drama series which all display a strong focus on female characters and which I feel have at least some claim to being female-positive, even if there are also some less female friendly kinks in some of the narrative presentation. And there are tons more programs being brought out right now that focus on female characters There are current programs I haven’t seen/been able to see yet like ‘The Killing’, ‘The Bridge’, ‘Lip Service’, ‘Parks and Rec’, ‘Two Broke Girls’, ‘Revenge’ and ‘Hellcats’. There have been recent programs like ‘Pan Am’ and ‘The New Girl’, which I haven’t watched because I heard they had serious female representation issues, but which nevertheless focused on female characters. And there have been recent programs I watched, but wasn’t that fussed about like ‘Vera’ and ‘Prisoner’s Wives’, which again put ladies at the centre of their stories.

I’m real happy about that, don’t get me wrong. It’s major that recently there has been such a boom in the amount of programs put out, that feature prominent female characters and it’s especially good that so many can be claimed to exhibit pro-female tendencies. These programs add to the wonderful back catalogue of earlier programs like ‘Buffy’, ‘Dark Angel’, ‘Charmed’ and ‘Alias’ which centred around female characters. Rock - ladies everywhere!

The thing is, you may have heard that a new American, female focused program called ‘Girls’ has been subject to some critical analysis; specifically commentators have mentioned its failure to include any African-America, Asian, or Latino women in its main cast, when the program is set in the multi-cultural city New York. That criticism reminded me that although there appears to be an increase in the number of female focused TV programs coming out right now, these programs may not be representing all women equally. With that in mind I wanted to take a stab at (no doubt, imperfectly) considering this boom in female focused shows, with an intersectional focus. Specifically I wanted to look at the racial makeup of the female cast on the four shows I have enjoyed watching recently and the sexualities of the female characters on those programs.

Here’s what I found:

‘Borgen’

The main female characters in ‘Borgen’ are all white and as far as I remember, the entire female cast of 'Borgen' ’s first series is white. I don’t know what Denmark’s population looks like racially and there’s always the possibility that ‘Borgen’ presents the racial realities of Denmark (feel free to agree, or correct this idea) but there’s no getting around the fact that despite being a female positive/focused program it’s also a pretty white show.

There is one character who I think is a lesbian, at least a male character labels her with a slur word that means lesbian, but I think we all know that doesn’t necessarily mean she’s actually a lesbian. Otherwise all the women in this program have been presented as romantically interested in men and if any of them are bisexual, this hasn’t yet been made explicit in the program³.

‘Homeland’

‘Homeland’ presents a bit more of a diverse picture of women, in terms of pure race/gender intersectionality than ‘Borgen’ does. Carrie, the main character is white, but one of the male characters is married to an Indian woman, who is a recurring character in a few episodes. Helen Walker, the wife of Tom Walker, another American soldier held hostage with Brody, is African-American and she is also a recurring character in a couple of episodes. In addition, Brody’s wife, Jess is played by Morena Baccinarin, an actress of Brazilian/Italian heritage. Although Jess’ ethnicity is never mentioned, personally I don’t think Jess presents as white, but I might be wrong. None of the female characters I’ve mentioned here are really the equivalent of Carrie’s character (a character who appears in every episode and is crucial to the main plot) although Jess is a significant character, with her own story and has been in every episode so far.

There are several other recurring African-American and Arab characters, but as they’re all male they don’t factor into this particular, informal analysis.

All of the female characters in this program are in significant romantic relationships with men, or have shown sexual interest in men. There are as yet, no lesbian characters. If any of these female characters are bisexual, this hasn’t yet been made explicit in the program.

‘Scott and Bailey’

‘Scott and Bailey’, has a very white female cast. All of the four main female characters are white (unless I missed someone who was introduced and removed over the course of series one).

All of these female characters are in significant romantic relationships with men, or talk about having had significant romantic relationships with men. If any of these female characters are bisexual, this hasn’t yet been made explicit in the program.

‘Once Upon a Time’

And finally, we come to ‘Once Upon a Time’. As I said, only five episodes have been shown in the UK, so other female characters may appear over the course of the series, but so far there’s only been one female, black character (Ella’s fairy godmother) has been included. She appeared on screen for roughly one minute, before being killed by Rumpelstiltskin.

Again, there’s a black male character, but as he’s a dude he doesn’t figure in this particular analysis.

To wrap up, so far, most of the female characters in ‘Once Upon a Time’ have been presented as being in romantic relationships with men, or they have been shown as interested in romantic relationships with men. The romantic interests of some female characters have yet to be examined, but if any of them are bisexual (and thank God this is the last time I have to say this), this hasn’t yet been made explicit by the program⁴.

Now, this post does not present detailed, comprehensive data. It is a sample, based only on four programs that I like. I saw a connection between these programs that troubled me, in the light of criticism about ‘Girls’ and wanted to talk it through in my own space. I encourage anyone and everyone to run a full data sample, with maths and STUFF, if you want to accurately gauge how our current female focused TV program boom may or may not represent certain sections of female experience. However, I think there’s a reasonable suggestion of a pattern here, one that forms a white coloured, straight line.

To be clear, I still love these programs. I love that so many more female focused programs seem to be making it onto British TV schedules right now. I just think it’s important to both celebrate the growth of popular female focused programs and examine these programs in the light of intersectional analysis. I think it’s important to recognise that some programs which seem like super positive, feminist shows for one group of women may seem kind of cool, but excluding to another group of women. I think it’s important for the first group (I’m in that one) to make room alongside the joy they feel at seeing themselves represented, to understand why others are not quite so excited about the next new program that’s going to feature a bunch of straight, white woman.⁵. As a white lady, that’s something I want to keep in mind, all the time, even as I cheer on Emma Swan and Birgitte Nyborg.

Notes

¹ And these do not include, the female fronted and female focused history and science programs coming out, as well: Mary Beard’s ‘Meet the Romans’; Bettany Hughe’s ‘Divine Women’; Helen Castor’s ‘She Wolves’; that program about woolly mammoths that would have been fascinating if I hadn’t been so dog tired.

²While Homeland does indeed present a security force with much more responsible than the team of 24 ever were, that is not exactly hard because 24 was a nightmare scenario of how the security forces might act (I’m still a big 24 fan though). Homeland is still not exactly a shining example of how we might hope a responsible security forces body would act.

³ It’s interesting to consider the general representation of female political leaders in fiction. TV shows ‘Borgen’, ‘Commander in Chief’ and ‘The Amazing Mrs Pritchard’, as well as the novel ‘The President’s Daughter’ by Ellen Emerson White, all present fictional women who rule countries. All these female characters are white, straight (or at least not described as bisexual) and have traditional families (husband and kids). I’d be interested in more data on fictional female political leaders, but that sample makes me wonder about how society ties normative womanhood to any potential idea of female political leadership.

⁴ I’ve only examined these programs in terms of the intersection between gender and race, and gender and sexuality that they exhibit. I have done this despite my awareness that there are other intersecting areas of social identity that affect whether female representation speaks to a particular woman.

So, just to make things clear, there are no trans-women in any of these programs so far. There are no disabled female characters in any of these programs so far. I can’t imagine that will be surprising to anyone, as these groups of women are even less well represented than say Asian female characters, or lesbian female characters, but it should be noted.

I make no claims about how well any of these programs represent different kinds of female body image, or socio-economic status.

⁵ One quick point that I think is important. I’ve concentrated entirely on the female characters, because of the specific focus of this post. This focus of mine has the unfortunate consequence of ignoring how low the level of diversity may potentially be when it comes to male characters in the four programs I’ve examined. I really don’t want to end up just spotlighting these shows for presenting a low level of diversity among female characters, because that ends in tears with people calling out female characters alone, calling out female focused programs alone and generally hating on the ladies. So, in an effort to balance the scales let me say that if you’re a fan of diverse representation then these programs are near equally normative when it comes to the racial makeup of the male cast of these shows and the sexualities that these male characters present. And there are plenty, plenty, plenty of male focused programs which fail at presenting both female and male characters of all races and all sexualities.

Useful Related Posts

My Feminism will be Intersectional or it will be Bullshit
Racialicious: Kendra and Jordan Break Down the Vampire Diaries
Colorlines on ‘Girls’
Sarah Rees Brennan on ‘Once Upon a Time’

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Sidetracks - Episode XV

Sun, 15 Apr 2012 05:47:50 GMT

Sidetracks is a collaborative project featuring various essays, videos, reviews, or other Internet content that we want to share with each other. All past and current links for the Sidetracks project can be found in our Sidetracks tag.

➝ At the risk of turning Lady Business into a Foz Meadows appreciation blog...

In pop culture, girls who crush hopelessly on guys they can’t have are painted as just that — hopeless. Over and over again, we’re taught that girls who openly express sexual or romantic interest in guys who don’t want them are pitiable, stalkerish, desperate, crazy bitches. More often than not, they’re also portrayed as ugly – whether physically, emotionally or both – in order to further establish their undesirability as an objective fact. Both narratively and, as a consequence, in real life, men are given free reign to snub, abuse, mislead and talk down to such women: we’re raised to believe that female desire is unseemly, so that any consequent shaming is therefore deserved. There is no female-equivalent Friend Zone terminology because, in the language of our culture, a man’s romantic choices are considered sacrosanct and inviolable. If a girl has been told no, then she has only herself to blame for anything that happens next – but if a woman says no, then she must not really mean it.

This is exactly what I was trying to get at when I said I craved stories from women's perspectives that legitimitised experiencing longing and desire and even idealisation in the same way manic pixie dream girl stories do for men. I know that having had access to such stories would have made a world of difference to my younger self.

➝ On the Rights of Reading and Girls and Boys:

Our children—both boys and girls—lose when we constrain their reading preferences. Ironically, what is acceptable in books for girls today is a much wider range of characters and themes, thanks to the advances of feminism, while what is acceptable for boys is still sadly influenced by what I assume is homophobia and an intolerance of effeminacy. A girl reading Homer Price, Sherlock Holmes, or anything by Robert Louis Stevenson or Mark Twain would be viewed as a reader of classics, but a boy reading much of Louisa May Alcott, the Brontës, or Jane Austen would have a harder time with his image. Girls, at the same time, are harmed by believing boys cannot be interested in female heroines and authors.

➝ Men Reading Women:

The very question why men should like Anne Tyler's books strikes me as odd. I haven't come across the reverse kind of question: why women readers should like, say, Henry James, or F. Scott Fitzgerald, or Edward St Aubyn. This shows that even here, in a sphere where women flourish, where the record of their achievement is truly staggering, the world is not yet on an even keel, so to say. Why males might like a female writer is still a question; why women appreciate the writing of men is not.

Yep.

➝ I love the fact that there's been so much Diana Wynne Jones love on the bookish Internet lately. Here's Peter Glassman on her work in general, and Chasing Ray on Fire & Hemlock (one of my all-time favourite novels).

➝ The blog PhD in Parenting has a series of posts on children and gender. As you'll have noticed before, I'm not exactly the best at telling whether this kind of commentary is doing a good enough job of staying away from girl cooties territory, but I thought there were some interesting ideas in the post and in the comments and would love to hear what others think.

➝ And speaking of avoiding the girl cooties trap, Clare at the Literary Omnivore has some excellent commentary on The Hunger Games merchandise and on some people's very problematic understanding of what makes Katniss a better role model than Bella.

➝ The F Word on Sherlock's Victorian Values: I found much of interest in this post, but at the same time, this paragraph really frustrated me:

The BBC's Adler was not a feminist icon, she did not meet the high expectations held for this adaptation, but the reactions surrounding her depiction speaks volumes about the socially unacceptable nature of powerful female sexuality.

A sex-positive attitude is a central part of my feminism, and yet I still found Adler's sexualisation problematic - not because I find powerful female sexuality unacceptable, but because it frustrated me to see sexuality become this particular character's sole defining trait. It's perfectly fine for feminists to disagree on this, but I'm always wary of discounting other readings with what amounts to "the patriarchy made you do it" arguments. We can never quite tell how much of our thoughts and attitudes are a product of the sexist world we've grown up in, of course, but when approaching feminist readings that differ from my own, I personally prefer to err on the side of generosity and not assume they're all coming from a place of internalised sexism.

➝ Lastly, I created a Pinterest board called Die, Gender Essentialism, Die. I would love suggestions of more things to add to it.

➝ I'm going to start with some good news this week. Greg Mortenson, the lying liar behind the autobiography 'Three Cups of Tea' has to pay money to compensate the charity he founded, because he benefitted financially from their mass purchase and promotion of his two falsified books. Hurray!

The Guardian article that Bookslut links to here sticks to reporting the facts in a rather bland, opinionless way which I assume is meant to be unbiased. Yet, somehow it still feels like the article's author desperately wants to remind you that Greg Mortenson is a good guy really. His co-workers like him! See this one lady says so.

For something with a bit more fire and common sense, I recommend Bookslut's response to an article about Mortenson's actions, written by Laura Miller in April 2011. Jessa Crispin also linked to an investigation of Mortenson and compared his falsified memoir to to James Frey's, earlier that month.

➝ Speaking of Jessa, she now runs the Kind Reader advice column at the Barnes and Noble Review website, where she uses books to try and help people caught by difficult conundrums. This month's advice is particularly relevant to me and I'm very grateful for the guiddance of that final paragraph.

➝ More good news; E A Games will not be removing same sex relationship options from its games, despite pressure. – via LGBT Space

➝ An influential study, claiming that gay people can stop being gay has been renounced by its author.

The article says this study has been lending validity to 'pray away the gay' therapy programs for a long time, partly because the scientist who created it had previously worked to stop homosexuality being classed as a mental disorder. As a prominent liberal scientist had produced this study it could be presented as unbiased by organisations that cited it (even though the data was criticised for emerging from flawed methodological processes). This allowed people who want to convince the world that gay, lesbian and bisexual people can become straight to strengthen their rhetorical arguments with flawed, but prestigious science from a non-religious, liberal researcher. A public retraction makes that argument invalid. - via Cheryl’s Mewsings

➝ Even though I like the peerbacking, kickstarter model of funding projects I try not to flood this space with links to projects that need financial contributions. I very much don't want to be that ass that makes you feel guilty about the starving children if you buy a nice coffee, or don't have any money to give.

I will just show you the 'We See a Different Frontier' project though, with the understanding that I don't want to tell anyone what to do with their money, the anthology that might be produced if the project is funded sounds sooooo interesting. We See a Different Frontier would be 'a special issue/anthology of colonialism-themed speculative fiction from outside the first-world viewpoint'. Sounds amazing and necessary, right? - again, via Cheryl’s Mewsings

➝ Celebrating projects that manage to find the money they need is free and we can all do it! Here's news of a great project that has been funded successfully. Katie's NHS doctors refused to prescribe her hormone replacement therapy. Her friend Paris Lees told her to ask the internet for help and help it did. now has the money to start seeking private treatment. Hurray for Katie.

➝ THE REJECTIONIST HAS A NOVEL COMING OUT! I'm so happy for her :)

➝ To end Robin Lafevers talks about second chances for published writers at Writer Unboxed. I worry about debut authors, because so often it seems like all their hopes rest on one book and a huge heaping of chance. Nice to see such a sensible and uplifting post, which can provide hope for all authors who keep going. Also, I want 'Grave Mercy' now, please to be giving it to me universe.

➝ chaosraven linked me to BIGBANG - FANTASTIC BABY M/V. I've had it on loop for way too long. Curse you, Rose! *shakes fist*

➝ Ashley Judd Slaps Media in the Face for Speculation Over Her 'Puffy' Appearance. This was fascinating to read except for the ableism (sigh, really?). Don't Read the Comments™.

➝ Sorry, unfortunately Lady Business is the Foz Meadows Show this month. >.> A few weeks ago, Hank Green did a video about The Friendzone. I found it really weird and kind of brain-hurty to compare it to the post Ana linked above, a piece Foz Meadows wrote about the same topic. I have some trouble parsing arguments, but find it interesting how Hank's was gender neutral and it felt very purposeful and like it was avoiding the issue but I couldn't put my finger on this issue until I read this post.

➝ Female Science Fiction Author Reading List.

➝ I have no clue how to cite this (I do not understand tumblr), but this essay about Azula from Avatar: The Last Airbender is wonderful. Spoilers for the entire series.

The Further Adventures of Lady Business!

This week, Ana reviewed Sexing the Brain by Lesley Rogers, Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein, and Zahra's Paradise by Amir and Khalil.

Jodie hasn't posted anything in ages, but is part of several co-reviews, watchalongs and readalongs right now, which is tons of fun.

Renay went back to visit her childhood home and subsequently into the past.

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We Want It! - April 2012

Sat, 14 Apr 2012 04:46:23 GMT

Because we haven't quite managed to work out a way for us to consume ALL the entertainment yet: to keep us from emerging haggard and zombie like after regular all night box set marathons, book splurges and music overload we've set up this monthly space where we can express our pure fannish glee at the fact that so many projects of awesome potential are continually being made. All of our past wants and desires can be found in the We Want It! tag.

Books

So many new books I'm excited about this month!

The Secret Life of William Shakespeare by Jude Morgan: First of all, a new Jude Morgan novel! Which is also relevant to Jodie's interests! I am so ridiculously excited that this even exists. I absolutely adored his take on the Brontës and on the women of the Romantic movement in The Taste of Sorrow and Passion respectively, and absolutely can't wait to get my hands on this.

The Origins of Sex: A History of the First Sexual Revolution by Faramerz Dabhoiwala: This upcoming book is mentioned in Straight by Hanne Blank (which I'm currently reading, hooray) and it sounds super interesting. From the GoodReads description:

In The Origins of Sex, Faramerz Dabhoiwala provides a landmark history, one that will revolutionize our understanding of the origins of sexuality in modern Western culture. For millennia, sex had been strictly regulated by the Church, the state, and society, who vigorously and brutally attempted to punish any sex outside of marriage. But by 1800, everything had changed. Drawing on vast research--from canon law to court cases, from novels to pornography, not to mention the diaries and letters of people great and ordinary--Dabhoiwala shows how this dramatic change came about, tracing the interplay of intellectual trends, religious and cultural shifts, and politics and demographics.

The Irresistible Fairy Tale: The Cultural and Social History of a Genre by Jack Zipes: The existence of a new Jack Zipes also makes me very happy. I remember my days of looting my university's library for everything of his I could find with such fondness. It's no exaggeration to say he's responsible for my interest in cultural and literary criticism.

Science and Gender: Critique of Biology and its Theories on Women by Ruth Bleier: Because my personal Project Read Every Debunking of Gender Essentialism in Existence is so on.

Black Ships by Jo Graham: Clare reviewed this the other week and made it sound right up my alley. And thanks to dancesontrains's comment the other day, I now also really want The Hand of Isis.

Other People's Daughters: The Life And Times of The Governess by Ruth Brandon: How great does this sound? From GoodReads again:

Ruth Brandon weaves literary and social history with details from the lives of actual governesses, drawn from their letters and journals, to craft a rare portrait of real women whose lives were in stark contrast to the romantic tales of their fictional counterparts. Governess will resonate with the many fans of Jane Austen and the Brontës, whose novels continue to inspire films and books, as well as fans of The Nanny Diaries and other books that explore the longstanding tension between mothers and the women they hire to raise their children.

Also, I have never read a non-fiction book about governesses, which seems a bizarre gap in my reading about the Victorians.

Gillespie and I by Jane Harris: And speaking of the Victorians, this is the book that appeals to me the most from this year's Orange Prize longlist.

Books

'Polar Wives: The Remarkable Women behind the World's Most Daring Explorers' - Kari Herbert:

'As the daughter of a pioneering polar explorer, Herbert brings a unique perspective to these stories of polar exploration. In her portraits of the gifted sculptor Kathleen Scott; eccentric traveller Jane Franklin; spirited poet Eleanor Anne Franklin; Jo Peary, the first white woman to travel and give birth in the High Arctic; talented and determined Emily Shackleton; Norwegian singer Eva Nansen; and her own mother, adventurer Marie Herbert, Karie Herbert blends deeply personal accounts of longing, betrayal, and hope with stories of peril and adventure.' (Amazon copy)

Although I gravitate towards all stories about explorers, polar exploration holds a particular fascination for me. Recently I made a special trip to the National Portrait Gallery to see four photos from Scott's Terra Nova expedition. I've now arranged to visit the Heart of the Great Alone exhibition, started making plans for a trip to the Polar Museum in Cambridge, taken a novel about a doomed trip to the Arctic out of the library and bought Helen Dunmore's 'The Greatcoat'. It's fair to say my interest in polar stories has ramped up considerably in the last few weeks. So, this is the perfect time for me to find out about a new book exploring the lives of women connected with famous polar projects, written by the daughter of an Arctic explorer. Sometimes the universe makes it impossible to hang on to your money. (Highlighted by Chasing Ray)

'Lucian Freud: Etchings' - Esther Freud / 'Lucian Freud: The Painters Etchings' - Starr Figura: While I was at the Portrait Gallery I spent a loooong time looking at the etchings hung outside the ticketed Lucian Freud exhibition. The next time slot was 13:00 (too close to my train time) or I might have shelled out the £15 ticket price to go in, because his etchings are...I could look at them forever. He is fantastic at pulling out all the tiny details on a person's face, just as honestly as possible and the results are engrossing.

I probably don't need both of these books, but it's difficult to decide which one would satisfy me the most. Does anyone have a favourite out of the two?

'Edward Burne Jones' - Penelope Fitzgerald: A week before I went to the NPG I visited a local museum in order to see a small exhibition of Leonardo Da Vinci's drawings. The queue for those drawings ran through an exhibition of huge Edward Burne Jones sketches and paintings. I've seen some of his technical sketches for stained glass windows before, but I never get tired of his work. It's all strong strokes, gorgeous red headed women and religious themes. I know that maybe sounds kind of old fashioned, but it's just all gorgeous and not twee or preachy at all.

Then when I went to the Portrait Gallery there were portraits of Burne Jones and a photo exhibit about his work with a group called The Souls. The universe wants me to know more about him. Although I really want a good art book with his work in it, I'm thrilled to find out that Penelope Fitzgerald (an exceptional author) has written a biography about him.

'Cold Magic' - Kate Elliot: The first chapter of this book was included at the back of N K Jemisin's 'The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms' and I love when your favourite authors leads you to other books, so I've been wanting to investigate this book for a while. I went to visit a revamped local library last week and discovered they have quite the SF collection. 'Cold Magic' is among their books. Keeping it on my radar.

Speaking of N K Jemisin (I feel like I talk about her all the time, so sorry if I'm boring everyone) the first book in her SF duology 'The Killing Moon' is being published in May! *beams* 'The Kingdom of Gods' near finished off my heart and I'm now filling the time until I can have her new book by reading any short stories of hers that I can find.

To finish Malinda Lo's first SF novel 'Adaptation' now has a cover and a blurb. I've got to be honest the cover is just not for me at all (I think it's kind of bland and it reminds me of those terrible 'unsuspecting hot teen dies in a pool' scenes from slasher films), but the description makes it sound like it contains an exciting thriller plot. Books where the government is potentially the big bad have such an effect on me, probably because it's scary when literature forces you to confront the very real possibility that such a powerful authority figure is seriously shady.

Food

Starbucks has been moving into petite dessert arena. Last year they took advantage of the cake pop craze to debut a few different cake pop flavors. The birthday cake pops were so popular that the warehouse/bakery that produces them ran out and their spot in the freezer sat empty for weeks. I was a sad panda because those are my favorite. Recently they've launched a petite pie line. The Starbucks at the place I work is selling petite apple pies and cherry pies and I am sadly addicted to the cherry pies. So many dollars. I'm craving cherry pie for some reason, and I am hopeful that soon I'll have more time to dedicate to making one, once cherries start appearing, for the one week period they're actually on sale in my area. I plan to buy tons and make a bunch of filling to store in the freezer, as well as some actual pies — one to fail spectacularly and one to actually get it right. I am not a baker, but that won't stop me!

Movies

Snow White and the Huntsman: I would not know much about this title except chaosraven put it on my radar a few months ago and now I am suddenly seeing it everywhere. Then there was a trailer I hadn't seen in front of The Hunger Games and my friend Matt and I were immediately "we are so coming to see this, holy crap!"

Books

Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey: This got a Hugo nomination, so, okay, universe, I get it, I should just stop resisting reading this book like I've been doing since last year any time Goodreads or Amazon or my library recommended it to me. I'm going, I'm going! Stop pushing.

Fullmetal Alchemist by Hiromu Arakawa: After years of hints by several friends, I'm finally going to dive into this manga because I am not so subtly looking for lady creators to help me pad my She Wrote What? numbers. I worried a little at the beginning that this would cause Zach and I to treat reading ladies like a chore and something we sped through, but in reality we've actually been just as lazy as ever! But I have some Hugo nominees to read so I can vote, so to manga I go! Also, so many of my fandom friends love this series that I'll finally be in on all the jokes. Score.

Empire of the Summer Moon by S.C. Gwynne: We touched on this topic a little in my American Indian course last year, but didn't have time to go in-depth (alas, survey courses). I was excited to see an entire book on the subject of Quanah and his mother Cynthia Ann Parker, and the story of the Commanches. On my wishlist it goes as I mourn the loss of interlibrary loan now that I have time to use it. :D

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Matched by Ally Condie

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 00:51:21 GMT

Matched by Ally Condie: Cassia trusts the Society to make good decisions for her: what to eat, what to read, how to care for herself and who, ultimately, she should love and marry. When the Society matches her with Xander, a childhood friend, she's sure that he is her ideal match. She feels lucky to know her Match. Later, she attempts to learn more about Xander, and instead of seeing his face on her screen she sees the face of Ky Markham, a boy on the edges of her social group. The Society tells her this is an isolated incident, a breakdown in the system, and to focus on her future with Xander. Unfortunately, spurred on by doubts laid by her grandfather and her own curiosity about Ky, Cassia can't help but wonder about paths she might take without the Society to guide her way. She can't help but wonder about a future, not with Xander, but with Ky. She can't help but wonder about a future with the luxury of choice.

The farther away from this story I get, the more I am torn. There should be a word for a book that is both predictable and pedestrian, and yet somehow still compelling. I picked it up on a whim at the library when they didn't have Under the Never Sky (HEARTBREAKING), remembering that there was some kerfuffle about it and some other similar book, plus that it had sold for some ridiculous amount of money and I wanted to know what in the world publishers were throwing their money at these days.

I said to a friend after I finished that it was like buying a bag of chips and not dividing them into servings as soon as you unloaded the bag from the rest of the groceries. You take the bag to the couch and a episode of Roswell/X-Files later the bag is almost empty. Or, this:

Also, the marketing for this book attempts to ram the love triangle down your throat, but it's a very tired, droopy triangle, one side leaking off. A few chapters into this book we entered scalene triangle territory and there was no going back. Yay for me! Peace out, geometry, no one wanted you, anyway.

I feel like Ana and Jodie are already palming some faces; theirs, those close to them because their skin is all palmed out. They're saying, "Renay, you HATE love triangles! Why do you try so hard to punish yourself?" Answer: because I keep hoping that one of these days I will stumble across an awesome one and it will be great! This one is less offensive than others because it wasn't actually a love triangle, it just happened to include one poor sod who is going to inevitably get tossed over to ramp up the dramatic tension (spoiler: this fails).

Speaking of dramatic tension, do you ever get the feeling that with some books all the life and verve has been edited out of the prose? That is, if it was ever really there at all? There are words, they're forming sentences, they're saying a thing and zZZZZZzzz. It's true that you're not going to like every writer's style. For instance, Ally Condie and I are never going to be writing buddies because I'd break out the rainbow highlighters all over her exhaustively boring prose shouting (while wielding a red sharpie) about verve and narrative and flow and "did you try reading this out loud? At all? Ever?" Excuse me, I'm going to go continue reading Avengers fanfic, where at least the writing doesn't send me spiraling into a coma (thank the stars for niche market fanwriters). On one hand, thematically this lifeless prose is reflecting the Society at large and Cassia's life up until the point we meet her and join her struggle. It's functional and it's doing a job, but it continually got in my way. I get it, prose, you're a soulless shell of the former glory of a world where writing about emotions was squashed, because when people feel too much they can't be kept down because they are determined to find more feelings and endorphins. I got it. I'm 3/4 through the book! I understand, I promise, can you please, please get up? Or at least stop imitating Ben Stein?

I spent most of my time with the book arguing with it. Who's surprised?

Concerning writing in general rather than writing in the book, the beginning of the story centers around a poem by Dylan Thomas. I love metafiction and authors who find a way to seamlessly integrate a piece of literature into a story; hello, I read John Green. However, I found the use of literature in this story so forced and awkward that by the end of the book I was embarrassed. It is hard for books to hit my embarrassment trigger — this book provided a roundhouse kick to the face. It wasn't subtle, it was heavy-handed, and it was humiliating. The less said about the way the poem was used — or in my opinion, badly used to lend gravitas and meaning to a book and a world empty of those things — the better. Thanks for treating me like a moron, narrative. You're off my buddy list.

Let's have a moment of silence for Dylan Thomas.

I don't read a lot of dystopias and I am not learned in the canon of them in any thorough ways (recommendations welcome!). I read We by Yevgeny Zamyatin in 2003, I read The Giver by Lois Lowry late in life (as I tend to read everything 15 years later than the culture says I should). I liked those well enough, although The Giver was a little bit better for me because I lacked the historical context of Russian history I needed to make We as truly frightening as it so obviously was at the time. I haven't done the rounds in dystopia. It doesn't help that recently the line between dystopia, apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic have blurred dramatically, for example, some enterprising author created a flowchart to helpfully define which is which.

It might be that I am simply not a fan of them, or haven't read the right ones to know what pieces make up the best kind of dystopia. But as a dystopia, Matched had no teeth — at least not the kind I'm used to with my schooling in this type of literature. Consequences were vague, the Society a nebulous enemy that never felt threatening at all beyond their power to make people swallow some pills or do terrible physical labor. It felt like with one strong push the people could knock it all over. It was flimsy. The narrative argues that many people are unhappy, but they don't speak up because of fear. I finished this book confused over what exactly people were so afraid of and how the status quo of this society had maintained for so long. I never got it; the fear of a status change, the fear of being taken away? The Society was instilling fear but it remained so transparent as fear tactics that I failed to see why people were so utterly taken away by it.

The book may boast a dystopia and have all the elements of what a story needs to be classified as such, but otherwise i found it lifeless and the romance passionless. This book is very much about The First Book in a Series Of $20 Hardbacks. Matched is The Giver with puberty and illicit, illegal makeouts in the wilderness. I saw someone else (I can't remember who now) compare it, sort of aptly, to Fahrenheit 451. It's a dystopia quilt. With holes.

One thing that pinged me and that Jodie asked me about explicitly was the heterosexuality aspect. In this narrative, there's a rash of invisibility of any sexuality but heterosexual. Whether this was an oversight on the part of the author or the nature of the world I'm unclear on. Are these people Singles? Aberrations? On one hand, it feels realistic to have them erased and not mentioned because there are people (like me) who actively look for diversity (or the lack therefore) and will fill in the blanks in ways that forgive the text if it fails to include it. As readers, we actively use the world-building to build our own worlds using the canon, or textual, evidence. In the lack of information, we patch the holes. In other words, we give stories a free pass. I almost gave Matched a free pass on the absence of diverse sexuality by chalking it up to the nature of the dystopia — the Society suppresses and erases non-traditional sexualities and wow, isn't that horrible?

Then I stopped to consider whether this was fair and asked myself the question: what if the Society didn't erase it because it's not part of the author's worldview? Cassia's narrative doesn't address it and it doesn't appear in the text even with a simple section of world-building, coded implicitly if not explicitly — does that mean the author had greater plans later on or simply erased all sexualities other than heterosexual in the creation of this story? In a book about matching two people for life, it seems like it would come up and because it doesn't, the red flags go up and start dancing frantically. Of all these breakdowns Cassia begins to see in a story about love and companionship and lifelong partners, this seems to oddest thing to leave out. It feels like missing out on a huge chance to make the world even more chilling, since the main relationships in Cassia's life are portrayed eventually as complicated but still supportive. I remain suspicious.

Which brings us to the end. I disliked the TO BE CONTINUED vibe (yes, it requires capslock, this is a thing) because it was so anti-climatic. Looking back at the last book I read with a solid TO BE CONTINUED takes me to The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness. This ending was frustrating and aggravating and lakfjaljskljasd Patrick Ness, you fiend. But it was in a good way. It owned itself and went forward with the knowledge that the story wasn't done and yes, you were going to have to wait for it, sucker. I found it fantastic. Matched felt like the story could have restructured and gone on a bit, but said "screw this", hit the snooze button and rolled over, because it knew it could. After all, the Second Book will clean up its mess, so why not grab an extra nap? It felt lazy or unsure of itself, like it wasn't positive it was good enough to get to go on, so time to vague it up in case that Second Book flaked out. Author and publisher, I do not understand your choice. I shouldn't want to rewrite the ending of the book to be more exciting and have about ten different ideas for doing so. /o\ It's a trilogy! Own it!

After reflecting for a few weeks, I finally came to a conclusion. You know whose story I really wanted to read after finishing this book? Cassia's mother, Molly. Her story carries on in the background of Cassia's realizations and disappointments about her life and her government, a supportive mother and wife but most-importantly, a rule-abiding member of Society. She goes on several mysterious trips and her struggle is just as interesting, if not more so, than Cassia's because of the hints laid about her work and the huge swathes of the world she sees. We only glimpse her journey and troubles in snatches and we slowly come to learn how the choices she makes impact many, many people. The power she wields is fascinating and there's simply not enough of it.

Yet another depressing entry in Impossible Things Renay Wants.

Other reviews: The Book Smugglers, Sci-Fi Fan Letter, Good Books and Good Wine, yours?

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Sidetracks - Episode XIV

Sun, 08 Apr 2012 04:59:00 GMT

Sidetracks is a collaborative project featuring various essays, videos, reviews, or other Internet content that we want to share with each other. All past and current links for the Sidetracks project can be found in our Sidetracks tag.

➝ Theory Thursdays at Read React Review are always so interesting and informative; the latest one is on transgender terms and concepts and it's full of useful resources.

➝ From Beyond the Measure of Men at The Rumpus:

The time for outrage over things we already know is over. The call and response of this debate has grown tightly choreographed and tedious. A woman dares to acknowledge the gender problem. Some people say, "Yes, you're right," but do nothing to change the status quo. Some people say, "I'm not part of the problem," and offer up some tired example as to why this is all no big deal, why this is all being blown out of proportion. Some people offer up submission queue ratios and other excuses as if that absolves responsibility. Some people say, "Give me more proof," or, "I want more numbers," or, "Things are so much better," or, "You are wrong." Some people say, "Stop complaining." Some people say, "Enough talking about the problem. Let's talk about solutions." Another woman dares to acknowledge this gender problem. Rinse. Repeat.

The solutions are obvious. Stop making excuses. Stop saying women run publishing. Seriously. Stop justifying the lack of parity in prominent publications that have the resources to address gender inequity. Stop parroting the weak notion that you're simply publishing the best writing, regardless. There is ample evidence of the excellence of women writers. You aren't compromising anything by attempting to achieve gender parity. Publish more women writers. If women aren't submitting to your publication or press, ask yourself why, deal with the answers even if those answers make you uncomfortable, and then reach out to women writers. If women don't respond to your solicitations, go find other women. Keep doing that, issue after issue after issue. Read more widely. Create more inclusive measures of excellence. Ensure that books by men and women are being reviewed in equal numbers. Ensure gender parity in the critics reviewing those books. Nominate more deserving women for the important awards. Deal with your resentment. Deal with your biases. Vigorously resist the urge to dismiss the gender problem. Make the effort and make the effort and make the effort until you no longer need to, until we don't need to keep having this conversation.

Change requires intent and effort. It really is that simple.

➝ The blog Letters of Note makes me so happy. I find correspondence fascinating — I spent a year cataloguing a deceased writer's personal letters, and I often think this was the most interesting job I'll ever have (and yes, I realise that saying this when I'm still in my 20's is completely ridiculous, but sometimes it feels that way).

➝ The story of the friendship between Winifred Holtby and Vera Brittain was an interesting read, though it made me sad that both Holtby and Brittain felt the need to make the 1930's equivalent to "no homo" comments. I understand the historical context and am not tut-tutting them when I saw this (though as always, "context" does not equal "free pass" — there were, after all, non-homophobic people around then); I just... the article got me thinking that all these decades later, we still haven't figured out a way to acknowledge how very real and important non-romantic bonds are in our lives without constantly defining them in relation to romance.

➝ Sort of related: Visi(bi)lity: Bisexuality as Rebellion: Sexualizing Women's Friendships.

➝ Faking It: the ‘Fake Nerd Girl' and Sexism in Geek Culture. When I posted about my MA dissertation recently, I mentioned the idea that "geeky" boys are generally perceived as embodying a subordinate type of masculinity. When discussing my post with a friend later, I realised with horror that I had come across as saying that there is no sexism in geek culture, that geek boys are more progressive when it comes to gender roles, and that therefore girls in geek circles are doing just fine. I want to clarify that I definitely don't think this the case, and this link illustrates some of the reasons why.

➝ Liz Burns on Boys, Girls, Books:

I love, love, love many of the ideas the library staff created and implemented. Listen to the videos at their website and how the grouped and labeled similar books to make them easier to find. Brilliant, inventive, ideas.

I just wish that it was done in a way that did not exclude girls from an opportunity for ownership and empowerment; and did not do it in a way that says, "this is a boys area but girls are welcome, also." Because, personally, I find that not welcoming or equal. Labelling books as either "boy" or "girl" does a disservice to boys, girls, and books and limits rather than enhances reading opportunities.

➝ "He Won't Read Books About Girls":

So often at the store, we hear parents say about a great book, "Oh, he won't read that. It's about a girl." Really? By accepting and perpetuating, pandering to, this mindset, we are basically saying — to ourselves, each other, the boys, and most damagingly, to girls — that it's okay not to have in interest in the experiences of HALF THE HUMAN RACE. I mean, it's not even possible not to be interested in what half of the world does and says and thinks. And we wonder why there's an empathy problem in our culture....

➝ And I'll leave you with a fun link: Women in Science: In honor of International Women's Day and Women's History Month, the Smithsonian Institution Archives (SIA) is pleased to present a sampling of images documenting women scientists and engineers from around the world, most of whom were pioneers in their respective fields, or were the first women to receive advanced graduate degrees in their discipline.

➝ Okay, I really loved the The West Wing and The Social Network was a really well-done piece of film with the skeevy layer of White Dudebros and How Many Stereotypes Can We Fit Into One Asian Character?...yeah. But Aaron Sorkin's writing! It's snappy! It's got life! I wish he were a more aware person so I could really get behind his new show, The Changed Man. *sigh*

➝ Podcast interview with Margo Lanagan. Possibly relevant to Ana's interest!

➝ Let Me Tell You About the Birds and the Bees: Gender and the Fallout Over Christopher Priest is a great post from Cat Valente about how the Christoper Priest situation would look if Christopher Priest had been any women. At all. My favorite part:

I'm frustrated. I'm tired of the disparity of voices, of who gets written off and who gets their blog posts discussed in The Guardian being dismally predictable. I'm tired of still having the "when men say it it's awesome and when women say it it's bitchy" conversation that was supposed to be sorted in 1985. Not because I have a whole bunch of horrible shit about awards that I'd like to say. I don't. But I have to tell you that I don't, so that you'll think I'm a nice girl, so that I don't come off as threatening, so that you'll listen to what I say and not just write me off as an angry feminist…what? Bitch. Because feminist bitches are not to be listened to, don't you know. They are not to be considered, not the way Priest was considered, even by people who disagreed, even by people who thought he went too far and too personal and too much.

➝ Oh goodness. This link. I don't know. I'm not a parent or an educator, but if any child I have known in my life expressed an opinion like this I would sit down with them and go, "look, child, we are about to have a conversation about gender esstentialism and cultural and social conditioning. Get your dictionary and some cookies, we're going to be here awhile." I would emphatically not post the opinion on the Internet and them complain about critiques (hi; welcome to the Internet, you must be new here). It brings to mind Saundra Mitchell's post on this topic (still great, sadly still relevant). Funny how we have this discussion over and over and over again and now we're dragging kids into it to bolster our arguments (because that's equal to scientific data). You'd think we'd get tired of going in circles and never moving forward by trying to address the actual issue but instead keep enabling boys to continue these positions, validate them and cap it off by having them write posts begging publishers to continue treating boys as if they're inherently different because there's just not enough books for boys. Social conditioning and The Patriarchy: 1 - Reasoned logic, discussion and education: 0. Is this a Don't Read the Comments™ situation? I can't tell. >.>

➝ Stories Are Genderless, where my raging crush on Foz Meadows grows ten sizes in one post. I kept trying to find a part to quote but couldn't; this post is everything Ana, Jodie and I talk about whenever there's yet another blog post or article demanding more boy books. aksd;lasda;sldk starry eyes everywhere! Ana, Jodie, please come fangirl this with me in comments so we can be incoherent together.

The fact that these changes have paralleled the decline of teenage males' interest in reading isn't a coincidence. However, this is not, as certain people would have it, because women have feminised literature with our magical vaginabooks and therefore made reading inherently unpalatable to the masculine half of the population. No: it's because everything in our culture tells men and boys to avoid any interest, activity or community dominated by women - and when article after article insists that boys are reading less than girls; when the pop cultural discourse shies away from portraying boys as readers, or closely associates male reading with male unpopularity and outcastness; when the humanities is widely touted as being the feminine alternative to the masculine sciences; when finally, after centuries of exclusion, girls are actually getting a break at something, the consequence is that boys are keeping away in droves.

➝ A song that's been in my head for the last few days that will provide an upbeat ending: Tightrope by Janelle Monáe.

The Further Adventures of Lady Business!

This week, Ana shares her collection of bookish postcards, reviews Marie Stopes and the Sexual Revolution by June Rose and How Beautiul the Ordinary, edited by Michael Cart. She also posts some fun photos of her gorgeous spring weather.

Jodie posts about her trip to the National Portrait Gallery and reviews My Mortal Enemy by Willa Carther.

Renay posts about an upcoming fandom project and taking over the role of Volunteers & Recruiting Chair for The Organization for Transformative Works.

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Sidetracks - Episode XII

Sun, 25 Mar 2012 04:40:20 GMT

Sidetracks is a collaborative project featuring various essays, videos, reviews, or other Internet content that we want to share with each other. All past and current links for the Sidetracks project can be found in our Sidetracks tag.

➝ The Smithsonian features 'Ten Historic Female Scientists You Should Know About'.

I read Tracey Chevalier's book 'Remarkable Creatures' which was partly about Mary Anning and I remember learning about Barbara McClintock's studies of maize, but all the other female scientists are new to me.

➝ The Rejectionist wrote a 'Dear Superior Person..." post in answer to a link on the Bookslut blog, which I sent her. It is awesome in both its fury and its acceptance of the need to rage about everything.

I probably spend too much time thinking about anger these days, specifically about anger and reconciliation (as you can probably tell from the way my reviews and comments are bending these days) and also anger as a political force. Seriously, if you want to hear me go on, just introduce the topic of anger. I suspect it’s why I’ve started linking to more anti-capitalist pieces recently, because sometimes it seems to me that the anti-capitalist movement still allows space for public anger about everything, while other political communities can struggle with that idea now.

It is wearying to hear the many ways in which people dismiss political anger. Your anger has to be about the big things, or it is trivial and pathetic. Your anger is preformative, rather than sincere. Your anger is going to fuck everything up for everyone else. Your anger is not worth it, let it go. It is naive to be angry — don’t you know, little girl, that everyone else got past anger years ago! Your anger is the problem here.

And I get the reasoning behind some of these statements, I do. People listen better if you’re not screaming in their internet face. At the same time, anger is so powerful; it’s part of what brings people to political action and plays a vital role in cultivating empathy? Yet all that positive stuff and all that necessary stuff about anger (sometimes you just need to shout or capslock) is swept away. Anger end up described as entirely negative and (most important in shutting down angry responses) unproductive, probably directed at something stupid and destructive. I would kind of like to see honest discussions open up about anger. Like Renay told me once, emotions – we all have them.

➝ Ana I think you will like reading Teju Cole’s recent article at Flavorwire about Kony 2012 and the White Savior Industrial Complex. It clearly shows the problem with the recent ‘Invisible Children’ project and calls people to ‘think constellationally’ about the reasons behind social injustice. Very smart.

➝ The Aurealis Awards (Australian SF/F and horror awards) have released their shortlists and there are lots of female authors among the finalists.

It's been a week, that's for sure. My OTW-related life exploded and my team manager at $dayjob has been gone and I met with a mortgage broker and life. Thanks for carrying me over the finish line content-wise, Jodie. ♥

➝ Fanfiction is getting a lot of play recently thanks to Fifty Shades of Gray (if you don't know what that is, I can't tell you how glad I am that you don't). I did a lot of catch up reading, starting with The Practice of Fanfiction, which led me to Dear Author's series on fanfiction which led me to annoyance and despair. I get people outside the community need to have the 101 discussion a few times, but we're approaching iteration 946254926748263 at this point and I would like to move on. Thankfully, Aja had some Opinions about that series, and maybe it's obvious by now that I have a thing with Aja's Opinions. Is that a ship? Is there going to be fanfic of this?

Her series is over at Manga Bookshelf, and here's what available now:

➝ Interview with Levar Burton:

First of all, as a student of culture and popular culture and the impact that it has on us all, I know this to be true: Seeing yourself represented in the popular culture is really critical in terms of forming your own self image.

➝ Paolo Bacigalupi had an article in Kirkus titled The Invisible Dystopia. The article was simple and straightforward, though. It was a comment that got me:

But this really rubbed me the wrong way and seemed backwards to me. I agree that these are tough times for queer youth, but a lot of queer youth that I see also seem really delighted with their lives and don't need to be categorized in the role of victim. Shipbreakers features a lot of characters of color. You could use the same argument to say that black youth in the USA are being discriminated against and shot down in real life, so they already live in a dystopia and why would you want to read about them, and that only by writing a story where white people are the victims of racism could you open the eyes of our true target audience, white kids, to the nature of racism. Doesn't that sound bananas?

It misses the fundamental thrust of his argument. In oppressive societies and situations, there can still be personal happiness and success for people who are in these groups. Cultural situations and systems that seek to hold us down impact our personal happiness, but we are varied people with excellent abilities to compartmentalize and live our lives reaching ever upwards for a better way to be. People can be victimized without losing their other qualities. People can victimized and be happy in their personal lives. People can be victimized and still be fully realized people. Pretending that happy people aren't victims of a system as insidious as the one Bacigalupi mentions is to pretend the system doesn't exist; that's more dangerous than the system itself.

The Further Adventures of Lady Business

This week, Ana reviewed Cereus Blooms at Night by Shani Mootoo, Girls to the Front by Sara Marcus and Global Women, edited by Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Russell Hochschild.

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Sidetracks - Episode XI

Sun, 18 Mar 2012 07:41:17 GMT

Sidetracks is a collaborative project featuring various essays, videos, reviews, or other Internet content that we want to share with each other. All past and current links for the Sidetracks project can be found in our Sidetracks tag.

➝ When a piece of writing starts out like Laurie Penny's article in 'The New Statesmen' by saying 'I'm having a major political rethink this week, because it turns out that all along, feminism was a CIA plot to undermine the left' I get a wry little grin on my face. Clearly what we have here is a writer who has found a target so ridiculous, that they can't help poking easy fun at it just for giggles. I mean, come on, Mark Crispin Miller's idea that the organisations with CIA links funded 'identity politics' as a deliberate attempt to split keep liberal politics from pursuing class, or economic analysis is so laughably based on bad logic and an obvious conspiracy theory.

And...then some people started agreeing with Crispin in the comments. Oh not that the CIA were involved, of course, that was clearly just ramblings, but wouldn't the labour movement have got on much faster and better if we all just stuck together? Solidarity is the way forward, difference is separating, the most important issue is class not gender etc,etc And once we achieve the one goal of bringing capitalism into line by presenting united strength, of course everything will be better for everyone.

It's stuff I feel I've seen trotted out by activists a million times before, when I've seen commentors argue against the importance of intersectionality and I'm pretty sick of it. If uniting under the banner of a labour movement will get everyone what they need then how does anyone explain why it took longer for the ordinary women to get the vote than it took the ordinary man? What explanation do these people have for any gendered pay split, or any racial pay split? I just want to point everyone who thinks like this to 'My Feminism Will be Intersectional, or it will be Bullshit' until they GET IT.

➝ Someone at work sent me this link to the work of an amazing glass artist called Dale Chihuly.The area I'm from used to be really well known for producing glass and there are a lot of individual glass artists who learnt their craft round here. I love glass art, go to this big glass festival whenever it's in our area and have been to the glass museum (yes, that's a thing, what?).

➝ A quick article about the male equivalent of the Rest Cure which was prescribed to women who were believed to have nervous disorders. The male version sounds way more fun unsurprisingly.

➝ Another article reminding us that Andrew Motion is writing a sequel to 'Treasure Island' (yes. we get it already, I refuse to have an opinion until it is published and I can read it)', but at least The Telegraph fleshes this out with interesting extra content. This article looks at
medical content in Robert Louis Stevenson's fiction and his biographical link to the medical world.

➝ I'm sorry Kim, but I just hate the term chick-non-fiction so much :( I hate all gendered book marketing and I would please like it to stop. How does everyone else feel about it?

➝ An interesting peek behind the scenes at Google is provided by an employee who has left in Why I Left Google. I love a good nose into how the big companies work.

➝ As Renay is creating her own Hugo ballot, I figure she's probably feeling curious about other people's nominations. Abigail Nussbaum Asking the Wrong Question talks through her thoughts on creating a draft ballot.

➝ From The Rejectionist:

'When I make jokes about guillotines people get uncomfortable but you know, I'm not really joking anymore, is the thing. I know how that one ended but look around you. Look around you and tell me you don't want guillotines a little, too. Tell me you don't want language that is a shear, cutting through; tell me you don't want words that leave the streets running with blood.'

Just read the whole thing.

➝ To follow, a post from her fashion blogger friend, Meg Clark, who I just started following. 'In Defence of the Hot Mess/ A Call for Female AntiHeroes'. Various people around the blogosphere have recently started calling for less of the strong women archetype and stating their interest in more regular, or flawed, or less assertive, or not primarily physically strong female characters (Ana's linked to some of those discussions and has talked about it herself). I think Clark's post takes that discussion in a new direction, calling for more female characters who are believably fucked up.

As you might have gathered when I said I was lusting after 'The Green Girl', this is a character type I want way more of, but which is surrounded by issues that may make this type of fictional woman feel uncomfortable to some. Interested to see what comes out of all these discussions (I suspect it's going to be a variation of the ever popular "ALL THE STORIES").

➝ And I'll end with an essay about Terry Pratchett's women for Ana. cassiphone talks about Agnes from 'Masquerade' and 'Carpe Juggulum', with bonus fan art.

➝ This is hilarious review of The Hunger Games that shouldn't be missed. Via owlmoose

➝ The MLA would like you to correctly cite all Tweets in your papers, please. #technologywins

➝ A wonderful video answering the question "What is the most astounding fact you can share with us about the Universe?" by Dr. Neil DeGrasse Tyson.

➝ I have feelings about Henry Jenkins, mostly centering around the fact that we're letting a white dude write about our community and I want more sources like this where it's our voices writing about our community, participants writing about events they witnesses and were a part of, but this review of Textual Poachers is still a nice summary of the book's content. On a related note, Transformative Works and Cultures Vol 9 is out, and the topic is Fan/Remix Video. Someone on my reading list posted a super neat trailer.

➝ Things I don't need but would love to have regardless: Dinosaur Chocolate Molds.

➝ Native Appropriations: Johnny Depp as Cultural Appropriation Jack Sparrow...I mean Tonto. and Why Tonto Matters. Thoughtful articles with good questions.

➝ Fiona Apple is releasing a new album titled The Idler Wheel is wiser than the Driver of the Screw, and Whipping Cords will serve you more than Ropes will ever do. I am super excited about this. \o/

The Further Adventures of Lady Business

Once again, Ana has written many, many interesting things! She reviewed Geek Girls Unite by Leslie Simon, A Bride's Story vols 1 and 2 by Kaoru Mori, The Next Day by Jason Gilmore, Paul Peterson and John Porcellino and discusses Chavs by Owen Jones, which explores "the demonization of working-class people".

For International Women's Day (next year our trio will have to do something special for this!), Ana created a fabulous recommendation list of nonfiction titles.

Finally, Ana created Reading and Gender: A Brief Guided Tour of my MA Dissertation.

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'Tankborn' - Karen Sandler

Mon, 12 Mar 2012 22:23:38 GMT

So, ‘Tankborn’...oh, this review is going to be a long one. I hope you can stick with me!

Karen Sandler’s ‘Tankborn’ is set in the intriguing, fictional world of Loka, a planet which Sandler’s characters colonised when Earth became uninhabitable. The characters in ‘Tankborn’ live on the continent of Svarga, which appears to be the only inhabited continent on Loka. Svarga’s society is rigidly structured; inherited economic status dictates a person’s place in society, the respect due to them and the districts of the continent that they are allowed to live in. The highest level of society is inhabited by the trueborns, humans born with inherited wealth waiting for them. Within the trueborn grouping there are three economic divisions; high-status, demi-status and minor status trueborns. This hierarchy was reportedly created by the varying contributions that each section of society made to re-establishing society on Loka:

‘It all had to do with how they’d started on Loka, the richest taking the top of the pile, all of them the same lovely colour as Devak – she pushed him out of her mind again- then that middle group that eventually settled into demi and the rest into minor-status. The lowborns has been in servitude from the start, so they were easy to understand, although a few of them has close to that cherished skin colour, the sekai said….

The non-humans were at the bottom of the pile, of course.’

As you can probably tell from the quote I’ve shared, economic status on Loka often intersects with skin colour. High-status trueborns often exhibit a particular skin colour, which due to its associations with wealth and power has become ‘that cherished skin colour’, in the same way that some skin colours are often idealised in our own world. While many real life cultures often idealise the white skin colour, or a pale skin colour, on Svarga the ideal skin colour is described as ‘a rich medium brown’. Interesting, right? I’ve seen authors such as Bernadine Evaristo and Mallorey Blackman write novels about alternate universes, where they attempt to highlight racial power imbalances through satire by making white people the dis-empowered class and black characters rulers, but I think this is the first time I’ve seen a novel position people with dark skins as the societal elite and make the majority of lower status skin colours that skin a colour that falls in between the poles of white and black.

Sandler’s author note explains that the culture of ‘Tankborn’ is ‘…inspired by my long-ago conversations with an Indian born co-worker named Azad…I’d been fascinated by Indian society and that caste system for decades…’. I know a little about that caste system, but I don’t pretend my knowledge is extensive, so I can’t examine whether there are problems with the way she applies this real life version of caste to her sci-fi world, or whether this particular interpretation will satisfy readers who know more about the Indian caste system than me. What I can say is that by using a different configuration of race and economic status Sandler ensures that the majority of the book is about characters that have black, or brown skin colouring. White people don’t often feature in the conversation this book is having with its readers (although there is one white character side character, who is a villain, but by no means the only villain) and that is refreshingly different in a world where a large percentage of the novels published focus near exclusively on white characters.

The racial composition of Svarga’s society becomes an especially exciting concept if you consider what it may suggest about the society of the Earth the early Lokans originally came from. As far as I can work out none of the main characters are white (like I said, there’s a white character who appears a few times, but his role in the story is limited) and being pale white seems to be extremely uncommon, much less common than in the real life western world. Perhaps the reader is intended to believe that the early settlers of Svarga came from a fictional version of Earth that resembled our world, but that only one country, or continent with a population where it is more common to have darker skin tones (say India, as the social hierarchy is based on Indian caste system) survived. Alternatively, Sandler could be deliberately writing an inverse vision of the pervasive, near all white dystopias, which seem to believe that there will be no (or very few) people with dark skin in the future, so the logic behind why most of Svarga’s population displays varying degrees of brown skin colour isn’t important.

These ideas are never explicitly verified in the text, or author’s note, so I’d like to suggest a third interpretation. Based on the racial makeup of Svargan society and the fact that the upper echelons of society have dark skin, it’s possible that the Earth which Loka’s people left behind, was totally different from our own world, with a different racial makeup. Perhaps the Earth the characters in ‘Tankborn’ mention is as much a sci-fi/future projecting creation as Loka is. I’m more used to seeing dystopian novels where a terrible catastrophe has befallen our own world and it’s exciting to see a sci-fi author potentially change that up, making the entire basis of her fictional world a science fictional (and racially progressive) concept¹.

It’s important to note that Loka isn’t totally segregated by skin colour. Racial segregation seems to apply mostly to trueborns; high-status trueborns generally have the coveted skin colour, while trueborns with lighter or darker skin colours seem to end up as demi-status, or minor-status trueborns. Colour privilege is certainly part of this society, at both trueborn level and lower down in society. Still, some lowborns have the coveted trueborn skin colour, but remain in their economic class, while some high-status trueborns exhibit skin colours that are seen as less desirable (like white, or dark black). Demi and minor-status trueborns, may buy their way into a higher level of society by securing adhikar land (precious land gifted to trueborns at birth, as their inherited right). Economic status is, I think, the defining factor in Sandler’s society, although skin colour plays an important part in deciding a character’s ranking within the higher reaches of society.

The sci-fi society that Sandler has created is highly complex and one of the best bits of ‘Tankborn’ in my opinion, so excuse me while I delay talking about the specifics of plot and continue to chat on about that aspect. The heroine of ‘Tankborn’, Kayla, is a GEN; a Genetically Engineered Non-Human. GENs are a despised group who make up the bottom layer of Loka’s economic caste system, but also fall outside of this structure. While the trueborn and lowborns who populate Loka are all locked into their own pre-defined economic and social places, they are all born as free citizens. GENs are created by trueborn scientists (they grow in a tank, hence the name of the novel) so that one day they may serve society. They are controlled by enforcers, monitored by a tracking system and confined to living in certain sectors, unless they’re serving on assignment. While they aren’t chained and are supposedly protected by human rights edicts, GENs are effectively slaves.

I’ve read books before that feature a genetically engineered under class, like Paulo Bacigalupi’s ‘The Windup Girl’, but nonetheless I think the GEN’s of ‘Tankborn’ allow for a new exploration of how society enslaves people. Kayla and others like her are made using manipulated DNA, which allows them to grow a special kind of archived brain section. This part of their brain, which can be accessed by pressing technology called a data pack to a tattoo on their cheek, is used to upload their slave assignments and to reset a GEN if they act in a way their captors disapprove of. As the book progresses and the reader finds out much more about the creation of GENs, the development of them as a sci-fi concept becomes the most fascinating aspect of the novel. The GENs have religion, a liturgy which has been given to them by their creators, but has been sincerely embraced by the GENS themselves. The religion contains the idea that ‘suffering makes us great and will bring rewards in the next life’, a powerful rhetorical argument which was used to control the poor of England in the eighteenth century. So, here we have a group of slaves whose minds are controlled from birth through rhetoric and religion, who are then physically controlled through a genetic modification to their minds, which can be accessed by technology. The reader gets both an interesting and effectively disturbing sci-fi metaphor and a realistic, disturbing exploration of how constructs of reason can be used to control.

At the beginning of the book Kayla is approaching her fifteenth year, the time when GENs receive their first assignment and start to work. GENs are changed, or genned, in the tank to have special, enhanced skills (skets) that enable them to carry out tasks which society needs a labour force to complete. According to their sket, they take places with high-status trueborns, or work in industries run by demi and minor-status trueborns, or work as apprentices in the GEN community with healers or nurturers. Kayla has been genned with strength and she expects to be assigned to a fetch and carry type of assignment. She is therefore surprised to find herself assigned as carer to a high-status trueborn Zul Manel. She is even more surprised to find out that his grandson, Devak Manel, is a dreamy trueborn boy she met briefly when he helped her little brother, right at the beginning of the book.

I want to take a moment to take a moment here to talk about Kayla’s family. As GENs aren’t born, but built in a tank, GEN children are raised by older GENs who have been given an enhanced care-giving sket. Kayla lives with her GEN mother Tala and her brother Jal. Although only fifty or so pages are devoted to their family life, before Kayla leaves her family (after which Kayla gains the traditional independence, many YA protagonists need so they can go adventuring) their relationships feel believable, close and established. Jal is an especially lively character and the inter-play between him and Kayla reads as the affectionate teasing often found between siblings:

‘ “So what happened with that high-status boy?”

“Nothing. He just asked if you were okay.”

“He was smiling at you.”

A hot flush rose in Kayla’s face. “He wasn’t!”

Jal guffawed. “I saw him. I was watching from behind the kel-grain warehouse.”

“You were supposed to run home!”

“I did. After I saw you making eyes at him.” '

I adored this section of the book and wished there could have been more time spent looking at the family, even though I understand why this might have put obstacles in the way of plot. Later in the book the Manels are portrayed as a much more troubled family and these relationships, while often broken also feel extremely genuine. The family members act like real people who have spent their whole lives together, rather than characters that have been shoved into the same house. The creation of family relationships is one of the real strengths of ‘Tankborn’.

Now, here comes the part of the review where I try to explain why despite the intriguing sci-fi, the likeable female protagonist and the believable family relationships, ‘Tankborn’ often felt like it was fudging it’s creation of humanity and society. As always, my feelings are complicated.

Unusually, for me, my feelings about ‘Tankborn’ are impinged on by other novels that I’ve read. There’s no doubt that I had more questions about the way the world of ‘Tankborn’ worked, because I read it straight after I’d finished ‘Page from a Tennessee Journal’ by Francine Thomas Howard. Howard’s novel is a piece of historical fiction which presents a difficult examination of a relationship between a black woman who takes over her husband’s duties, sharecropping for a white man and the white man himself, who uses his racial privilege to oppress and abuses her, while believing he is romancing her. I found myself comparing the real life world of this particular historical novel to the sci-fi world of ‘Tankborn’ because ‘Tankborn’ features a romantic relationship between a member of an oppressed GEN class, Kayla and a member of Svarga’s elite, power class, Devak.

Devak differs from the privileged male character in ‘Page from a Tennessee Journal’ because he isn’t physically, or mentally abusive towards Kayla. He has been raised by his grandfather to treat GENs with respect, although, due to competing socialised training from his father and peers, he sometimes stumbles in this progressive behaviour. As Devak is kind and exceptionally progressive compared with much of the rest of his society, I had no problem believing that once Kayla fell in love with him, they could have a kind and equal relationship. However, I did think that Kayla fell in love with Devak really fast and easily, considering that he is still a member of a class which holds all the GENs down. In fact, Devak’s links to GEN abuse are even stronger than other high-status trueborns as his father is in charge of controlling the GENs, using the tracking Grid to monitors the movements of GENs who stray outside their assigned areas. Kayla doesn’t even fully realise that Devak harbours progressive feelings about GENs, until late on in the book when he shows that he’s in love with her as well. She constantly feels he must be revolted by her and he is often gruff when he speaks to her. Considering all these factors I would have expected her to feel more conflicted over the fact that she was falling in love with him.

There are totally plausible reasons why Kayla is still able to love with Devak, despite believing herself inferior to him and despite the fact that Devak often struggles to be nice to her. Novels like ‘Wench’, by Dolen Perkins-Valeez, explore why a slave might still love their oppressors. The kind of reasons Perkins-Valeez presents (internalised racism, or trickery and deceit on the part of the oppressor) don’t seem to apply to Kayla and Devak. Maybe their love has more to do with old standards about love: the heart wants what it wants, you can’t choose who you love etc, etc. I can get behind that. Sometimes reason can’t be appealed to when it comes to love, or maybe sometimes reason doesn’t even have to factor in when you find the right partner, no matter who they are. However, that doesn’t change the fact that Kayla and Devak are still in monumentally different positions and that Kayla has spent her whole life being oppressed by members of Devak’s class, who have reset GENs at whim. While I wouldn’t expect their different status’ to be a problem for a progressive boy with trueborn status, I did expect to see Kayla experience a little internal conflict. Examining the problems of your relationship and experiencing worry, or concern about the future of this relationship, doesn’t have to come at the expense of romance and it would be nice to see this novel acknowledge that.

Maybe her sudden and simple feelings towards him are just another case of the ever popular insta-love, or it could be argued that as Sandler is writing a piece of science fiction Kayla’s lack of freedom and Devak’s mastery of GEN’s wouldn’t necessarily lead to the characters having the same kind of troubled feelings as unequal characters in a novel like ‘Pages from a Tennesse Journal’. I don’t know if anyone is making that argument, but I’m going to pissily pre-empt it anyway and say that my problem with this line of thinking stems from the fact that Sandler has (according to the author’s note) based the caste system in ‘Tankborn’ on real life social practises in India. I think that use of Indian culture is different and exciting; in fact it’s one of the things that attracted me to this book. However, if an author is going to use a real life style caste system, then they have to be prepared to follow the use of that caste system through to its logical, real world conclusions. There are plenty of places were the characters are allowed to address the anger that inequality and ill-treatment creates, for example Kayla is given a voice to argue about the treatment of GENS and lowborns, as well as trueborn power in general, for example in this extract where she and Devak discuss the lowborns:

‘ “I’m told what work I’ll do and where I’ll live,” she went on. “I’m only a fifteenth year, but the trueborns could have me sent clear across Svarga Continent, far away from my family, and I wouldn’t have had any choice.”

“It used to be that way with the lowborns,” he said, “when we first came here, Only the trueborns had the money to build the colony ships. The lowborns had to work for their passage, be servants to the trueborns when they arrived.”

“But the lowborns agreed to work for the trueborns. And they didn’t have to do that forever. Now they pick their own jobs, live where they like, how they like. So, why aren’t the lowborns trueborns now?”

“Because of the adhikar. Lowborns don’t own land.”

“Because they’re not allowed to.”

“But that’s how the lowborns want it. They don’t want to become trueborns, tied down by an adhikar parcel…”

“How many lowborns have you asked about that?” '

It’s clear that Kayla is less than perfectly accepting of her place in society and she mentions that all GENs experience conflict over the way that the system relegates them to service. Yet Kayla has no similarly troubled internal feelings about being attracted to a member of the oppressor class. This seems strange as I feel it would be in keeping with her questioning character for the novel to explore some of the emotional problems such a system might present to any couples trying to bridge the caste divide. Keeping this emotional response out of the novel, seems to me to be fudging; picking and choosing; shunting characters into peculiarly easy emotional acceptances that suit the conclusions the novel’s plot needs to arrive at, instead of allowing the story to embrace the full range of human (and GEN) emotions.

I know that each individual experience of oppression differs. Not everyone goes through the exact same troubled confusion over how to react to those who have benefited from their oppression. And I so don’t want to claim that the only valid reaction for Kayla to have about her feelings for Devak is internal conflict because he is a high-status trueborn. Still, I think because many people do go through that internal conflict, it seems kind of uncomfortable for a novel like ‘Tankborn’ to avoid addressing that somewhere. No one novel can encompass every variation of experience, but in the quest to represent individual experiences each novel also has to be careful not to block out emotional feeling in a way which reinforces troubling, dominant ideas. The idea that romantic love easily conquers social inequality, or that romantic love heals every rift is still so pervasive that I feel kind of sad every time a novel has the chance to redress that balance, without cutting its own romance off at the knees and just…doesn’t. At least that’s how I feel – comments are for alternate views.

For me, if a caste system forces people into slavery and a slave like Kayla doesn’t feel at least a little bit confused about having romantic feelings towards a member of the class that makes use of slaves, then I want some pretty firm reasons to explain why not. ‘Tankborn’ just doesn’t provide those kinds of reasons. When I read this novel shortly after reading realistic historical fiction like ‘Pages from a Tennessee Journal’ and ‘Wench’, which were so good at having characters examine unequal relationships and try to provide real² reasons why these unequal relationships might still exist, it means that the society in ‘Tankborn’ inevitably looks a bit flat, a bit simplistic. I also think that if an author is going to make changes to the way that personal psychology works, then the logic behind those changes needs to be especially well worked out and explained. Authors may need to show their working, because in my opinion the heart of what makes it possible for readers to understand and care about a work of fiction, is usually the fact that characters act in recognisable ways and justifying themselves when they don’t act in ways the reader might understand. Without textual justification, it’s tough for readers to understand your character and once understanding is gone, I think empathy is out the window.

Returning to the plot, the third main, teenage character in ‘Tankborn’, is Kayla’s friend Mishalla. Mishalla is assigned to a mysterious work detail, where she cares for children who are spirited away by enforcers in the night. There are a couple of plots going on in this book, which eventually turn out to be related and while Mishalla is worrying about children being stolen away, Kayla is the recipient of some unauthorised data, which sets her on a path to help Devak’s grandfather in a mission she doesn’t fully understand until the end of the book.

Some spoilers from here on: Devak’s grandfather is engaged in leading a revolution, which he hopes will end certain unethical practises surrounding the creation of GENs.

While the purpose of this revolution is admirable, original and turn out to expand the diversity of YA again (seriously, when was the last time we saw a book where a revolution was partly against ableism?) I was a little concerned about the way the revolution was structured. Zul says that members of all the different trueborn classes work with low-borns and GENs in this fight to free GENs, but the specific plot of ‘Tankborn’ sets trueborns up as the organising force, with low-borns acting as fields agents. The GEN characters who become involved in the revolution in this novel are sort of coerced into participation. I just want to provide some side critique that this type of revolution doesn’t represent the way a lot of real life social action works. Movements for freedom and equality are often driven by oppressed groups seeking empowerment in real life, while allies outside of these communities provide support. Think of suffrage, or the African-American civil rights movement, or Occupy Wallstreet – all rights actions that incorporated the work of allies, but were primarily driven by members of the affected groups.

I’m just offering a sidenote above for readers to keep in mind. My big problem with the revolutionary structure that ‘Tankborn’ presents is the way the GENs in this book are treated by the trueborn revolutionary organisers. They are, to put it bluntly, used. They are encouraged to take help a mysterious force without being given all the details of what they’re actually getting into, or why they are helping. They’re not even given a complete explanation of exactly what wrong that has been done to them. The book comes up with very plausible reasons for why the GEN characters can’t be made aware of the full details of the revolution that they are helping to run and Mishalla is allowed to react negatively to being used. I can even construct a way to justify why the wider population of GENs can’t be informed about a revolution which is supposed to be for their benefit out of the textual evidence³, but to avoid providing the main GEN characters with information once they’re part of the team seems quite strange.

And yet, no one really thinks about the problems of the revolution at all. For all their progressiveness, none of the revolution leaders discuss whether GENs should take charge of the revolution for their freedom. None of the GENs who find out about the revolution are able to express dissatisfaction that trueborns are still in control, of making plans for their freedom. There’s an implicit ‘everyone plays an equal part in the revolution’ concept that is never vocalised by the characters, but provides a possible interpretation of this situation. I’m conflicted about how well the book implicitly develops this theme, but I am absolutely rock set that the concept of the revolution feels under developed and lacks an interest in including psychological complications.

So, I’m kind of half and half on ‘Tankborn’; it all feels like a bit of an unpolished jumble to be honest. Some aspects, like the sci-fi and the world building are shiny and cool. Some aspects, like the emotions of the characters, lack textual justification and end up making the novel feel kind of flat. The ending, which reveals all the big secrets was great, although I wish it had been more focused on breaking a privileged system and helping the GENs, rather than fixing one particular aspect of that society without disturbing the greater hierarchy. The epilogue seems less than necessary and again leaves me confused about the characters emotions and actions.

Now to be honest, although I add a lot of big concept sci-fi YA dystopias to my wish list, I rarely read from that part of the sci-fi genre. The ‘What if love were banned?!’, ‘What if your eye colour could get you killed?!’ side of the genre appeals to me, but I often hear of problems with the most visible titles that put me off exploring further. I think it’s super unfortunate that the first one I’ve read in a long time and ended up critiquing in depth, a novel where none of the main characters are white that comes from Tu Books, a publisher focused on diversity. I bet I’d find similar problems with the logic and social construction in some of the many, many books from this part of the genre, which focus on white characters and are published by traditional publishers. And it’s great to see a new piece of sci-fi that contains lots of female characters with darker skin (and a publisher who puts one of those characters on the front cover). It's just that parts of ‘Tankborn’ just were not for me at all and I hope I’ve explained why as fully and transparently as possible, so that you can make your own mind up about this novel.

Other Reviews

Rhapsody in Books
The Intergalactic Academy
SF Signal

¹ I can totally see how this construction of society is open to different readings than the ones I’m presenting here and I encourage you to bring them in the comments. I am the whitest white girl in the world, who is trying to learn about race and it is always best for the voices of people who know their stuff about race to be included alongside anything I might say.

² if perhaps hard for a modern reader to understand

³ because GEN religion and social factors has conditioned them to belief in falsehoods, which would probably cause a lot of them to report the revolutionaries to the authorities, thereby destroying the revolution

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Sidetracks - Episode X

Sun, 11 Mar 2012 08:55:26 GMT

Sidetracks is a collaborative project featuring various essays, videos, reviews, or other Internet content that we want to share with each other. All past and current links for the Sidetracks project can be found in our Sidetracks tag.

➝ Keep Calm and Carry On: The secret history. Have I mentioned that this is the best bookshop ever?

➝ The surgeoness: the female practitioner of surgery 1400-1800 is a really interesting sounding (and freely available: hooray for open access) academic article on women in medicine. I have not yet read the whole thing, but the description reminded me of the bits I actually liked from Ariana Franklin's Mistress of the Art of Death (sadly the book as a whole as not a success with me).

➝ An introverted call to action: Susan Cain at TED2012. Her book Quiet has been getting good reviews; being an introvert myself, my curiosity is definitely piqued.

➝ A collection of minimalist children's story posters. So pretty.

➝ The Women of National Geographic in photos.

➝ Sarah Waters on why Sylvia Townsend Warner deserves to be rediscovered. yay, Sarah Waters ♥. I've owned Lolly Willowes for ages and her wish is my command: I'll definitely read it soon. There's also a great companion piece by Belinda Webb, pointing out how all these rediscovered writers tend to be middle class (and white, I would add) and celebrating working class writer Ethel Carnie Holdsworth. I agree that these are very important conversations to have, but it's also important that they don't take an either/or approach (which, to clarify, I'm not saying Webb does). My plan is therefore to read them both.

➝ More authors celebrating other authors: Aimee Bender on Angela Carter.

➝ The top 20 most beautiful bookstores in the world according to Flavorwire.

➝ There's a new website listing feminist friendly fantasy books. A very useful resource, and I would love to see someone do the same for science fiction.

➝ Over at The Center for Fiction, Kate Bernheimer, Kevin Brockmeier, Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, Timothy Schaffert, and Maria Tatar tells us why fairy tales matter.

➝ Hanne Blank picks a playlist for Straight: The Surprisingly Short History of Heterosexuality at Largehearted Boy. I always really enjoy these posts. Also, I'm pining for this book so much it's not even funny.

➝ In honour of International Women's Day, here's a top ten feminist books from The Boy Least Likely To. Like I needed more reasons to love this band.

➝ Ever wondered why cats seem to run the Internet? Here are some theories.

➝ Redwood and Wildfire by Andrea Hairston (Aqueduct Press, 2011) is the winner of the 2011 James Tiptree Jr. Award:

Hairston incorporates romantic love into a constellation, rather than portraying it as a solo shining star. Her characters invoke a sky where it can shine; they live and love without losing themselves in cultural expectations, prejudices and stereotypes, all within a lovingly sketched historical frame.

"Intersections of race, class, and gender encompass these characters' entire lives. They struggle with external and internal forces around questions of gender roles, love, identity, and sexuality. This challenge drives how they move through the world and how it sees them. The characters in Redwood and Wildfire deftly negotiate freedom and integrity in a society where it's difficult to hold true to these things."

I want it SO BADLY.

➝ The longlist for the Orange Prize has been announced. Every year, I watch with joy as the list is announced and the conversation on lit blogs becomes exclusively about female authors: does everyone like the list, who is missing, who was robbed and on and on. All that chat accompanied by lovely pictures of the books that made the list and enthusiastic fan championing in the comments, really makes all the Orange reveals the highlight of the lit year.

➝ Some follow up on Paul Cornell's panel parity idea, which gives reason for optimism. In 'Tammy Taylor Takes a Seat', Cornell talks about how he recently witnessed a comics writer Simon Spurrier and a comics creator Tammy Taylor stand up for panel parity. In contrast to Cornell's proposed plan Simon contacted Tammy before the convention. She then agreed to be involved in replacing him to talk about a subject she knew very well.

Cornell's resistance to contacting women who could replace him on panels was probably the biggest problem I had with his conception of enforcing panel parity. Although his explanation of why he felt uncomfortable doing that fits in with ideas of ally behaviour that I'm familiar with (the ally does not get to decide who is best placed to represent the group that the ally is trying to support), his approach scared the beejezuz out of me personally. I just can't imagine being expected to talk about a subject, even one I knew a lot about, without time to mentally prepare myself and implications in the comments that women who can't do that lack something made me real uncomfortable. There are other issues, with this approach which have been discussed by other women, but this was the big freaking roadblock for me personally, so seeing someone successfully use another strategy was a big relief.

Cornell also describes the reaction of his friend Farah Mendelsohn to his conception of the panel parity project, as a leading feminist SF academic:

'On this same subject, as I've mentioned before, a few weeks ago I got a life-changing email from a friend of mine, SF academic Farah Mendlesohn, in which she took me to task for the way I'd initially approached the Panel Parity campaign. She called me on my egotism, and on various specifics of how I'd set up the plan. It was a hard message to read, but I realised, after a lot of huffing and puffing, that she was right. And so I made several changes to the plan. (I've referred to several aspects of this since then, but never all in one place, apart from editing the original blog post.) Si's approach, for example, in actively finding a woman creator beforehand to take one's place on a panel, is one I now follow. (At the time, I felt I shouldn't be the one choosing who was 'worthy', but that puts even more pressure on those who might come and take a panel place.) I'm also now at pains to point out that I'm the latest in a whole history of people who've been doing this for decades, including many creators who always let convention organisers know beforehand that they won't appear on non-balanced panels.'

It's nice to see a woman get through to someone on issues of feminism. I'd like to celebrate the work of Farah Mendelsohn, Tammy Taylor and Simon Spurrier in affecting the way that panel parity projects are being under taken — so well done. I'm also really excited to hear further news about an upcoming female led panel parity campaign, which is mentioned in this post:

'And I've turned down anything that turns the Plan into personal publicity, sending such inquiries to the female-led 50/50 campaign, soon to be announcing itself. (Drop a line to hagelrat@googlemail.com to get involved.) There's a fine line between trying to not put oneself in the spotlight and just hiding, but I'm attempting to walk it. All in all, I intend to learn from female creators along the way, and adjust my approach based on their advice and help. I hope to be an ally, not a supporter who offers that support with conditions attached.'

➝ A judge used to order certain offenders to read and report on Les Miserables by Victor Hugo, as part of the rehabilitative portion of their sentence. Yes I know that sounds horribly naive, but hear the man out:

'Willmore does not believe a person can be reformed by reading, but he has seen the introspection and growth it can inspire.'

Even coming out of the musical is a total mindfuck, guaranteed to make you want to try harder at being a human being. And the rehabilitation of offenders is one of the most difficult parts of the justice system, once someone has been sentenced. As long as this is a small part of a solution, not the solution I think it's great. (via Bookslut)

➝ Downton Paper Dolls come with female empowerment accessories.

➝ A new Dr Who blog has opened to discuss the women of the show, being a feminist fan of the show and all kind of Who female things! It's called Dr Her and it makes me want to jump up and down with excitement. I love the female characters (and the actresses) from this program and they so deserve a dedicated space on the interwebs, as do the female fans of this show.

➝ Classical Bookworm found a bookish bath tub for reclining in with champagne, bubbles and more books.

➝ bookshop compiled a list of female-centric and female positive TV programs and films as suggested by commentors. So much to potentially watch.

➝ Something to make Ana smile: five hundred German fairytales that were collected and ended up locked away in an archive have been rediscovered. Please, please let them be translated into English.

➝ And The Bloggess has officially created The Unicorn Success Club. There are t-shirts. For those who need more success, or unicorns — the Double Unicorn Success Club. I mean, of course! I think we have enough unicorns between us to be in this club.

➝ Writing has been tough for me lately, which includes reviewing. I am also writing a 20k Teen Wolf story that's all, "Oh, you thought you were going to write about pretty boys making out? GUESS AGAIN." Then I found this:

Good advice.

➝ Okay, I have feelings about Orson Scott Card and they hover between "apathy" and "unchecked fury and raging disappointment". But Ender's Game was a gateway for me and so I can't help but be excited about the casting for the upcoming movie. They genderswap a character! The cast of kids is amazing and diverse! HARRISON FORD? HAILEE STEINFELD? Sign me up for reliving a piece of my childhood, even if it is with a movie made from this troublesome book by this raging jerk author.

➝ In more movie news of the "oh god please don't make it suck, just don't" variety, The Book Thief has a director. THIS COULD GO SO WRONG, or it could be so right.

➝ My motto for next week (after an extremely stressful week) is the following:

➝ I saw the awesome Japanese poster for Brave and then I saw the amazing Japanese trailer and can this movie please, please, just get in my eyes already? I found the promotions interesting. Isn't it worth noting that the Japanese trailer is much more focused on Merida's many roles? I can't remember where I saw it mentioned, but it was said that this is being marketed like a Studio Ghibli film, who have had tons of success with female characters.

➝ Would you like some dubstep violin? I thought so; you're welcome.

➝ A link I wish had had last week that really needs no commentary: Women Deserve Better.

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We Want it! March 2012

Sat, 10 Mar 2012 07:55:03 GMT

Because we haven't quite managed to work out a way for us to consume ALL the entertainment yet: to keep us from emerging haggard and zombie like after regular all night box set marathons, book splurges and music overload we've set up this monthly space where we can express our pure fannish glee at the fact that so many projects of awesome potential are continually being made. All of our past wants and desires can be found in the We Want It! tag.

Books

The New Moon With the Old, The Town in Bloom and It Ends With Revelations by Dodie Smith: these are all being reissued by Corsair with lovely new covers, and I'm dying to get my hands on them. I so love this trend for bringing back neglected women writers. I think there is room for asking interesting questions about the particular kind of women writers who are brought back (predominantly white and middle class) and why, but we can do that while still celebrating all these exciting books which are being made available again.

Not Before Sundown by Johanna Sinisalo: Nic from Eve's Alexandria completely sold me on this novel by describing it as "a strange and beautiful and funny exploration of folklore and sexuality in the darkly frozen north. In short, it's like nothing I've read before. Probably also like nothing I'll ever read again, although not for want of hoping."

Returning to the review to get the link just now, I realised that this is actually the same book as Troll: A Love Story, which has been on my TBR for years. I really need to read it soon.

As If: Modern Enchantment and the Literary Prehistory of Virtual Reality by Michael Saler: Clare's fault for including it in one of her Literary Horizon posts. Here's the description from GoodReads:

Many people throughout the world "inhabit" imaginary worlds communally and persistently, parsing Harry Potter and exploring online universes. These activities might seem irresponsibly escapist, but history tells another story. Beginning in the late nineteenth century, when Sherlock Holmes became the world's first "virtual reality" character, readers began to colonize imaginary worlds, debating serious issues and viewing reality in provisional, "as if" terms rather than through essentialist, "just so" perspectives. From Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos and Tolkien's Middle-earth to the World of Warcraft and Second Life, As If provides a cultural history that reveals how we can remain enchanted but not deluded in an age where fantasy and reality increasingly intertwine.

How freaking awesome does that sound?

Fairy Tales and Feminism: New Approaches edited by Donald P. Haase - Could there be a book more perfectly suited to my different interests? Also, can you tell just how badly I miss having access to an academic library?

Beyond Human Nature: How Culture and Experience Shape Our Lives by Jesse J. Prin — I love a good takedown of biological determinism. The description of this book reminded meof a point Cordelia Fine makes in Delusions of Gender. As I said in my review of her book:

And yet, where else but in the brain will socialisation manifest itself? Our brains constantly interact with our environment, and from a very early age our culture is part of what helps map our neural circuits. This isn't really a nurture versus nature debate, because that's too simplistic a way to put it. The two are not at all easy to separate. What we should be thinking of instead are malleable versus fixed, immutable categories.

I would love to read a whole book centred around these ideas.

DVDs

Call the Midwife: It goes without saying that this is totally Jodie's fault. I actually watched a few episodes before getting sidetracked by Gilmore Girls, but there hasn't been much room for anything else in my TV viewing life in the past few weeks (nearly done with season 3, everyone!). I would love to return to this series, though, and it's exciting that the DVD is coming out soon.

Tomboy: A French film about a trans boy which was recommended to me when I reviewed the manga series Wandering Son. It sounds like it could be amazing.

I feel kind of guilty wanting things right now, because my attempts to keep from buying as many books, DVDs and CDs is schooling me in just how much stuff I actually have unused. I probably have enough unwatched DVDs to last the year. Still, I guess it doesn't really hurt to keep adding to the wish list as long as I don't actually buy any of these things just yet.

Books

'Why we Broke Up' — Daniel Handler: When I first read about this book I thought it might be a bit simplistic. The description hints at hipsterish judgement: Art house type girl starts dating a jock, the relationship ends and the book is the girl's attempt to explain to her ex why it didn't work out. I was expecting lots of poseur language and laboured attempts at cutely mystical explanations of the meaning of life and so I quietly pushed the thought of it away. Then Colleen at Chasing Ray posted a review that made it sound like this book had punched right through her chest. That's exactly the kind of emotional writing I'm looking for, so back on the list it goes.

'Ash Mistry and the Savage Palace' — Sarwat Chadda: I loved Sarwat Chadda's first two novels about Billi SanGreal, a teenage initiate into the brutal Knights Templar, who (in Chadda's novels at least) defend the modern world against the supernatural. They're based on a classic paranormal death/angst model: only the heroine is ever totally safe from being axed, yet you still can't help but care about all the characters. I kind of get off on media that twists my emotions like that ('Buffy', 'Charmed' and 'The Vampire Diaries' are all examples of programs that both hurt me and make me clamour for more), so I'm hanging all my hopes on the recent news that Billi may have her own TV series soon. TV, I have been faithful. I have defended you to your detractors. I deserve this, right?

Anyway, while the happy day of Billi's TV appearance is a bit of a way off, Chadda's new book (marketed for younger readers, rather than young adults) 'Ash Mistry and the Savage Fortress' comes out this month. It's an Indian fantasy, featuring the demon king Ravanna, which I think is very, very cool. When I was growing up everyone at my school had to take religious studies for three years and the lessons mostly consisted of us hearing the more exciting stories from each religion that we studied. The Hindu stories always seemed so exciting to me and I'm looking forward to revisiting the world of ancient Indian legend.

'Shadow and Bone' — Leigh Bardugo: I don't know much about this title, except that it's a young adult fantasy set in Russia. The last time I went to fantasy Russia was when I read Sarwat Chadda's 'Dark Goddess' and I've been desperate for more fantasy about that country ever since., because there's so much interesting, dark folk lore in Russia that we just don't often hear about in the UK. And when Rachel Hawkins tweeted the cover I was one smitten kitten. There are minarets!

'Goliath' — Tom Gauld: I saw some panels from this graphic novel in the Times Saturday Review section a couple of weeks ago. It's a revisionist version of the tale of David and Goliath, told in muted colours and there's something in the style that pings a distant memory of...something...I just can't work out what. Anyway, its art is so appealing and I have a passion for revisionist stories and it's nice to see something new being given the revisionist treatment examined in this way.

'Green Girl' — Kate Zambreno: I'm not quite sure how to summarise why I want to read this book. Perhaps because it sounds so messy and sinister, full of fuck ups who burn bright and imperfect women who aren't being judged by their narrative for being just as messed up as the rest of humanity.

Some of the books I wanted to eat so they would become a part of me when I was growing up, were about these kinds of women. 'Foxfire' and 'The Bitch Goddess Notebook', 'The Robber Bride' and 'Man Crazy', all featured that kind of reckless, destructive, clever, firework women. I've never quite got over that kind of character.

'Codename Verity' — Elizabeth Wein: I imagine that Ana is lusting after this one as well. Secrets and female spies in WWII, which I might never have heard about if The Booksmugglers hadn't mentioned it.

'Spellbound' — Rachel Hawkins: MY WAIT IS SO NEARLY OVER!

'War Horse' — Michael Morpurgo: I've seen the play, the film and I watched 'War Horse — The True Story' over the weekend, so that just leaves the book. I'm looking forward to a version of this story that gives the horse a voice. I might pair it with a re-read of 'Black Beauty', because every time I think about 'War Horse' the connections to Anna Sewell's book seem so prominent.

Music

Making Mirrors — Gotye: Someone in our office is obsessed with this and the Lana Del Ray album, so they're on near constant rotation at our place. Usually that's enough to make me start planning violent ends for people, but I find that I can't hear these two CDs enough. 'Somebody that I Used to Know' is a kooky, but hard edged break up song and my favourite track off this third Gotye album.

Film

The Dark Knight Rises: I saw the trailer for this when I went to see 'The Woman in Black' and was kind of astounded. I fully acknowledge that any viewing of this film means engaging with the white washing problems of Tom Hardy's role and reading up on arguments about Bane, written by people who know the comics. Aesthetically though it just hits all my fear and pain buttons with a hammer. I'd forgotten how back to basics dark and bitter this franchise was. And what does that tag mean? How can the legend end?!

I Have It!

I have coveted many things over the past few months, and I am happy to say I have acquired some of them!

1. The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater — Read this at Susan's behest, it was awesome. Trying to seduce her into a co-review with the reminder of how awesome our last co-review was.

2. When she Woke by Hillary Jordan — Ana sent me this! ANA YOU ARE GREAT, THANK YOU. ♥

3. The Shattering by Karen Healey — Amy let me have her copy for free! It was so nice of her. Thank you for sending it all that way. ♥

4. The Name of the Star by Maureen Johnson — Another book Ana got me after I complained about the horrific cover the book was released with here. Ana was even great enough to get me a signed copy. Lucky! :D

5. Born to Die by Lana Del Rey — I got my paws on this album and have only regretted it a few times. Some of the lyrics are not so great to the ladies, but overall it's been my favorite album of 2012 so far.

Books

I've been reading a lot about Prohibition after listening to a podcast about it. What with The Wettest County In the World coming up, it's going to rise to the top of discussion. I live in a "dry" county where restuarants have started to become private clubs where "members" can get drinks with their meals. But it's always been pretty lax. The earliest restaurants to do it had a $5 membership fee, but that's pretty much gone away, too, alcohol slowly encroaching. There are two books that look great that I want to check out: Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition by Daniel Okrent and Bootleg: Murder, Moonshine, and the Lawless Years of Prohibition by Karen Blumenthal. I am really missing my academic library right now.

Ivey and the Airship by Cheryl Ammeter sounds rad! Girl who gets to save the world, sign me up. Although I wish publishers would stop being like "strong-willed girl!" and "strong! she's female and strong, everyone!" Ugh, publishers.

Really what drew me to Fated by Benedict Jacka is that the main character runs a magic shop. Although I've seen references to similiarities between this and The Dresden Files and I've got to say, what I've heard about that series isn't so great. So let's hope it's only similar in the AWESOME ways.

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Coverage of Women on SF/F Blogs

Tue, 06 Mar 2012 16:55:36 GMT

The Backstory
In mid-2011 after a discussion about diversity in reading with my partner, we agreed to focus our reading in 2012 on women by undertaking a project called She Wrote What?. The project is not focused on SF/F, but those are the genres he likes the best. To find recommendations for us I began following popular SF/F blogs for their reviews and back catalogues.

A trend emerged as I collected women writers. Women's names started to repeat while more and more new male writers emerged. This reminded me of The Count 2010 by VIDA and The SF Count by Strange Horizons (which I hope they repeat). I did two test cases on blogs I was already following, using their current reviews for a three month period. Toward the end of my test case, I mentioned it on Twitter and had a conversation, which I include here for context:

@renay: I am basically looking at SF/F blogs and counting how many books by ladies they've reviewed in 2011. SPOILER: it's depressing.
@kingrat: I've thought about doing that project. I could predict the results.
@renay: Is that why you never did it? End result too predictable?
@kingrat: When @niallharrison did the print mag review numbers this year, i thought a similar blog project might be worthwhile.
@niallharrison: @kingrat @renay I shied away from blogs at the time because so many of them are single-author it felt a bit personal.
@niallharrison: But it would be instructive to see, I think.
@renay: @niallharrison Many position themselves as professional, especially those receiving review copy.
@niallharrison: Even so, I think there's a difference in the implicit promises magazines and blogs make: comprehensiveness vs idiosyncracy.
@renay: Whereas if I sample a group of them over a one year period, meaning will be had! What kind, though, remains to be seen.
@niallharrison: Yeah, that's the level at which it gets interesting. Though I wouldn't want to be the one selecting the sample. :-)
@renay: @niallharrison I started at the Major Players and used blogrolls. I'm sure this is the most effective and least wanky solution! #doom
@niallharrison: Defined methodology is good! I look forward to seeing the results, anyway.

I'll come back to defined methodology.

The Inevitable Disclaimer
This has been such an undertaking; five months of my life were consumed by this project. An unexpected development is that after spending time with the blogs that became my sample, I feel protective of them even though all of the owners, sans The Book Smugglers, are strangers to me. Toward the end, even though KJ told me early on I couldn't hoard the data and mask the blog identities, that it would be a Jerk Move, the more tempted I became to do so. But here we are, and nothing is being hidden, but I still feel like standing on the rooftop to wave my arms and shout about how awesome these blogs are for literature, how diverse of opinion and thought, how lucky we are to be in a community and fandom with this much to choose from, and to please not go pick on them or call them names or accuse them of things based on a year's worth of numbers gleaned from narrow rules I applied to collect the information. Honestly: don't do it. That's a Jerk Move.

I did not begin this project as an expose of individual blogs, because individually there's nothing to glean from the numbers. One year of a person's reviewing habits tells you exactly zero about that person, and furthermore, not all reviews are included — only SF/F and speculative fiction, defined by me, by using Amazon and Goodreads and tags, and reviews of the work elsewhere. On top of that, a list of reviews and an actual reading list are two different things.

I'm not making any claims as to how each blog owner or contributor feels about women writers.

Although Niall had qualms about examining blogs in this way because of the personal aspect, I obviously disagreed, as here we are, on the cusp of Graphs and Lots of Data. Yes, it can be personal, but when we have review policies (most of the blogs I examined did) we're positioning ourselves as a voice for literature to other people, even if they happen to be our friends. When we tell a publisher we're willing to read and review books and then post those reviews, we're telling the world we have something to say and inviting the world in to listen. Furthermore, for me this is personal, because recommendations from mostly recreational, non-professional reviewers is how I tend to find the SF/F media I consume.

Methodology
I did my best to apply my decisions equally across all reviews. I stopped at 21 blogs because of severe issue fatigue. There are hundreds of SF/F blogs and 21 barely skims the surface.

I chose my sample by using the blogs I follow, blogs from their blogrolls, recommendations from my co-contributors to Lady Business and Ana of The Book Smugglers who is active in the SF/F community (this is apparently called snowball sampling). I based my decision on whether it seemed like the blog was SF/F related and subscriber count. I did not research archives of any blogs but my two test cases beforehand and once I started processing a blog, I did not remove it from my sample.

I am not sure what I would have found if I had kept adding blogs. Maybe 50 would have been the magic number where the scale tipped the other way from what my results turned out to be. However, anyone can feel free to look over their favorite SF/F blog and its reviews and report back what they find and how it compares to my results. Google Docs is free! \o/

This survey focuses on reviews of science fiction and fantasy texts (more on sequential art below). Many blogs were good enough to note the genre. Some didn't and I had to do a little legwork. Several people came behind me and gave me advice and opinions on reviews I was unsure about and did checks on author gender for me.

In the reviews total, each book was counted M, F, or U. This project is, at its core, a binary one. I make no claims as to the gender identities of the authors or bloggers classified as Unknown.

Authors can appear multiple times in the reviews total. The only exception to this was when there were multiple books by the same author in the same post. That's counted as one because those reviews are happening at the same time in the same entry. That's different than putting that author and their work in front of eyeballs three different times.

1. I took a very generous line on what I counted as SF/F and speculative. There's going to be something like Spellcast by Barbara Ashford in the same study as The Clockwork Rocket by Greg Egan. That's how I'm rolling; it's okay if you don't agree.

2. I only counted reviews hosted on the actual blog. Woe, should they be posted elsewhere with a link to them!

3. Young Adult and adult SF/F and speculative fiction were included, but not Middle Grade. If anything was unclear, I used Amazon/Goodreads based on where it was listed to make that decision.

4. Anthologies with multiple authors are treated by authors (sorry editors).

5. Writers under a shared pseud that's publicly known were counted individually. Unfortunately concerning authors filed under Unknown, it's impossible to know if those are shared and thus they are counted as one author.

6. Co-authors were counted individually.

7. Guest Post reviews were not included (unless they weren't labeled as Guest Posts, and if so, well-played blog owners. Well-played.).

6. Originally I included sequential art (comics, manga, and graphic novels) in these numbers, but unfortunately, they skewed the results too much. While all blogs included traditional texts, only a handful covered sequential art: strike one. The sheer number of men in the industry also made some blogs have wild ratios that, bottom line, annoyed me and made their coverage look terrible through no fault of their own due to my inclusion standards: strike two. It was extremely difficult to find complete lists of all artists. Including all artists — colorists and pencilers, etc. — was a requirement for me based on opinions of artists I asked. Some projects were almost impossible to find information for, which meant some listings would be complete but others wouldn't be. Because this project relies on complete contributor lists, I deemed it too time intensive: strike three. It was also like a bonus round of "wow, women sure are invisible in the comics industry, huh?" It was supremely depressing and in the end that was a discussion I simply didn't want to dive into at this time.

7. Horror that was psychological or based on gore or torture porn didn't count. Horror that was fantastical or paranormal did. This is still my most personally conflicting category; there are probably a lot of errors and missing information or additional information that shouldn't count. It still makes me unhappy. I asked for second opinions here because I don't read horror and did the best I could with research.

8. On gender of authors and bloggers: when possible, I checked when gender was not clear. I noted when it was unknown or if I couldn't find enough data to make a clear decision. I did my best to examine each. It feels pertinent to note that one of the hardest things I faced was women writing under male pseudonyms. There are so many men represented that it's truly difficult to say I researched each one as thoroughly as I could have. I did my best and erred when in doubt. If I was wrong, please tell me, and I will make the correction with apologies.

I was also dealing with hundreds of blog posts and Google Reader, which underwent a horrible, eye-gougingly awful redesign in the middle of this project (thanks Google). I am certain there are reviews I missed because of this awesome development, authors I've placed incorrectly because of lackluster research, and other fun, humiliating errors. I'm willing to update my spreadsheets and include notes in this post if the information is brought to me and presented convincingly, although the data presented graphically in this post will not be updated for a few months, as I'll let any corrections float in and request a final update of the graphs to be included alongside the current information.

Version one of my spreadsheets can be found at Coverage of Women on SF/F Blogs (I). All the data and the blogs I acquired it from that I am discussing below is contained in these sheets.

The Results
In the beginning, I was fairly sure of what I was going to find: men discussing mostly men, and women discussing both either equally or more. Does the data follow?

This is a fairly standard result that's not ideal, but is better than what it could be. Men still dominate the literary conversation, but women are in there, too. I was initially surprised by this result, because my gut back in 2011 had said it was not this even.

Even when expressed in a different way, the "overall" score seems to indicate that my gut was jumping the gun:

However, if you start rearranging the data a bit, things change. There are women being reviewed by men, yes, but there are also women being reviewed by women. My initial instinct was correct. My results highlight an interesting development here given the context of Girls as Omni-Readers, as Jodie wrote last year during an unrelated debate in the YA community, where she said,

'Omni-reader' is a term Maureen Johnson used on her Twitter feed two weeks ago. She used this word as a way of describing beliefs that girls are readers who will read about anything regardless of whether the subject matter looks traditionally masculine, or traditionally feminine. Articles like this one by Sarah Pekkanen of The Washington Post agree that girls tend to accept a broad range of books and will read a book featuring a boy on the cover [...]

If you look at the same graph, reorganized to take into account the blogger's gender (as expressed in profiles, about pages, etc.):

Here we have the data reorganized by gender of the reviewer, female, to mixed gender, to male, to the one unknown. And thus, the feeling I had turned out not to be so wrong after all: the 40/60 is an average, and that average is the way it is because the women reviewing women drive it up.

The breakdown comes out to:

Group blogs: 25% women

Female bloggers: 58% women

Male bloggers: 19% women

(The blogger with the unknown gender is not included in this graph.)

So no, I wasn't wrong last year to go, "hey, wait a minute..." and feel like things were unequal. If you're following popular SF/F blogs run by men I believe this is a problem you will continuously run into, except by those focused on their review diversity. Reviews of books by women don't feature as often on blogs run by men or shared by men, but on blogs run by women, it's more equal and sometimes even women as majority because culturally women are trained to read "traditionally" male things, while the reverse is not true.

Recently I linked to a post by coffeeandink where she examined a panel of authors talking about SF/F titled The erasure of women writers in sf & fantasy. I quoted that post then and said I would come back to quote it again because it's so insightful and says everything I wasn't educated enough to know or speak about:

I am not suggesting that the participants are consciously sexist or intend to suppress or erase the existence of women writers. I am saying that this conversation follows a typical social pattern in which (a) men talk more than women in mixed company; (b) men promote male writers significantly more than they promote women writers; (c) the criteria which determine value or worth inherently favor men's contributions over women's, which are deemed trivial or inapplicable; (d) women's contributions to the critical or cultural canon are systematically devalued, forgotten, or erased.

Are there answers in these numbers? I'm only finding more questions. There are no good, easy answers. Of course, some like to pretend there are easy answers and that's where I've watched this debate fall apart in the past whenever it's cropped up. It goes to Disasterland immediately and becomes a shame spiral. Someone inevitably shows up and starts talking about why quotas are bad and no, no, how dare you call them sexist and a game of Defensive Assholes is launched. The entire situation devolves into Don't Read the Comments™ and it's Gender Catastrophe Theater and general badness, which accomplishes less than nothing, because if we go back to the beginning, no one called anyone any names at all. I want to avoid that as much as possible. Reading diversity is a complicated subject and book selection often a process that we're not conscious of. We're impacted on all sides by a myriad of things influencing our decisions. But reviewing and talking about titles on public blogs and journals is an active decision that we're making every time we put a book down and go, "I'm going to write 1000 words about that and share it with the Internet!"

As friends finalized this data for me, made the graphs you see above and I started thinking about what to say about them, VIDA released The 2011 Count. It's not specific to SF/F like my project and and it's professionally focused, but I think it's fascinating to look and see the same trends in an unrelated sphere repeated in this one.

What are we saying to those who trust our reading choices? What are we saying to the publishers who send us materials to review about the books that deserve that kind of virtual hand-selling? Does it impact what they think is relevant and sellable? What does it mean when we review that book by a man, and that one, and that other one and pass over the women writing the same kind of story? There's worth in examining the reviewing choices we're making. There's worth in thinking about what messages we're sending when our promotional energies favor the dominant gender without letting ourselves get mired in arguments grounded in gender essentialism.

Diverse voices in literature we celebrate is incredibly important. I encourage everyone to look at their SF/F review statistics. It's not an easy task if the results are uneven, but it's a worthwhile one.

— Renay

Credit: Ira and Susan for advice, Lex for beta help (congrats on finding a typo in the 200th edit), Ana and Jodie for their support and suggestions, handholding, long chats about all the feelings this project caused and beta help, Ana from The Book Smugglers for blog suggestions, feedback and beta help, KJ for graphing the data and being a sounding-board, and Philip for derail critique, enabling and supporting from backstage with the promotion hat. Thank you all for your assistance, I will never ask you to do this again...probably. ;)

Further reading:
Sidetracks - Science Fiction Edition!
Summary of comments for SF Signal's Russ Pledge post
Everyone Can Promote Equality In Genre Writing
How to Suppress Women's Writing

eta - 3/9/12 3:15P.M.: Going forward, to leave anonymous comments on this post you must sign your comment with the name you use online or a name created specifically for commenting across this post. Any non-signed comments will be screened upon discovery. We will not engage with unsigned anonymous comments.

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Sidetracks - Episode IX

Sun, 04 Mar 2012 06:14:44 GMT

Sidetracks is a collaborative project featuring various essays, videos, reviews, or other Internet content that we want to share with each other. All past and current links for the Sidetracks project can be found in our Sidetracks tag.

➝ I'll start with some sensible commentary on the predictable reactions to the casting of Lucy Liu as Watson in the upcoming American Sherlock-based series "Elementary":

Fandom's rage over all this is very typical and it's an extension of the boys'-club mentality that forms around canons that hyperfocus on white straight male homosocial relationships, and that tend to marginalize anyone who isn't that. The shows (and there are a lot of them) do it, and then the fans follow suit. There's a lot of valid reasons to not be on board with another Holmes adaptation, but I don't think this is one of them because I've seen it too many times before.

I might be worried about heteronormativity if the BBC version had provided any actual glbtq representation, but as Jodie and I have discussed before, it didn't exactly do a great job on that front. Having said that, I think there are plenty of valid reasons to be wary of this new series: here's a post with more commentary that Renay sent my way.

➝ One of my favourite reads of the week was A Plague of Strong Female Characters, a thoughtful New York Times piece by Carina Chocano:

Maybe I'm a cream puff, but few cultural tropes get under my skin like "strong female character," and it still surprises me when like-minded people use it. Maybe the problem is semantic. Maybe what people mean when they say "strong female characters" is female characters who are "strong," i.e., interesting or complex or well written — "strong" in the sense that they figure predominantly in the story, rather than recede decoratively into the background. But I get the feeling that what most people mean or hear when they say or hear "strong female character" is female characters who are tough, cold, terse, taciturn and prone to scowling and not saying goodbye when they hang up the phone.

Of course, I get the point of characters like these. They do serve as a kind of gateway drug to slightly more realistic — or at least representational — representations of women. On the other hand, they also reinforce the unspoken idea that in order for a female character to be worth identifying with, she should really try to rein in the gross girly stuff. This implies that unless a female character is "strong," she is not interesting or worth identifying with.

YES. This is something that has been worrying me for years, and it's been particularly on my mind lately as I notice more and more feminist-identified blogs using victim-blaming and girl-cooties rhetoric to dismiss female characters they perceive as "wimpy", "needy", "doormarts", "slap-worthy", or otherwise "weak". Of course, when I say this I absolutely don't mean to silence conversations about, or critiques of, stories that normalise placing women in positions of helplessness and dependency; I just think it's important to remember to "direct our attention to the straitjacket, not its dutiful wearer". (I warned you I'd be quoting this sentence a lot.)

Having said that, I definitely also don't want to dismiss female characters who "don't say goodbye when they hang up the phone" as "unrepresentative of real women". All the stories about all the possible ways of being a girl, please.

➝ Here's some Oscars commentary from a new-to-me blog I've been enjoying, Girls Like Giants. And don't miss this Racialicious piece about Billy Crystal wearing blackface at the Oscars.

➝ Rosie Swash wrote a piece for The Guardian called Among the Asexuals, and being ignorant and privileged I can't really tell how accurate or comprehensive it is. But I'm sharing it anyway because I thought some of you would be interested in asexuality getting mainstream coverage, and might perhaps have some thoughts to share.

➝ Institutional sexism of book world needs new girls' network: Jennifer Weiner responds to the latest Vida count with some suggestions of what we can do:

I'm committed to using my voice and talking about women writers who aren't getting the quality or quantity of attention that their male peers receive. In the past few years, I've done blogposts, Q&As and I've had a lot of success with giveaways, where I ask readers to purchase a book by a female author, from Sarah Pekkanen and Julie Buxbaum to Emma Donoghue and Liz Moore, and then send them one of my books for free. (...)

I'm not the only commercial woman writer who's gone out of her way to support her peers – and, right now, that's the best response I can think of to a problem that's not going away any time soon.

I'm not a writer, but I'm a woman and a reader who shares Weiner's concerns, and as such I try to use my (infinitely smaller) voice in similar ways.

➝ And speaking of sexism in literary circles, here's an essay on Jonathan Franzen's female 'problem': ... Franzen continues to indict himself with gender theorizing that panders to the worst instincts of the male intellectual. It is neither art nor thought, and it is certainly not humor. Franzen can do better. Let us hope that he can. The response by Victoria Patterson this piece links to is even better.

➝ I love these! Critical thinking explained in six kid friendly animations.

➝ But, Pinterest is for Girls! Sexism and Social Media. I brought up the sexist media coverage of Pinterest a few weeks ago, and in the meantime the problem only seems to have gotten worse. s.e. smith at Tiger Beatdown provides some great analysis.

➝ This New York Times article about how young women are often trendsetters in vocal patterns and linguistic innovation reminded me of Deborah Cameron's excellent The Myth of Mars and Venus, which is about sexism in sociolinguistics. Also, have I mentioned how awesome I think Mark Liberman is?

➝ Wow. I LOVE YOU, China Miéville:

It is depressing to have to point out, yet again, that there is a distinction between having the legal right to say something & having the moral right not to be held accountable for what you say. Being asked to apologise for saying something unconscionable is not the same as being stripped of the legal right to say it. It's really not very fucking complicated. Cry Free Speech in such contexts, you are demanding the right to speak any bilge you wish without apology or fear of comeback. You are demanding not legal rights but an end to debate about & criticism of what you say. When did bigotry get so needy? This assertive & idiotic failure to understand that juridical permissibility backed up by the state is not the horizon of politics or morality is absurdly resilient.

This whole essay is absolutely amazing. If you only click one link this week, I hope it's this one.

➝ The Oscars are over! I honestly didn't care much (because I rarely ever do) but am finding the articles about the Oscars and their diversity pretty exciting! Let's talk those old white dudes into a stupor. The Oscars' women problem:

None — zero — of the films in the best picture, best director, best adapted or original screenplay, best lead or supporting actor, and best supporting actress categories were directed by women. In the major categories, 98 percent of nominations went to movies directed by men, 84 percent went to movies written by men, and 70 percent went to movies starring men. The only female-centered movies that appear outside the best actress categories are "The Help" and "Bridesmaids." In the best picture category, there are as many movies about women as there are movies about horses.

Emphasis mine.

➝ Currently my partner and I are renting and our apartment has no washer/dryer hookups. This has been, on the whole, a miserable experience, including unreliable apartment-provided washers with inconvenient hours taking tons of money, the public laundromats taking even more, and adventures in borrowing the appliances of friends. We're settled now with a good set-up that's way cheaper (help the friend with the electric bill a bit, get free laundry every week). So really this is all about my complicated relationship with laundry, okay! But this week I had an interesting conversation with friends, who were boggled to learn that as a child I often used a Maytag Wringer Washer. There were other washer/dryers available, but I was on that weird cusp between old-ways and new ways, I suppose (I also lived in the very rural South). My mother used the newest versions when they worked (they often broke down). My father and grandmother used standalone washers (interesting about my father who was very anti-new washers, don't know what that means, though). I spent many, many days putting clothes on the line with clothespins, with my mom during "oops broken dryer" times but mostly with my grandmother.

That means that Life With and Without Animated Ducks: The Future Is Gender Distributed by Cat Valente was fascinating. She speaks about the technological divide in the public sphere and the private in Japan and how much the technology in public is much better than the technology in private, and what it means that technology is so gendered (more work for women, less excitement about "female" tech). I suspect that part of the problem is women themselves in tech-creating positions, which deepens the thought a little bit. I did wonder if it would differ from place to place — she seemed to be in a particular (terrible) circumstance, so I wonder if it's different for women in other locations, in other financial groups, etc. I don't think Japan (!!!) can really be this technologically similar all over.

Anyway, the real reason I have spent so much tl;dr on the topic of LAUNDRY OMG is that it reminded me of this TED talk by Hans Rosling discussing the magic of washing machines. It's 100% worth it to watch until the end. OKAY, done talking about laundry now, I'm sorry.

➝ Inadvertently, I sort of built a themed list of links without even trying. I'm going to provide a general trigger warning for the topic of abortion, privacy issues, reproductive health and some disturbing imagery in most of the links/my commentary.

➝ Funny or Die ran Women's Health Experts Speak Out. It's interesting to see how this is played for a joke. It is really funny in how ridiculous it is, but on the other hand some of the things they say are things men actually believe without coming out and owning their opinions. That's okay, I suppose — their actions say it all. Jerks.

➝ How Target Figured Out A Teen Girl Was Pregnant Before Her Father Did. A fascinating look at the way compnies can bend data to their will, even personal data, by the digital footprint we leave behind with our credit cards, bank cards, customized coupons mailed to our doors, or if you happen to use cash to avoid these problems, even an employee discount card.

What I find most interesting about the article isn't the article itself. It's that in the article, we have talk of pregnancy, with the catchy little phrase, "Target knows before it shows" on women characterized by either a almost-to-term stomach as well as somewhere in the middle of a pregnancy. They're definitely showing. Also, these women are just pictures of stomachs and nothing else. They've been reduced to the ability to reproduce in a photo, attached to an article about how to squeeze as much money as possible from them. Wheee, objects. Author might want to look where they're standing on that creepy scale, because Target's just massaging the data we (thoughtlessly or not) give them in legal ways. The author is characterizing first-trimester pregnancies with mid-term and full-term pregnancy pictures. Classy.

I think it's fairly interesting how often when we discuss pregnancy, a woman's stomach becomes a symbol for all of them, even pregnancies that women themselves don't even know about. That's the creepiest thing about this article (and every article about pregnancy I read). It's like the FedEx arrow. Once you see that most of the media does this (especially in the context of abortion discussions), you can never, ever unsee it.

➝ The Way It Was. I read this essay on my couch, and when I was halfway through zachariah walked into the room and said, "You read with your mouth open."

I wanted to snap at him, well, of course my jaw was dropped, I was reading about abortion and its history. I was so angry at that moment, maybe at him for not remembering I hate to have my appearance commented on in that way or for not asking me what I was reading instead (maybe I wanted him to care about what would make me forget to control my jaw). Or maybe at the reality of what I was reading about, the things you never hear about, the way the current debate is being framed in the media with none of the past historical context, the way the most women I know using birth control use it for everything but preventing pregnancy. Sigh.

➝ Reproductive Parts:

A politician says abortion is bad for women. A politician says birth control is bad for women. A politician says he wants to ban prenatal testing. A politician says women should focus on their families. A politician says sex is for reproduction only. A politician says queers are disgusting. A politician says.

➝ To round this out, io9 posted What does science fiction tell us about the future of reproductive rights?, although I disagree with some of the final conclusions drawn for complicated reasons that involve the claim that the whole debate is about parenting. It doesn't feel that simple given how women have been left out of the debate, women politicians forced to submit joke amendments to make points that should be obvious to anyone, Planned Parenthood attacked even when most of their work is just plain health-care — it feels like a male-dominant culture trying desperately to put the women back in places where they can be easily controlled.

The Further Adventures of Lady Business!

This week, Ana posted four reviews: Feminism is for Everybody by bell hooks, The Firefly Letters by Margarita Engle, When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead, and The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets by Eva Rice.

Jodie posted a review of Scott Westerfeld's Goliath, that completes the trilogy following Leviathan and Behemoth.

Renay didn't post anything, but she did contribute to the massive Volunteers & Recruiting section of the OTW's February newsletter with the help of her VolComrades. \o/

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Sidetracks - Episode VIII

Sun, 26 Feb 2012 01:57:41 GMT

Sidetracks is a collaborative project featuring various essays, videos, reviews, or other Internet content that we want to share with each other. All past and current links for the Sidetracks project can be found in our Sidetracks tag.

➝ What if male superhero costumes were designed like female superhero costumes?

➝ The 8 Stupidest Defenses Against Accusations of Sexism.

➝ Keffy R. M. Kehrli at Fantasy Matters on reading A Wrinkle in Time as a child:

When I was a girl, some part of me was very Meg-like. I got her. Sure, the Little House books were full of girls (as were the piles of horse books that people bought me despite my lack of interest in horses), but Meg was the character who embodied my nerdy smart-but-strangely-immature awkwardness. I was a weirdo, and Meg was a weirdo with me.

My trans-related dysphoria at the early onset of puberty (nine) was subsumed into the acceptably female dysphoria of feeling too ugly and too fat. I don’t remember if Meg ever thought of herself as being fat, but her general body dissatisfaction from page one resonated with me. And it meant something that despite all that, despite her fears that her brother was smarter than she, despite feeling off-kilter and immature for her age, and despite being a weirdo, Meg got to go on an adventure and defeat the creepy brain monster.

➝ Mark Charan Newton writes about his continued efforts to avoid racefail.

➝ And I'll leave you with 30 Cats in Snow.

➝ BBC News has an article about royal feasts through the ages because it's the Queen's Silver Jubilee this year. My particular favourite fact:

'At state banquets no table decorations were needed as elaborate dishes did the job. They included a 2ft-high, silver salt cellar, made in the shape of a castle and encrusted with jewels. Often there were also silver fountains on the table flowing with wine or water.'

I went to the Tower of London and saw some of the incredibly gold tableware from Charles II's reign. If I remember rightly the label on that case said that he got such extravagant items as presents because people felt the need to appease him after the beheading of Charles I and prove their loyalty. Maybe I'm a nerd, but I find that fascinating and kind of sad. I'd probably better state my bias for Cromwell here.

➝ Other people making such good use of their tumblrs that they almost tempt me to get one. Malinda Lo continues to feed my KStew obsession with this cool Ellen gif which she posted on her tumblr.

➝ And the Booksmugglers posted a surreal picture based on Wolverine from the X-Men and the style of Salvador Dali. I think Dali's work is like...how do you even explain how cool he is, without scaring people away? His work was that kind of intense, weird genius that ripped and melted everything everything into an exciting distortion.

➝ Speaking of surreal art, Ben Heine has so many fantastic surreal and mixed media art projects showing on his website! I could look at them all day. — via stevefeasey

➝ And more art — some cute as illustrations which put Daleks into fictional worlds from books. Someone linked me too, but I'm afraid I can't remember who (shout up if it was you).

➝ A couple of weeks ago I watched two programs called Super Smart Animals, which are all about scientific developments in the understanding of animal intelligence. Unfortunately it's another BBC program, which means no one outside of the UK could watch it on iplayer and it'll disappear from there quickly anyway. It was so informative and in many cases surprising, I'm sad that I can't show you scientist and presenter Liz Bonnin (yep, she's a scientist, but apparently John Preston at 'The Telegraph' prefers to make gross insinuations that her qualifications may be non-existent instead of y'know presenting the facts) being scientifically converted to the idea that whales can experience emotions, in an encounter with wild whales that nearly mad me cry. Luckily, I can share something related as Barbara J King wrote a piece a few years ago about 'Alex and Me' by Irene M Pepperberg. Pepperberg's studies on language in parrots are kind of amazing and although Alex, a parrot who displayed amazing skills is now dead, his successor was featured on the program.

➝ TV writer, Paul Cornell who has worked on Dr Who, recently made the decision to step off any convention panel that doesn't contain gender parity and find a woman to take his place. I recommend reading the comments where many common sense objections are made to his initial plan. Cornell has tried to address those problems, by listening and amending his plan to try and avoid making those he intends to help, feel uncomfortable.

Even though I'm always glad to see feminism pick up male allies, I have to say that I often feel the same way a commenter named Jude does upon seeing yet another feminist project having to be headed by a man:

'I am (as I know Farah has said on her blog and doubtless others have observed as well) utterly exhausted with these kinds of things only being able to be established by men. Not a criticism of you by any means; more a reaction to a moment's thought about the reactions to women arguing for gender parity on panels.'

Full comment text here.

cassiphone also talks about Paul Cornell's decision and makes interesting points, like:

'His plan is not going to fix everything. It’s not going to heal the world. It may not even make much of a difference to a whole bunch of conventions. But that is not a reason for him not to do it. Because Paul can get away with it. He’s a lovely guy, good-humoured and presents well in public. If he does end up having to do this piece of comedic pantomime, physically stepping down in front of an audience and finding women to take his place, then people will remember it, and they will likely forgive him for it. He’ll make it entertaining, and the point will be made, with far less fallout than would occur (sadly) if a woman was the one trying to make the same point.'

➝ Karen Healey did some research on the hate directed towards male and female writers. The comments are to be approached with caution.

➝ Jodie and I are relaunching Nerds Hearts YA, a project I started in 2009. Jodie wrote an entry at the old site. However, we'll soon be moving to a new location, designed and hosted by the wonderful Catherine who is being super generous with her time and skills to help us out. :) If you love YA literature, making lists, and nerdy data, send us an email at nerdsheartya@gmail.com and let us know you're interested in taking part in the initial launch. :)

➝ Isn't it funny how perspective colors the way we look at events? Although Jodie linked to Paul Cornell's decision, my introduction was through How to Be an Asshole in One Easy Step and Assholes Redux: Sexism in Action. After reading, this, my reaction was, "Well, I'm not very excited like everyone else is." and finally "Oh, gross.. I had a thought along of lines of what Jodie quoted about, about how things like this get more attention and merit when they're done by a man. Jodie, I would definitely be interested in your perspective here, because mine is that a dude had an idea, didn't really think it through or get feedback from actual ladies, spouted off about it, and then got a little irritated (along with a bunch of other dudes) when it was pointed out this wasn't like, the second coming of male-allied feminism.

➝ Since Jim Hines did his Striking a Pose project, I've seen tons of pose projects crop up all over. The most recent is at Maxi and April Have a Tumblr. There are three right now: the project introduction, Paying Our Bills and Everytime April buys shoes.

➝ Catherine linked me to She Has No Head! — No, It’s Not Equal. This was a fascinating post. I've seen many posts like this in the past, but this is the most thorough I've seen yet. Don't Read the Comments™

➝ Someone (I can't remember who? WHO WERE YOU, MYSTERY PERSON?) shared Humbled and Amazed, a review of Kristen Cashore's Graceling. I found the article really interesting, but the emphasis the reviewer kept placing on how the novel wasn't for him started to make me uncomfortable, because it skirted the line between "this book is not engaging in the male-gaze for its female characters to benefit male readers" and "this book isn't for dudes". The comments here are worth it!

➝ Jodie, remember how excited I was for This Means War? I am not so excited anymore. :( Warning for spoilers for the movie. Sorry, Reese and Tom! I will wait for your next film.

➝ The recent talk about the statistics of Academy voters has generated a lot of great discussion. For Your Consideration: Women Directors Missing From the Oscars is one video reacting to the news.

➝ Two glorious minutes of Brave..

➝ This trailer of John Carter? 10,000 better than the official ones. I would watch this movie (and actually might, wow).

The Further Adventures of Lady Business!

On our respective projects, we created some words you might like to read in the last few weeks!

Ana has been writing up a storm and putting everyone else to shame. She reviewed Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde, The Brides of Rollrock Island by Margo Lanagan, The Mismeasure of Woman by Carol Tavris, Wandering Son vols. 1 and 2 by Takako Shimura, and The Home-Maker by Dorothy Canfield Fisher. She also wrote two fascinating essays for The Sunday Salon, On Objectivity, Again and On Being Wrong.

Jodie reviewed Great House by Nicola Krauss and discussed parts of BBC’s Dickens season that aired in honor of Charles Dickens's centenary.

As per usual and because Lady Business is her book blog, Renay was the slacker and did nothing but brag about graduating. Again.

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A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 17:24:52 GMT

My recent experience with Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time was a good reminder of why I should get back into the habit of rereading: my appreciation for the book deepened considerably on a second reading. I enjoyed it a lot the first time around, but this time there was even more to it than I remembered. The characters grabbed me more; the writing stood out in ways that it hadn’t before. This isn’t to say that I found it perfect, but it’s the kind of book I’ll happily spend a long time thinking about and trying to engage with.

I reread it so I could write a post about Mrs Which for the novel’s 50th anniversary celebrations. Revisiting the story while paying particular attention to the role one of the characters plays in it was a new approach for me, and something I really enjoyed doing. But of course, it didn’t exhaust all the things I wanted to say about A Wrinkle in Time, so here you have them: all my extra words.

Another thing I tried to pay attention to this time around was L’Engle’s handling of gender roles. I know this is one of those books that frustrate some readers for being celebrated as revolutionary and yet not going further than they do, but I thought t did some valuable things, even fifty years after it was first published. But I’ll start with something that did bother me a lot: the comparisons between Mrs Murry and Mrs O’Keefe. Calvin’s mother is unfavourably compared to Meg and Charles’ for being slovenly, for not being pretty, and for failing to be a good mother and homemaker. And her presence casts Mrs Murry herself in a more troubling light. I don’t at all mind the existence of a female character who does it all – I don’t for one moment resent her for being both beautiful and smart, for being a flawless mother who has French toast waiting for Meg when she wakes up and a brilliant scientist. This only begins to trouble me when all her achievements are used to cast women who don’t manage to balance their different roles so well in a negative light, and unfortunately the presence of Mrs O’Keefe (in this book, at least) has that effect.

Part of the reason why I was trying to make sense of how the narrative frames Meg’s mother was a post about the book by Catherynne M. Valente that I read last year. Renay included it in one of our Sidetracks posts and paired it with an essay by N.K. Jemisin titled “The Limitations of Womanhood in Fantasy”. I agree with Renay: both make good points, and it can be very, very tricky to draw the line between resisting the confinement of women to the domestic sphere and buying into the devaluation of anything domestic and feminine. I’m not saying that reading Mrs Murry like Valente does necessarily implies doing the latter, but I do know I’d have been much happier with her role in the story if not for the tricky comparison with Calvin’s mother.

And then there’s Meg herself, who I had loved before and continued to love now. One of the things that I find the most exciting about her is that she challenges the divide between emotions and rationality. She’s both smart and feeling – she’s great at math and interested in science and temperamental, stubborn, and loving. However, what Valente says about the balance between these two sets of traits gave me pause (and btw, I didn’t mean for my post to bounce off her review quite this much, but I went and reread it and there’s so much I want to say, so much I agree and disagree with, not to mention so much I’m not entirely sure how I feel about. It’s a powerful and engaging piece of criticism, that’s for sure):

Meg’s talent is an especially female one—loving her male relatives and...well, I got very tired of how many times she “wailed” “cried” or “stamped her foot.” This is very infantilizing language, removing her feeling from anger or passion into the realm of tantrum.

I take her point about the language, but my reaction to this paragraph as a whole is a big “but”, for reasons best expressed by Jodie’s excellent comment in that old Sidetracks post:

I’m talking about representation arguments where a lady ‘can not’ be a certain way because the characteristics she’s been given could be seen to have negative repercussions for the way women are seen. I’m talking myself in knots, but essentially I want to be able to see evil female characters (who aren’t evil because oh for example they’re super sexy and seduce all the dudes to evil, that I do not want) and not have to hear all about why any kind of evil female character harms all women. Or I want to be able to have traditionally feminine female characters and not have to hear all about how any traditional feminine female character rains negativity impressions down on all our female heads.

I just love the scene where Meg discovers that the antidote to cold rationality is love. I love it because she does that not by departing from rationality altogether, but by rejecting the notion that the two have to be divorced. And yes, by doing so she takes on a traditionally feminine role, but I can’t get behind the idea that this is a bad thing.

I guess that where I depart the most from Valente’s reading is in the fact that I read A Wrinkle in Time entirely as Meg’s own story, and not for a moment as the male characters’. I can’t see her as an accessory to Charles Wallace’s, Calvin’s and her father’s more important stories, simply because they didn’t interest me nearly as much as she did. There’s a lot going on in A Wrinkle in Time, but what always grabs me is Meg’s journey towards acceptance, towards a greater degree of comfort of who she is. The whole adventure leads up to the moment when she has her flaws returned to her, almost more so than to her father and brother’s rescue and to IT’s defeat. Naturally this is not the only valid reading, but it’s what the story looks like through my eyes.

It’s true that Meg is not remarkable in quite the same sense as the male characters are, and I won’t dismiss readings that point out that this is problematic. But to me she’s the human element; she’s the bridge between the reader and the timeless realm where her adventure is taking place. Without Meg, I suspect I might have felt that the story had left me behind, much like I felt that the ending of The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms had. This is particularly true of the religious elements of the novel, which are so alien to my worldview. I don’t mind engaging with ideas that are alien to me (this is, in fact, part of why I read), but it’s very easy to be made to feel that a story based on assumptions that completely differ from your own has shut you out.

Meg is the reason why A Wrinkle in Time doesn’t ever make me feel this way. I can’t relate to the theology behind it, but I can relate to the sense of awe before the universe as experience by Meg. I can even relate to her brief flashes of understanding as opposed to Charles Wallace’s insight, which is framed as “superhuman” and therefore loses me. Of course, there’s again a troubling gendered quality to this (women as “instinctive” and men as rational), but if we leave that aside for one moment and take Meg on her own, I’m incredibly grateful that she gives me a way in.

They read it too: The Blue Bookcase, Care’s Online Bookclub, Books Without Any Pictures, In Spring it is the Dawn, The Boston Bibliophile, Regular Rumination

(You?)

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Sidetracks - Episode VII

Sun, 19 Feb 2012 11:03:48 GMT

Sidetracks is a collaborative project featuring various essays, videos, reviews, or other Internet content that we want to share with each other. All past and current links for the Sidetracks project can be found in our Sidetracks tag.

➝ Stewart Lee on "political correctness". I found this quote on tumblr and loved it despite having no wider context for it. Jodie then pointed me towards a full article by Lee on the same subject, Guilt-Free pleasures.

➝ Somebody has an issue with gender. This is all sooo familiar, and not just in comics.

➝ How Not to Write About Female Musicians: A Handy Guide. Can everybody please follow it?

➝ NPR has a long feature about "We Are Fine", a track from Sharon Van Etten's new album, Tramp, which features vocals by Zach Condon from Beirut. I already loved the song even before knowing what it was about, exactly, but I love it even more now. You can stream it if you follow the link.

➝ Cory Doctorow's essay With A Little Help: Digital Lysenkoism DRM, "social DRM," and the madness of publishers is a great follow-up to the conversation Renay started last week.

➝ Theodora Goss picks her Top 10 Fantasy Love Stories. I do love me a good romance storyline. I agree with many of her choices, and some of the ones I haven't got to yet seem really promising.

➝ Fatemeh Fakhraie asks: Who says I can’t be a Muslim feminist?

➝ Jenny Geras writes about why she thinks the term "chick lit" is problematic. Why are Jane Eyre, Kate Reddy and Becky Bloomwood even being discussed together in the same paragraph? They have nothing at all in common apart from being female characters created by female authors. Thoughts?

➝ The 2011 Cybils Awards winners have been announced! I enjoyed Anya's Ghost and Blood Red Road and look forward to some day picking up the winners in some of the other categories.

➝ The Atlantic has a long article about "How a Male Feminist Alienated His Supporters". I don't know nearly enough about Hugo Schwyzer to have a solid opinion on this matter, and experience has taught me not to fully trust mainstream media coverage of debates that largely take place in the blogosphere. But I'm throwing this link in here because it ties in with questions about the role men can play in feminism that were already on my mind, thanks to bell hooks' Feminist is for Everybody. I bet some of you out there have thoughts on this, and if so I would love to hear them.

➝ Zetta Elliott's essay 'Canada's Black Writers: Achieving Excellence and Avoiding Annihilation' explores a lot of points she's brought up at her blog and in other essays: the lack of published black Canadian writers, discussion about the Coretta Scott King award, her own move to America and her struggle to decolonize her imagination. In this particular essay she unifies these subjects by examining the difference between the way American publishing approaches African American writing and the way Canadian publishing approaches African Canadian writing.

➝ Elliott's essay links to Arundhati Roy's opening address to the 1997 World Social Forum. I know that's old, old news, but I found Roy's speech really relevant to the current UK political situation. She talks about the way current events are often cherry picked and used to justify war, mentions that valid protest is often officially defined as terrorism and explores the problems of relying on governments to bring about change for people.

➝ Garland Grey provides a thoroughly sourced exploration of the problems of our current capitalism systems, at Tiger Beatdown, called 'Personal Decisions, Global Catastrophes: Capitalism is not inherently friendly to human life.'. therejectionist said, it would melt faces off, which, yeah, seems accurate. Even if you just read the article, or only click one of the links he uses to make a point, you're going to be appalled, enraged and informed.

➝ I haven't followed the Leveson Enquiry closely, but Cheryl Morgan's description of Trans Media Watch's evidence caught my eye. She lays out the problems with how stories about trans people are reported, that Helen Belcher, of Trans Media Watch outlined at the enquiry.

➝ io9 wants to know if readers think there should be more science heroes, instead of so many science villians. I would like more heroes and heroines who like science, partly because then I would learn more about how things work (pure humanities student after the age of 16).

➝ dovegreyreader talks about Jennifer Worth's autobiography, which relates her experiences of being a midwife in the East End. The book has been turned into a short series, 'Call the Midwife', which I want everyone to watch, but is sadly on the BBC so hard to find in other countries. The book's available everywhere though.

➝ Iris' recent post, 'Confessions of an Insecure Reader', was really smart. She just really got the insecurities that can accompany being defined as a reader by others.

➝ I said that I was annoyed when no women were voted into the Orange Rising Talent BAFTA short list and I still am. Despite that, I am well glad that out of all the men on the short list, which the public did create, Adam Deacon was the person who won. His win is a cool acknowledgement that talented people be seen as rising, or break through artists, even if they're not involved in American films (do not get me wrong, I love American films, but I don't think rising talent necessarily has to be evaluated by how well someone has done in American cinema). He's also strongly against British film funding being prioritised based on how much mainstream appeal a film might have. And I loved his speech, where he said this award felt like being accepted.

➝ HeheheheHehe, foxxcub put up an Avenger's gif, which is adorable.

➝ To finish, let me show you some pretty posters that move popular films to different eras. My favourite is the 'Drive' re-imagining, featuring James Dean, but the posters for 'Inception', 'Pulp Fiction' and 'The Hang Over' (that film would be so wicked with a different script and Dean Martin) are cool as well.

➝ I complained a few months ago about John Carter. Classic science fiction about a special dude when there are tons of awesome science fiction stories about special ladies waiting to be told (sigh). Of course, then I read The Title of John Carter, Gender and Money in Hollywood via this article about women rejecting the movie for some sweet action re: how Hollywood thinks ladies and dudes are as dumb as a brick wall cemented together with gender essentialism glue:

Stanton spoke in London last month at a small preview of the new Walt Disney distributed film, John Carter. Take a deep breath before you read this. "Here’s the real truth of it," he said of the film’s title, "I’d already changed it from A Princess Of Mars to John Carter Of Mars. I don’t like to get fixated on it, but I changed Princess Of Mars…because not a single boy would go." [....] Stanton added, "And then the other truth is, no girl would go to see John Carter Of Mars. So I said, 'I don’t won’t to do anything out of fear, I hate doing things out of fear, but I can’t ignore that truth.'"

IT'S THE TRUTH, EVERYONE.

➝ Shit Book Reviews Say. This has been making the rounds, but it's great. Guilty as charged.

➝ On a recent Booking Through Thursday, they asked people about fanfiction. It's like asking an electrician to comment on cultural anthropology. I may have written a little fanfiction and consider my work 76% okay most of the time, so finding people unfamiliar with it is both fascinating and frustrating. Have some hilarious/horrifying highlights:

"I knew people online who would spend days working on a fic." (source)

justira has been promising the sequel to These Unending Alchemies of Honour since 2009. I feel like I should win a prize for knowing the person who's been thinking/working on a story this long. I still love the hell out of that story.

"And I’d like to point out that fanfiction is a much broader category than you might think. I refer you to Aja Romano’s brilliant post, "I'm done explaining why fanfiction is okay", which points out how works based on other works have been around since the dawn of time (Paradise Lost counts!) and are perfectly capable of being fantastic enough to win the Pulitzer." (source)

♥ ♥ ♥

"When I was a teenager (oh god, I’m old! When the hell did I get old!), fanfiction was pretty much all I read. I lost entire summers to the internet and fanfiction. I really get into a fandom and exhausted all resources until something else catches my eye." (source)

This person is clearly me in disguise.

Of course, then you have the inevitable:

"I think it is too unoriginal and disrespectful toward the original creators especially if the stories came out rather silly and lousy." (source)

"I’d like to write something, but i think it would have to be done very carefully because i wouldn’t want to disrespect the original book in any way." (source)

What does that even mean? I see it over and over and over and am never sure what to make of the claim of "disrespectful". I can think of quite a few things that are disrespectful to do to a piece of art. Setting it on fire, maybe? Remixing and transforming is not on the list.

"I understand why fans enjoy fan-fictions of their favourite series, especially after a series has finished or while they are waiting for the latest release, but for me those characters sprouted from inside the author's head and so the author is the only one who really knows them." (source)

This is really sad. :(

"Some of it is obscene and to be avoided at all costs." (source)

Ahahahaha. EVERYONE, PLEASE AVOID MY FANFIC. Dudes have sex in it. With each other. I might even use the word "cock".

"Fanfiction, as writte by amateurs jotting it down in Microsoft Word and then uploading it to a fanfiction site - never. It's very rarely any good." (source)

If I've written, say, 30 stories...does this means 29 of them are bad? Serious question. What's "very rarely" in this case?

"I was heartbroken when Cassandra Claire got a real publishing deal, dropped the “I” from her pseudonym, and took the Draco Trilogy offline." (source)

I will end this tour with that. Because it's perfect.

➝ the girls are posts a review of Lana Del Rey's new album, Born to Die. I have acquired this album and listened to it and declare it a winner. The most famous track, Video Games, is not my favorite, and the reviewer and I disagree on some of the songs. This is another case where I know very little about the artist, and the critiques are not just of the music, but the persona of the artist that's being formed. That's really not how I engage with music, and thus, am finding music criticism inaccessible.

➝ Would you like to read an excellent post? Our own Ana wrote On Objectivity, Again. She engages with a post made by Maggie Stiefvater and a definition of review that caused me to close the window in disgust. It was a definite, "Are you kidding me, lady?" moment for me (and so we come to why I hesitate to read author blogs these days). The War to Define Reviews has continued from 2006 when I first encountered it and it gets more and more tiring every year. It's a particularly vile form of community policing: "this is my definition and things that fall here count, but what YOU do doesn't!" is my biggest pet peeve about any sort of interaction with art. It's another version of "you're interrogating the text from the wrong perspective!" where people with opinions that don't toe the line of some subjective definition portrayed as objective are marginalized and erased because the person claiming these things speaks from a certain position of authority. In this case, it's an author who is horrified someone had opinions and expressed them in a way she didn't like, so they have to be discredited immediately. Ana neatly takes this apart.

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Eon: Dragoneye Reborn by Alison Goodman

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 06:42:29 GMT

Eon, a Dragoneye candidate, has spent years dedicating himself to the study of magic, blade and dragon arts in order to become the new apprentice Dragoneye of his year. With a disability from an accident in his youth, a hard master and little support, Eon seeks the power of the dragons while carrying a secret, one that could result in death. Eon, twelve year old Dragoneye candidate is actually Eona, sixteen year old girl, disguised as a boy because female use of Dragon Magic is forbidden, even though she has the power to see all the dragons. All her hopes and entire future is centered on keeping her true identity a secret.

Eon: Dragoneye Reborn had a lot of elements that intrigued me and sat on my reading list for ages while I pined for it and read Stanley Fish instead. I especially love stories where people hide in the performance of other genders. I fell in love with the trope after I saw an excellent performance of Twelfth Night at my local university in 2007. For awhile there I was all over the concept. A girl, determined to fulfill her dreams regardless of social rules or how she is looked upon in society? A girl parading as a boy, fooling everyone and playing politics and amassing power? It's like catnip. So why didn't this book work for me? There are a few answers and two are full of spoilers.

Everyone has probably heard of Avatar: The Last Airbender by now, as the show has surpassed its targeted Nickelodeon audience to become a critical success with adults as well for it's nuanced and respectful portrayal of a culture that's nothing like I've ever experienced in my rural United States upbringing. Avatar blends thoughtful characterization with a plot so finely arranged it makes me flail in joy as well as grind my teeth in jealousy. It's set against a back drop of a fascinating and obviously well-researched fantasy culture inspired by East-Asian societies, plus tons of references to others that I am unable to pick out. I'd never experienced fantasy that's not flavored with medieval European monarchies before Avatar. I'm lazy and finding it is hard for someone like me, who is way more likely to stumble across as many problematic things as possible, love them, then discover how skeevy they actually are because I'm culturally illiterate (not a great reason, but an honest one). Avatar was a first for me and what a first it was. It's proof that non-white stories can be told well and be successful within the white media ocean we're up to our necks in. It's infinitely re-watchable and full of fun and joy and drama and political intrigue without ever recognizing that it's one of the few representations of non-white culture in the media landscape it inhabits. It doesn't explain itself; it just is. Ana and Jodie reviewed the first season in January and I sincerely hope they continue with the remainder of the series so then we can all watch Korra together and squee about it.

My problems with Eon began immediately. Part of the reason I loved Avatar was the way the Asian-inspired cultures were woven into the world-building and narrative. Things were explained, but in very natural way that spoke to the excellent story-telling Avatar episodes boasted. Although Avatar was created by two white men, it's extremely clear that they took pains to be respectful, thoughtful and subtle in how the narrative and the world unfolded. Unfortunately, Eon does the exact opposite. There's no discovery of the world. Eon spends the first two hundred pages in constant informational dumps that made me feel more and more uncomfortable. I don't claim to be knowledgeable about the East — my university had a gaping hole where those classes should have been. The farthest they went was Afghanistan in their course offerings, so most of what I do know is a cultural diffusion, a collection of stereotypes and shorthand that is no doubt wrong, incomplete and definitely offensive. I don't want to damn the book for not being Avatar because the mediums are different and thus, the experiences are going to be vastly different, but I didn't want China 101 to replace it. That's what the book felt like until midway through when it finally eased off to only crop up a few times every chapter; someone explaining a culture to me instead of telling a story. Instead of building these things into the narrative, it often feels as if Eon is explaining them, when this is the world in which he lives. I discussed this with samjohnsson, who asked me, "does the cultural flavor help with the immersion, or hinder."

The world-building, the very thing so many found exciting and interesting, kept me from investing in this book and tossed me constantly from the story. I could never dive in because it felt so much like "white person writes fantasy based on China! Look! ~Energy dragons~!" There was no immersion for me at all. I kept stumbling over commentary where it felt like Eon was talking to himself to explain the world he lived in, on and on throughout the story that yanked me immediately out. There was no discovering this world, this culture. It's going to be delivered to you in as many information dumps as possible under the guise of "explaining" things that it seems like someone who had spent their entire lives in a culture would already know and the reader could pick up on without being treated like they're dense. There has to be some element of explanation for a fantasy culture but surely there's a better way to integrate the explanations with the plot. I just find it boggling that although Eon studied so hard, and that his (abusive) master took so many risks, that he would still need things explained to him so thoroughly even up until the end of the book. The borrowed cultures are always being commented on, always aware of their difference and foreign nature to people who are likely reading the book. Thus, the comparison to Avatar which was never self-conscious about its story, tone, or world building. Eon is very clearly aware of itself and then fact that its readers are not as familiar with the specific culture beyond shorthand of the Chinese Zodiac and a general idea about how ancient Chinese and Japanese cultures worked. It doesn't feel genuine. The story would have been stronger if it had started at a different point, as well, revealed all the secrets Eon was keeping in a different way, and trusted the reader to pick up the vagaries of the culture as the story unfolded.

Of course, the book did attempt some interesting things with gender. Eon struggles with his identification throughout the novel, making it fairly obvious why the Mirror Dragon is unavailable. How do you live in a world in which your personal identity is a constant struggle, even beyond trying to hide it? Eon attempts to suppress Eona all through the story, denying every aspect of Eona's actuality. Because I am so uneducated on these types of issues I really have little right to comment on them at length, because I left the book more confused than anything else at the way gender binary is both subverted but then re-enforced. I couldn't figure out if the book was attempting to show that there was no reason for Eon to choose between the two identities because both were a part of him and important. There was also Lady Dela, a person with two spirits, who seemed to deal with the pressure of being physically male but spiritually a woman in a way that was extremely well done and nonjudgmental, to show Eon there is, as Ryko says at one point about the sexual proclivities of eunuchs, more than one way to skin a cat. I am more familiar with Native America versions of this, but I found it very ambitious and really liked her character. She was a mentor, smart, loyal, helpful, she doesn't die horribly, and she creates interesting discussion about gender that didn't feel like I was being bashed over the head with a lecture. It did, at one point, come down to a "I knew because I didn't like traditional boy things!" which I find hard to unpack for my own purposes. I have no clue how right/wrong a portrayal like that is — I am woefully undereducated about these issues. Of course, at times she suffered as a mouthpiece for the aforementioned "Let's Learn About China!" problem, as did the other character I liked, Ryko, a eunuch guarding Lady Dela at court, who was very obviously in love with Dela. I would definitely read a book about them on adventures, that's for sure. >.>

Now we come to the end, full of spoilers!

Of course, all the conversations about gender couldn't save the end of this book for me, as it included: a spiritual invasion, followed by a threat of rape, followed by the ultimate redemption of the villain's character by the main character after another attempted rape that infuses her with FEELINGS toward the villain. I have opinions about rape as a tool to make a villain REALLY EVIL NO SRSLY THEY'RE SUPER BAD, and they are all negative. I have thoughts about forgiveness and mercy as framed as appropriate in a narrative where mercy is not a guarantee. I'm not Ana or Jodie who would probably be able to write up a thoughtful paragraph about why the whole final culmination to the book sucked all the enjoyment out of it for me, but I can hobble my way through it and hope I make sense.

After Eon has had his mind and body invaded by Ido, after Ido has forced himself on Eon physically twice, after he's murdered and attacked people close to Eon, after he's attempted to steal Eon's power, Eon finally defeats him by claiming his true power, calling the Mirror Dragon and opening Ido's heart point. The following things happen.

"Kill him," he said hoarsely. "Kill him. While you've got the chance."

Lady Dela emerged from behind a pile of tumbled bales and struggled upright, one of my swords in a wavering grip. Her face was caked with dirt and streaks of blood. She lifted the weapon, the effort making her sway. "I'll do it."

"No!" The words burst out from somewhere deep in me. Somewhere newly forged. "We can't."

"Why not?" Ryko demanded.

I bit my lip, knowing my reasons would mean nothing to a man who had just been tortured. I hardly understood them myself. Part of me still felt the touch of Ido's hands on me and wanted him to suffer and die, but a bigger part—a golden part—wanted to stop his pain. In forcing compassion onto Ido, I had somehow opened my own heart to him.

This also occurs:

You forced this new generosity on me, so don't waste it," he said harshly. "Get out of here."

He was right. I should go—let him make his grand gesture of atonement—and get myself and my friends to safety. I owned him nothing. But even as I backed further into the hole, something stopped me. I could not leave him to face Sethon. My power had ripped his strength away; I had made him vulnerable. I doubted he even had enough stamina left to connect with his dragon.

I leaned out of the hole again.

"You could come with us." Even as I said the words, I knew they were a mistake. I did not want him near me; I could already feel the rage that was forcing its way through my compassion. A sharp, deadly female rage that was not forgiving or pitying or merciful.

....yeah.

And of course, Eon begins this book with an injured hip, the back story of which disturbed the hell out of me. By the end of the story, the hip, the disability:

"No," I said. "My hip is healed!" I ran my hand down the smooth line of my thigh again.

"Healed? By your dragon power?"

I nodded, meeting her wonder. I was free. No longer a cripple. No longer untouchable. I was strong and powerful.

Just going to leave that there.

This book attempts a lot of things: a different kind of fantasy, commentary on gender, with a disabled character which could have been awesome, but just FYI, having a disability means you're not "free" and also, once you get rid of it with ~magic~ you can be strong and powerful, because damn, you know how disabilities render those with them weak and powerless!

I would also like to quit coming across the narrative of the rape victim who is compelled to forgive her rapist by forces she can't control, whether they be external or ~magical~ (or in other words, cultural pressures that encourage women not to report, to "let it go", because "he didn't mean it" and "he's better now"). Why, exactly, should women be redeeming and forgiving these men that abuse them? Why is it framed in such a way to make the lack of reaching out and no feeling of sympathy an immediate negative? I don't understand this; it's possible I need to read more about rape and the power dynamics of rape to understand why this seems so acceptable. Eona didn't have to show the villain any mercy at all at that point after her initial revenge to open himself up to his deeds in order to remain a kind person. She didn't have to help him avoid the consequences of his actions in order to remain a kind person. She didn't have to ask him to run away with her, moments after he had ripped her clothes off in a dark alley, in order to stay a kind person, while inside she was miserable that she was even asking. I resent that the book framed her choices the way it did. If the awkward world building that made me feel uncomfortable hadn't ruined this book for me, this would have done it.

Eon didn't work out for me, but I am happy to see more books dealing with gender commentary and fantasy drawn from different cultures. I hope there will be more in the future, now that this series has proven so popular. But maybe next time we could get a story like this minus the terrible rape and erasure of disabled character parts.

That would be awesome.

Other reviews: Fantasy Book Critic, Fantasy Cafe, Stella Matutina, Tempting Persephone, yours?

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Ladies in Music Part II, or: Apparently Ana Loves Lists

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 23:09:10 GMT

One of my first posts here at Lady Business was a list of some of my favourite ladies in music or lady-fronted band. What I said then about the imbalance of my music listening habits is still true now, unfortunately, though I have discovered some wonderful girl-centric bands in the past year. And just recently Renay was asking me for music recommendations, which is what gave me the idea for this post.

I’m not very good at analysing music – it might be a matter of practice, but I often feel like I lack the vocabulary to write at length about music like I do about books (and more recently TV, with the encouragement of my partners in crime here at LB). Blessing all the Birds, the wonderful Joanna Newsom tumblr I discovered recently, has been giving me all sorts of ideas for possible future music-centric posts, but it might be a while before I feel comfortable trying my hand at one.

In the meantime, considering this another instalment of my small musical show and tell:

The wonderful Sharon Van Etten has just released a new album, Tramp, which I’m completely in love with. The album was produced by Aaron Dessner of The National, and I think fans of their music are also likely to really enjoy this. I’m sharing a track from the new album below, but my favourite of her songs is still the brilliant and heartbreaking Love More, which closes her 2010 album Epic.
First Aid Kit are a lovely folksy duo from Sweden who have album just released a new album. They seem to get compared to Laura Marling a lot, though Adele’s very wise comment “we’re a gender, not a genre” comes to mind whenever I read those things. Watch the video for The Lion's Roar:
Hospitality: I feel bad that I already used the phrase “like a female-fronted Belle and Sebastian” when trying to sell Allo Darlin’ to Jodie, because it kind of also applies here. Just saying.
Shannon Wright: An American singer-songwriter who has been around for ages and never seems to get as much attention as she deserves. I’ve lost track of her most recent releases, but her 1999 album Flightsafety is a big favourite of mine. I love this song SO MUCH. So much.
Nina Nastasia: As above, only replace the album title with Dogs. Here's my favourite track, Stormy Weather.
Amanda Applewood: A frequent collaborator of the indie pop band The Boy Least Likely To who released her first album in 2010. Her song Still Smiling may not be that upbeat once you get beyond the surface, but still it never fails to make me happy. You can listen to it at Myspace.

EDIT TO ADD: I have just found out that Amanda Applewood is the same person as Eva Rice, author of The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets. My mind is kind of blown.

That’s all I’ve got for today, but if you have any recommendations of your own I’d really love to hear them.

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Sidetracks - Episode VI

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 09:26:51 GMT

Sidetracks is a collaborative project featuring various essays, videos, reviews, or other Internet content that we want to share with each other. All past and current links for the Sidetracks project can be found in our Sidetracks tag.

➝ Gwenda Bond on teen characters in YA: The Fast-Talking Smarties. 'My suggested rule of thumb is that if you'd never say, "That's just not how adults are" about an adult character (and, really, you wouldn't, would you?), then don't vary the same theme about teen characters in YA.' THIS. This times a million. The fact that every other review of The Fault in Our Stars includes some sort of variation of "the characters are so unrealistic! Teens are not that smart, and they definitely don't sit around having philosophical discussions" has been driving.me.nuts.

➝ 10 Things Not to Say to Childfree People. I think I've heard all of those, though my absolute favourite is missing: the ever-recurring comments about how unnatural it is for a woman not to want children. One of these days the gender police is going to come for me.

➝ At the F Word, Emily Kenway and Kaite Welsh discuss the pilot of New Girl from a feminist perspective. As you might remember, my own reading was much closer to Welsh's , who says that "this is a show that revels in offensive gender stereotypes", than to Kenway's more generous take. But it was so interesting to see these two different perspectives side by side.

➝ Sherman Alexie in conversation with Neko Case:

SA: [Exhales] I mean, certainly one of the things I was talking about: I'm a big fan, too. I'm a fanboy! So, you know the way in which they love what I do? I feel the same way about all sorts of artists. I may create the stuff, but I'm also a huge fan. So, I mean, I understand.
NC: Wouldn't it be terrible if you weren't a huge fan?
SA: There are a lot of people like that.
NC: I know! I think about those people all the time. I think, God, you must be so lonely. You're not excited about things. Or people who believe that artists have to be completely tortured to do anything good. I hate that stereotype, too. It's destructive.

♥

➝ Dangerous Minds asks some very interesting questions about the extent to which outraged reactions to MIA's finger gesture during the Super Bowl were influenced by her gender.

➝ And via that last post, I discovered Blessing All the Birds, a tumblr whose description just abut made me swoon: they're a feminist fan project focused on the work of songwriter Joanna Newsom. We see Newsom's work as feminist literature and our goal is to provide it the serious critical analysis it deserves, as well as to discuss her unique place in popular culture. !!1456@#!1 And look, look, they have an essay on Go Long and Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber!!!1 I'm in love.

➝ Elaine Showalter writes about her favourite contemporary American female novelists and the problematic relationship between the critical establishment and women's writing.

➝ Dreaming Awake: N.K. Jemisin on being a woman of colour and a fantasy writer. And how dare I disrespect that history, profane all my ancestors' suffering and struggles, by giving up the freedom to imagine that they've won for me.. I now really want the essay anthology she wrote this for, The Miseducation of the Writer.

➝ Pinterest: A "Shocking Example of Women Using the Internet". The horror, the horror.

➝ Gender and book covers: the romance novel edition. Do men get objectified through romance novel covers? Yes. Do they have it worse than the women on the covers? No, they absolutely do not. Not even close.

➝ Finally, Geek Feminism lists comics by or featuring women of colour.

➝ From Jezebel: 'Ava DuVernay, director of the drama Middle of Nowhere just won the Best Director for Dramatic Film award at the festival.'

➝ The trailer for 'The Middle of Nowhere' makes it look stunningly shot. Another film for the LoveFilm list.

➝ The short lists have been announced for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature and the Man Asian Literary prize. I like prize lists, because they give you a place to start with areas of literature that you're unfamiliar with and now I have a few more titles written by Asian and South Asian authors (that I would probably never have heard about otherwise) to check out.

➝ I don't understand how I have lived without ANIMALS TALKING IN ALL CAPS until now. Edit: Problematic
update about this link" and link to this URL.

➝ Ari talks about The Birthday Party pledge, a project which asks readers to make a commitment to 'give multicultural books as gifts' to children for one year. I don't have any kids in my life, so I'm passing on the message.

➝ The Intergalactic Academy is the first place I saw anyone talk about 'Daughter of Centaurs' having a white washed cover. The Booksmugglers confirm. White washing covers is a really crap move.

'Daughter of Centaurs' is published by Random House for Young Readers and their contact page is here if you want to write to them about this incident of white washing (I'd guess a letter to the children's publishing address would be best, but please let me know if you think another address is better).

➝ I found this article posted on The Washington Post, Even today, an angry female arouses fear and is dismissed, fascinating.

What is all the more infuriating about such prohibitions are the breathtaking hypocrisies they contain. Sometimes it seems that those most likely to mock anger as a means of dismissing and silencing legitimate female claims of dissatisfaction are those most likely to utilize the politics of resentment and victimization for personal or ideological gain.

No! Really? Wow, who would have thought? This makes me want an entire book on this topic that's not as obvious. Do either of you have any recommendations?

➝ One month after the end of 2011, I am getting around to reading all the Best of 2011 books. Orbit Books posted a round up to several. I love best of lists, or...maybe I just love lists. I need to go through all the blogs I'm subscribed to and find their best of lists. Or people could link me to theirs! GIVE ME ALL THE LISTS so the March We Want It! post will be even larger. \o/

➝ I have a nook color (which I like) but I hated not being able to move the books I bought between my nook, my laptop and iPhone depending on where I was going to be or what I was going to be doing (when your 3GS iPhone battery is better than the nook, that's an issue). This resulted in me....not buying books, which was ¼ of what I planned to do with it (the other ¾ going to fanfic). Catherine linked me to It's time for a unified ebook format and the end of DRM:

Some publishers don't want to hear this, but the truth is that DRM can be hacked. It does not eliminate piracy. It not only fails as a piracy deterrent, but it also introduces restrictions that make ebooks less attractive than print books. We've all read a print book and passed it along to a friend. Good luck doing that with a DRM'd ebook! What publishers don't seem to understand is that DRM implies a lack of trust. All customers are considered thieves and must be treated accordingly.

The problem I have with moving to digital books is DRM (it was my biggest problem with iTunes) is how long devices last. What's the average age for a tech device these days? The odds of me wanting to move my stuff elsewhere, to new devices completely in two years, maybe not one owned by B&N, are high. I paid for these files. They are mine, and DRM tells me "these files are yours...sort of! Sorry about those strings but you can store them in the CLOUD OF INEVITABLE FAILURE!" Even then, I believe I should be able to do what I want with them in ways that don't actively harm an author's livelihood because ultimately I like authors and want them to write more books, so it doesn't make sense for me to strip the DRM and create 95728462 torrents, laughing manically all the while. Therefore, DRM is still on my list for treating me like that's my plan. Also, the fact that the nook color has a ~secret internal memory~ you can't access unless you root the device is so aggravating — I can't even access the location where the files are stored on my nook to control the device I bought. Screw you, Barnes & Noble, and your hidden memory, your insistence on treating me like a thief when I just want to read the book I bought on multiple devices. Thanks, I guess, for using epubs, which makes my life easier after I strip the damn thing of DRM so I can actively use the files I purchase in ways convenient to my life and not controlled and directed by your product and company.

It's difficult — I've chosen to support B&N as a bookselling company because there are no independent booksellers in my city and B&N remains the only bookseller that's not Hastings (super rude every time I've been in there) or a retail chain not dedicated to books. Not for the first time, I really regret that.

➝ I had no clue that ice could make these kinds of noises. Whoa.

➝ Ellen DeGeneres is still classy and hilarious. Worth it especially for the end.

➝ New blog I discovered courtesy of The Book Smugglers and Ana: slatebreakers. Awesome premise. I am jealous of blogs that can develop a very specific review style with sections and have it work. Intergalactic Academy is another blog who has this same type of great review style. I can't even settle on a solid rating system that doesn't change day to day.

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We Want It - February 2012

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 09:03:50 GMT

Because we haven't quite managed to work out a way for us to consume ALL the entertainment yet: to keep us from emerging haggard and zombie like after regular all night box set marathons, book splurges and music overload we've set up this monthly space where we can express our pure fannish glee at the fact that so many projects of awesome potential are continually being made. All of our past wants and desires can be found in the We Want It! tag.

As per usual, I want a lot of books:

First there's Christopher Paul Curtis' The Mighty Miss Malone: I first saw it reviewed at Slatebreakers, and then Ana at The Book Smugglers sealed the deal. It sounds like a book I'd absolutely love.

I've been hearing good things about Megan Whalen Turner for ages, but Chachic's Queen's Thief Week is definitely to blame for the fact that I'm currently dying to read this series.

Wheels Of Change: How Women Rode The Bicycle To Freedom (With A Few Flat Tires Along The Way) by Sue Macy was on the Amelia Bloomer Project list, and it sounds sooo good.

I discovered Jerry Griswold's The Meanings of "Beauty & The Beast": A Handbook via SurLaLune and immediately added it to my wishlist. I quite enjoyed his book on children's literature, Feeling Like a Kid, and this sounds every bit as interesting.

I'm so excited to one day read Emily Martin's The Woman In The Body: A Cultural Analysis Of Reproduction. There was a recap of her work in Carol Travis' The Mismeasure of Woman (which I absolutely loved, by the way) and it sounded fascinating.

There's been a lot of buzz about Delia Sherman's The Freedom Maze lately, and it does sound like an amazing book. I've never read Delia Sherman, but she has always seemed one of those authors I'll really love when I finally get to them.

Finally, I really want The Discovery of Jeanne Baret: A Story of Science, the High Seas, and the First Woman to Circumnavigate the Globe by Glynis Ridley. Science! Cross-dressing! Sea adventures! What's not to love? Fyrefly is to blame for this one.

Films

This month I am excited about all the films.

The Woman in Black

No joke, after I saw the stage version of 'The Woman in Black' I was convinced that if I closed my eyes the ghost would appear in my room. Then I read the book, which I thought would have less power to scare me, because I am usually terrible at visualising all the spooky surrounding stuff that ghost stories rely on to thrill their readers. Still I decided I would take sensible precautions and restricted my reading to daylight hours. That did not help.

It turns out 'The Woman in Black' is one of the few books that can really scare me. So any visual performance of the book is bound to freak me out all over again. The thing is, it such a good story, I just can't resist this film version. Daniel Radcliffe plays the lead and I've enjoyed his work outside of Harry Potter (so far he's picked really good roles). I'd guess I'll be cowering my way through this one soon.

The Pirates! Band of Misfits

Hurray, a stop action animation film based on the adorable, absurdist pirate books by Gideon Defoe. His pirates like ham, treasure and having luxurious beards. I'm just looking forward to a silly, sweet film here and to seeing the team behind Wallace and Gromit make a new project.

Coriolanus

Ralph Fiennes is the best of the Fiennes brothers and the thought of him doing a modern adaptation of Shakespeare sounds like intellectual porn to me.

The Lady

I don't know much about Aung San Suu Kyi, beyond the fact that she was under house arrest for 15 years and I'm hoping to learn more by seeing this film.

Of course this is a major film with an Asian actress about a foreign political situation, which means it's been deemed 'unsellable' for the cinemas near me. I mean 'The Iron Lady', which features a white, American actress and is about home politics, is showing several times a day at most cinemas, while 'The Lady' seems to be reserved for city cinemas. Draw your own conclusions about how cinemas view the people in my area. DVD it is, I guess.

Man on a Ledge

I know this looks a little cheesy, but it has brothers, a heist story, a dramatic gimmick and Jamie Bell.

A Monster in Paris

I love the look of the animation style of 'A Monster in Paris'. It's a monster redemption/hiding story, with a science element, set in a city associated with romance and it looks charming.

I'd better start saving the pennies.

Music

Lana Del Rey - Born to Die — I had never heard of this artist until I heard her mentioned on Slate's Culture Gabfest as they discussed her performance on Saturday Night Live (which I have never really watched) which was apparently bad and resulted in the Internet going wild and giving her a hard time and a lot of criticism of her performance and, it seems, her persona. I did not look up the performance because, ack, embarrassment squick, but I liked the clip they played of her song Video Games. Ana I discussed the diversity of our music collections a few weeks ago, and I have been on the lookout for new female artists. Of course, I would like to explore the album more, but it will have to wait until I get paid. Curse you, dollars! Why are you so fleeting?

Books

Reasonable Creatures: Essays on Women and Feminism by Katha Pollitt — To begin a theme, this week I went through Ana's feminism tag on things mean a lot. Ana reviewed this book in 2009. Here's what made me want to read it:

Let me tell you how I came to this book: I read somewhere that Pollitt was one of the main opponents of Carol Gilligan's theory of gender differences, and I suspected that if she opposed Gilligan, she was someone I would really, really like.

JFC someone get me my smelling salts, this is practically Ana calling Gilligan a hack. If you know how to decode Ana-Speak, that is, the lady who is super polite and even-handed at all times. I knew I immediately had to read this book.

The Influencing Machine by Brooke Gladstone (author) and Josh Neufeld (illustrator) — Another book Ana recommended to me directly based on a conversation we had elsewhere about a subject I can't quite recall at this point (Ana, what was it?). I don't know much about the construction of the media I consume (except that the only news programs I used to watch were actually satire and not...news.... Ana reviewed this recently and it looks fascinating. She wanted me to read it so I put it on my birthday wish list for my mother, who needs guidelines when buying me things that aren't socks (although I hope I get this book and some socks).

Virgin: The Untouched History by Hanne Blank — I found an upcoming book on with virginity as its premise and my first thought was, "didn't Ana reading something that examined virginity?" This is what started me on the feminism tag search. And I was right, review it she did, in June of 2009. After rereading, I immediately recognized the bit of this review that stuck around in memory to ping me:

One of the main points of this book is that attaching so much cultural meaning to a single sexual experience and defining it as an abrupt transition can actually have the effect of stripping it of its emotional meaning.

And lo, Ana is responsible for all my feminist reading desires for this month.

After the Apocalypse: Stories by Maureen F. McHugh — This review of the book by Charles Tan pinged me. I've never heard of the author before, and the last short story anthology dealing with the apocalypse I read introduced me to one of my favorite authors, Paolo Bacigalupi. If I can get my hands on a copy, this will be my first one-author anthology, and the praise was high in the aforementioned review, so I'm excited.

Under the Never Sky by Veronica Rossi — This is another book where if I end up buying it a hard copy I will have to send money and shipping to Jodie so she can get me the cover I like the best (or I guess I can ebook it and strip the fucking DRM so I can read it where I want). This keeps happening! U.K., why so excellent with book covers? I was alerted to this title by The Book Smugglers's review last month. And well, I love books without InstaLove. That's pretty much what sold me. Thea and I either REALLY agree on a book or we REALLY disagree, with fireworks. We'll see. :D

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'One Crazy Summer' - Rita Williams-Garcia

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 07:35:14 GMT

‘One Crazy Summer’ is a simple novel. Rita Williams-Garcia’s story is written in the voice of an uncomplicated, but smart child narrator. It is easy to read, unconcerned with dazzling readers with complex literary techniques.

I expected ‘One Crazy Summer’ to be an interesting way to pass a few hours and a quick read. It was all of those things, but it was also so much more satisfying than those phrases imply. It’s been ages since I finished such an easy to read book, without the feeling of disappointment that comes from having read an average, or forgettable novel. It’s been a while since I’ve been so swept away by a story told using an ordinary narrative voice, without any added literary trickery¹.

Delphine, Vonetta and Fern are sent to spend the summer in Oakland with their estranged mother, Cecile, who left just after Fern was born. When the girls arrive it doesn’t take long for them to decide that Cecile is out of her mind crazy. She lives in a bizarre green stuccoed house, with a palm tree outside. She’s changed her name to Nzilla, which confuses Delphine because, in her eyes:

‘A name is important. It isn’t something you drop in the litter basket or on the ground. Your name is how people know you. The very mention of your name makes a picture spring to mind, whether it’s a picture of clashing fists or a mighty mountain that can’t be knocked down. Your name is who you are and how you’re known even when you do something great or something dumb.’

Cecile (as Delphine insists on calling her, despite this new name²) doesn’t cook like a regular mother; she shows no interest in her three children and is prone to mumbling angrily under her breath. When her daughters first arrive she sends the girls (Delphine is the oldest at twelve) through the unfamiliar streets by themselves in the dark to pick up take away food. The next morning she all but kicks them out of the house, so they can get a free breakfast from the People’s Centre, run by the Black Panthers and tells them not to come back until late evening. Cecile is not the mother they’ve all been hoping for; initially she’s even surpasses Delphine’s low expectations.

And Delphine feels she has every right to be cynical about what their mother can possibly offer them. Cecile’s absence has forced Delphine into a mature role at an early age. She spends a lot of time looking after her two sisters and their summer trip at first seems to provide no respite from that role. Vonetta has to be kept in line, fights have to be mediated and Delphine is soon in charge of the cooking after her sisters get sick from too much take away food. Being given such responsibility, apparently by default as the eldest, has given her the (substantiated) idea that she must remain the sensible, diplomatic sister to guide Vonetta and Fern through life, even though she’s only twelve years old herself. It’s unsurprising that Delphine’s narration is full of resentment for Cecile, which she unhealthily suppresses in a surprisingly accomplished, passive aggressive way for someone her age.

As the narrator of ‘One Crazy Summer’, Delphine’s negative feelings about Cecile could easily have made the book a reinforcement of society’s easy, anti-feminist ideas about women who leave their children and don’t appear to love their kids ‘as a mother should’. There’s no doubt that Delphine’s description of Cecile includes many negative comments, but Williams-Garcia also has her character include short memories from Delphine’s childhood to illustrate the restrictions placed on Cecile during her marriage. In one memory Delphine sees the walls of their house being painted over by her Papa. The reader previously learnt that the walls were covered in Cecile’s poetry. Delphine also recalls other moments, like her Papa’s call for ‘ “No more of these made up, different names.” ‘ when Cecile was deciding what to call her third daughter. These incidents show the reader that Cecile may have been battling against repressive forces at home and later her relationship with Delphine’s father is explained a little more, giving the reader insight into why a mother might leave her children, to help herself. Although the reader never fully knows why Cecile left her family it is clear that a clash between her creative, modern personality (she is a poet and a feminist who works with the Black Panthers) and her husband’s desire for her to be a normal mother had something to do with her departure when Fern was tiny.

As Delphine is so young and doesn’t fully understand the significance of the events that she remembers she can still be written as a daughter who feels uncompromising angry at a missing mother, without losing the reader’s sympathy. Delphine could have, like so many other young adult characters, been pushed into a place of false reconciliation, where she had to acknowledge the total validity of Cecile’s feelings and come to feel her own emotions were invalid when judged against issues of wider importance. What so impressed me about ‘One Crazy Summer’ was how skilfully it balanced the need to express Cecile’s valid reasons for leaving her family to the reader, as well as Delphine’s valid sadness at losing a mother, without making either person’s priorities feel less important than the other. I think Angie sums up why the inclusion of this kind of mother/daughter relationship is so interesting when she says:

‘I have certainly never read a children’s book that has a mother like Sister Nzilla – a mother who is neither a villain or a redeemed heroine, but who is person, on her own terms, struggling to find out what it means to be a mother and a free person.’³

The partial reconciliation the two achieve by the end of the book felt realistic, based on the hurts that both of them had experienced. There are no tearful breakdowns in this book, that require one character to reject the reality of their emotional state, but both characters are allowed to come to an understanding of each other, without either being requiring to fold rather than compromise. Instead, a quiet bond grows between Delphine and Cecile towards the end of the novel and their last conversation is a measured discussion about real things. I liked it so much for refusing to ladle on the dramatics.

I was especially interested in the impact of one event that contains no explicit blame (Cecile isn’t even present) but manages to emphasise just what Delphine has lost, by taking on the role of most responsible sister. A trip on a new friends go-cart, allows her to release her childish side as she flies free screaming and laughing downhill:

‘As the go-kart went faster, I felt the rumbling of the wheels hitting the concrete underneath me. I screamed. So loud I startled myself. I had never heard myself scream. Screamed from the top of my lungs, from the pit of my heart. Screamed like I was snaking and falling. Screamed and hiccuped and laughed like my sisters. Like I was having the time of my life, flying down that glorious hill.’

The subtlety of ‘One Crazy Summer’ is, I think, its greatest strength. It’s small details like this moment of fun and the memories I mentioned, that Delphine has about Cecile, that build up into a picture explaining how people feel, and what they’ve faced. These moments are much more effective than a big speech about feminism, or a row about Delphine’s lost years of being a kid. The reader is allowed to make the connection between Cecile’s idea that Delphine could stand to be more selfish and the positive aspects of selfishness, on their own.

There’s a lot more going on in this small novel than the one significant relationship I’ve talked about. The girls get lessons in civil rights, they fight, go on a sightseeing trip and there’s a bit of drama at the end with a police informant at a protest rally. I’ve focused on Delphine and Nzilla because I think they’re the core that the rest of the novel revolves around, but I wonder which part of this novel others were most interested in. Care to share?

Thanks so much to Ana from The Book Smugglers for giving me a copy of this book.

¹Unrelated moan: Am I alone in finding a whole range of lauded, but easily accessible adult fiction kind of uninspiring right now? I mean, these books are a fine way to pass a lazy Sunday, but around 250 pages in they start to make me feel sluggish, like I’ve eaten too much roast dinner. When I get to the end I feel like I have very little to say about them.

² That sets her at odds with her mother who says:‘ “It’s my name. My self. I can name my self. And if I’m not the one I was but am now a new self, why would I call myself by an old name?” ’ There’s quite a bit about the importance of names, placed subtly here and there in this novel, which should delight fantasy fans who are into understanding the power of naming.

³~~Her blog ‘Fat Girl, Reading’ seems to have unfortunately disappeared while I wasn’t checking blogs : (~~ (Edit - No it hadn't, thanks to Renay for checking)

Other Reviews

The Book Smugglers
Reading in Color
Colour Online
Fat Girl, Reading

Bonus: Zetta Elliot posted a series of interview questions with Rita Williams Garcia about ‘One Crazy Summer’ last year. Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 are available on her blog.

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Sidetracks - Episode V

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 09:12:46 GMT

Sidetracks is a collaborative project featuring various essays, videos, reviews, or other Internet content that we want to share with each other. All past and current links for the Sidetracks project can be found in our Sidetracks tag.

➝ I saw Amy mention reading the Racialicious breakdown of race in 'The Vampire Diaries'. Kendra and Jordan's analysis talks about the historical link between the vampire characters and slavery in the south, which receives very little overt attention in the program. I found myself thinking harder about the tradition of vampires who belong to a wealthy, elite class (from Dracula, to Lestat, to the Cullens) because of this breakdown. When you examine white vampires through the lens of historical realism, it becomes apparent that their longevity and elite status must often lead the characters we love so well to participate in historical periods of oppression. So, why does contemporary vampire media spend so little time commenting on this aspect of vampire life?

➝ Zetta Elliott made a list of African Canadian novelists whose books were published in English between 2000 and 2011. Her final total was 23. I wonder what UK and US numbers would look like if we counted authors, rather than books.

➝ And before we leave Zetta's news, I've got to show you the cover for her new novel 'Ship of Souls'. It's a stunner. 'Ship of Souls' comes out at the end of February, which means my tortured waiting is nearly over!

➝ maureenjohnson shared a link to a New York Times article, 'In China Human Costs Are Built Into an iPad' The article talks about recent deaths at a factory where iPhones are polished, then goes on to talk more about the current state of worker safety in the Chinese manufacturing industry, which many big Western companies, like Apple, use to create their products.

I saw someone mention that this kind of article has been around for years and consumers have known about these issues for ever, but suddenly the stories have become important enough to be considered worthy of mainstream comment again. I think that's true, at least, I remember when I was growing up a lot of attention was paid to the working conditions of overseas manufacturers used by Coca Cola and Nike. Then mainstream media seemed to forget about working conditions and any further commentary became confined to special documentary programs. I wonder what the re-emergence of large, mainstream news coverage means this time and whether significant change will come out of this focus.

➝ Cheryl Morgan links to a handy pictorial reference for explaining gender, sex and sexuality: The Genderbread Person. As she says it's not perfectly inclusive, but it does provide a good starting point that can be expanded on once people have gained a basic understanding.

➝ Angry Robot's new YA SF/F imprint, Strange Chemistry has already signed three books which sound cracking, but I'm especially excited about Gwenda Bond's 'Blackwood'. It sounds like a creepy, buddy mystery novel.

➝ In 2010 Jennifer Weiner and Jodi Picoult made comments about the media saturation that surrounded Jonathan Frazen's novel 'Freedom' and how female authors were treated in comparison with male authors. A year later Weiner is checking the gender stats of the books and authors that The New York Times found worthy of interest in 2011. The results are mixed, but some areas show improvement.

What I think is perhaps more important that an improvement, one year on, is this act of returning to check the stats. Once a gender balance problem is identified we need to keep monitoring the situation, or the visibility of the problem and the motivation for change disappears. I'd be interested to see the VIDA study of reviews repeated in 2012 and it would be nice to see stats gathered on the state of gender in sci-fi publishing at the end of 2012.

➝ Jennifer Weiner's new analysis prompted Ron Hogan to talk about gender and book reviewing, in a post called 'The Beam in My Own Reading Eye'. Then, in 'More Thoughts on Gender Bias and Reviewing' he tries to explain why literary culture continues to reinforces the significance of the great white male author:

'The latest book by a familiar face, from a familiar publisher? Why, it practically demands a review. And when somebody like Jennifer Weiner comes along to point out how that kind of thinking can skew a book section's contents, the defense is that it's a reflection of the author's cultural significance and prestige. But that significance and prestige isn't shaped just by the author's earlier books, but by all the previous decisions book critics made about those books. In other words, critics aren't only recognizing a pattern of "fiction that will really endure" or "books that matter," they're perpetuating that pattern.'

It's always nice to see these things written down in public places.

➝ This week, I donated some of my old YA ARCs to the teen section of my public library and I feel good about it. Thanks to misskubelik for the suggestion. Good deed of the week! Now if I could only read some books in order to donate some more to Friends of the Library and make our inevitable move from this neighborhood easier.

➝ LEGO & Gender Part 1: Lego Friends by Feminist Frequency is out. The feminist bent is always illuminating, but like a nerd I went straight for "HISTORY OF LEGO!!" flail party. It was really fascinating.

➝ Michelle Obama and Ellen have a push up contest. I wish I could do one push up. This is amazing. I can now link to this animated gif photoset on tumblr featuring Michelle and Michelle's arms and oh, right, the President that I was clearly saving for this moment.

➝ Reading Rainbow was a formative part of my childhood and now it's on Twitter at ReadingRainbow!

➝ I've followed SF Signal's Tidbits for years and years now. A few weeks ago, I stumbled across a blogger that contributes to them and a post he made, Essay: Awareness and Bias in which he talked about his agenda, one of which I happen to agree with. I will say one thing: this reader noticed, Charles Tan, and she thanks you.

➝ I also came across A Few Thoughts on the Russ Pledge by Fantasy Book Cafe, which was a response to Nicola Griffith in the ladies in SF debate last year. This grabbed me:

At this point, I was solely reading books I bought myself because I heard they were good, and it seemed like a lot of the fantasy and science fiction books being talked about were written by men. It made me pay more attention to recommendations for books by women, and I did find out there are a LOT of women writing fantasy and science fiction. I just had to work a little harder to find them because their books didn't seem to be talked about as much.

➝ Feminist texts written by women of color. Really useful.

➝ The Printz award was announced...awhile ago. I'm slow, alas. The winner was a book called Where Things Come Back. Here is an interview with the author, John Corey Whaley. I am really excited about this book! Because it is set in Arkansas, and I have spent 1984 - 2012 living in Arkansas, I have lots of emotions about its portrayal in popular culture and media (many of them are anger). I am very excited to read this book.

➝ I don't know much about vidding, but I do like awesome things and festivids, which I was introduced to by franzeska. I haven't gotten to watch near enough yet, but Bloom in Adversity is heart-wrenching. The master post is here and definitely worth a look even for those of us outside of fandom!

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Co-review: 'The Broken Kingdoms' - N K Jemisin

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 17:52:07 GMT

'The Broken Kingdoms' is the second book in N K Jemisin's Inheritance Trilogy. While it takes place in the same world as 'The Thousand Kingdoms', 'The Broken Kingdoms' follows a completely different set of characters (although a few familiar faces make occasional appearances) and takes place ten years after the dramatic finale of the first novel. It can be read as a stand alone novel, but there's definitely a richness that comes from reading this book after 'The Thousand Kingdoms'.

Meghan from 'Medieval Bookworm' is the reason why I ended up reading the fantastic 'The Thousand Kingdoms' last year, so I was super excited when she agreed to co-review the second book in the trilogy with me. We get pretty spoiler happy in this post, letting out secrets about both 'The Thousand Kingdoms' and 'The Broken Kingdoms', just so you know : )

Jodie:So, let me try and briefly set the scene for anyone who hasn't read the book . The main character in 'The Broken Kingdoms' is Oree Shoth, a blind woman with the ability to see magic, as well as create her own magical oil paintings. In Oree's world, magic is reserved for gods, godlings (the children of gods) and the elite, so she hides her gift carefully, but her life is quickly disrupted by the suspicious scrutiny of the religious authorities called 'The Bright'. Oree has recently made the decision to shelter a mysterious, reticent man who seems bent on suicide and this will be important *winks*.

Thoughts - go!

Meghan: My first thought on the book which occurred to me over and over again, especially after you sent me that article, Why is Oree Shoth Blind?, was that Oree’s blindness actually added a whole different dimension to the book, especially in the magical realm. The fact that she only saw magic revealed how prevalent it is and was a useful device to help us work out what was going on and where she was. I don’t know how we’d have known about all of the godlings if she couldn’t see them for what they were, for instance.

Jodie: Great point. I think Jemisin acknowledges a really important, often unexamined literary link between disability and magic in 'Why Is Oree Shoth Blind?'.

I do wonder though if sometimes Oree’s ability to see magic, crosses over into a version of the ‘throwing off the disability’ trope? Oree’s blindness is over ridden in many places by her ability to see magic, especially in Sky, where she can see the outline of everything because there’s so much magic around. I thought the novel tried to keep from tipping into magical healing territory: Oree makes a point that Sky’s constant brightness hurts her eyes; she can only see things that radiate magic, so magic doesn't give her full sight and at the end of the novel she loses her ability to see magic. Then, there were times when I thought that it was very convenient that Oree's magical abilities allowed her to see just when she needed to.What did you think?

Meghan: Actually, I hadn’t thought about it that way, but you are completely right. It means that she doesn’t fully experience what a blind person does until the end of the novel, which is easily the shortest section of the book. At the same time, though, it really wouldn’t be the same without that aspect of her; it’s a fundamental part of her character.

Jodie: Yeah, I like that in the blog post you linked to above Jemisin says Oree's blindness is 'just one more aspect of who she is', even as she acknowledges that linking disability with magic is problematic.

On a purely dramatically level the fact that Oree can see magic helps readers who didn't start with 'The Thousand Kingdoms' to orientate themselves in this novel's fantasy world, without the need for Oree to spend a lot of time naively discovering the magic of those around her. The times when she can’t see also help to emphasise how special magic is, as the reader gets a real feel for how bright and colourful magic is, even when someone is radiating dark magic. There’s a feeling of power and an association of burning, or searing that comes from this magic being described as light and that adds something very tangible to the magic of Jemisin’s world.

Meghan:One thing I really like about this series is the way there are so many shades of grey to the characters, especially the magical ones. Gods are not necessarily benevolent, and demons are not necessarily evil, often completely contradicting the belief systems that the humans have. I felt like this book explored the possibility of that underworld more than the last one did - or perhaps continuing where that one left off - because of the different roles the main characters enjoyed. For me, at times Oree was sort of a window into that world, rather than a player in it herself.

Jodie: It’s very old school religion in these books right? There’s no modern, benevolent Christian God character. As much as Itempas’ followers may try to convince everyone in their world that he fits this model (and Enefa is the Eve character, while Nahadoth is the devil) the reader gets to see behind the scenes and the individual god’s often resemble the jealous, squabbling, destroyers of antiquity more closely. One of my favourite examples of the god's departure from the image of a kind, caring god figure is when Sieh appears as ‘Shiny’ (*wink*) is lying injured and begins to kick him. You kind of expect it from Sieh as he’s the most childlike god, but at the same time he’s a GOD, who you would hope has gathered wisdom and restraint over the thousands of years he's been alive. So, it is kind of shocking to see him attack Shiny.

I like that these older ideas about gods are then mixed with a kind of modern literary approach to demons (like you say all the demons aren’t bad). It’s an interesting world where a demon can be the heroine despite still carrying some serious evil inside her blood. The willingness to play around with traditional ideas about ‘good’ and ‘bad’ is probably what I like the most about modern paranormal and fantasy stories, because like you say it introduces such interesting shades of grey.

I definitely agree that Oree’s story functions differently than Yeine’s did in ‘The Thousand Kingdoms’. Yeine’s story is always about her. Even though a really important part of the novel focuses on the gods, Yeine faces so many struggles that are separate to her involvement with the gods that I always felt like she was the most important character, even before we learn that she’s carrying Enefa’s spirit. Oree’s struggles all seem to come from the gods if that makes sense, until we find out she’s a demon, which is when her individual story really takes off. The story does focus more on Shiny and the godlings, with Oree acting as the narrator and a useful access point for readers who don’t have any of the back story from ‘The Thousand Kingdoms’. I almost feel like we missed a huge chunk of Oree’s interesting story (how she built her live when she arrived in Shadow).

Do you think it’s almost inevitable that ‘The Broken Kingdoms’ ends up being more Shiny’s story, considering what has happened to him?

Meghan Yes - I suppose because he *is* meant to be that One God which current religions have, but it went wrong along the way. I think it’s almost natural that, because of that, we’re a bit more attracted to his story and what happens to him. He changes a ton over the course of the book, given that he starts out not even speaking to Oree and we have no idea who he is.

Regarding Oree, I completely agree, there was a lot of backstory there that we completely missed. There are little bits and pieces throughout, like we learn about her father and her one view of magic, but despite being the narrator she just doesn’t seem like the focus, something that coalesces even more in my head the further I spend away from the book.

I love this sort of exploration of the gods. It’s fascinating to see us exploring these mythological ideas through fantasy, something I think is very touchy to do in real life. Someone like Philip Pullman can manage it, but courts so much controversy doing so - whereas a book like this probes at those ideas without offending even though the concepts of a fallen, weakened god are similar.

What do you think about Shiny’s story?

Jodie: When I started the book I expected to be really ambivalent about his story, because, ugh Itempas. I'd just spent a whole book watching the horrible way he punishes others unfold and now I was being asked to care about him? Of course, the most successful writers can make you feel for anyone and by the end of the novel, after Shiny has made a real connection with Oree, I did hope he’d find a way to be happy and reconcile with his family.

At the same time I always think the best writers know how to help you care about unlikeable characters, but also know how to keep from shoving you towards sympathy. They know how to make you feel for their villains and they create great plausible reasoning that turns them into anti-heroes, but they never...idk...they never force you to love them, maybe. Does that make sense? For me, the fact that the reader is allowed to be slightly detached from Shiny, to still see the madness in him and to understand why Nahadoth can’t forgive him so quickly, is what made me care more about the whole world in ‘The Broken Kingdoms’. Like, this is a world where a crime must receive fit punishment, but punishment doesn’t have to be forever. Sorry, I’m probably a terrible liberal and way too angry, but I have a lot of trouble with the ‘forgiveness sets you free’ ideas about reconciliation that sometimes surface.

If I’d been pushed along and told to care about Shiny I’d probably have bought it while I was reading, but once I’d left the world I think the timeline would have crept up on me. Like, really, is ten years as an isolated human punishment enough for what Itempas did? I mean sure I’ve come to see the good in him and I want him to be happy eventually, but...he killed Enefa and he imprisoned a god. I’m not sure what the situation was with the Greek and Roman gods and maybe you’ll know better than me. Could the parent gods like Zeus/Jupiter punish other parent gods, without consequences? Like if Zeus took down Hera would that have been acceptable, or would that have been an abuse of power? I think it’s really interesting that there are repercussions for his actions, even though he’s one of the top level of deities...

Meghan: I do think Greek and Roman gods could punish one another, actually, but I couldn’t say for certain - I can’t remember if there were repercussions. But I don’t know if ten years is enough either. I mean - he’s a god. He’s lived HOW many years now, and ten years is going to make him sorrowful when he knows he has thousands to go? I’m not really convinced. Strangely enough, despite that I did like Shiny and hope for the best for him and Oree.

Like I said before, I think that’s another function of having Oree as the narrator. She doesn’t really see things from the gods’ perspective, exactly, so I felt a lot more sympathy for him through her eyes than I thought I was going to when I first started the book. I definitely agree that Jemisin struck the right balance there.

Jodie: I know I’m skipping to the ending of the novel by talking about this so soon, but how did you feel about Itempas’ ending and the way he and Oree are separated? Justified, or were you kind of sad, or both?

Meghan: The ending conflicted me - I did want them to be happy at the end of it, but I didn’t think it was going to happen, so I wasn’t surprised. I’m a total sap, so I ate up that bit at the end with the baby. I’m really curious to see how that’s used, if it is, in the final volume of the trilogy (currently patiently awaiting me on the shelf!). It was just enough to ensure she wasn’t going to forget him - something I think a god would do, anyway. What did you think?

Jodie: Ha, I kind of want the baby to doom everyone. No, No, I don’t really mean that! I like everyone too much to wish them all sad. Still, if I were picking the ultimate plot twist for this series it would absolutely be ‘Foolish sentiment allows demon baby to kill everyone’. I spent my childhood watching Xena though and I love shows where 9 times out of 10 mercy equals the death of humanity. My ideas about entertainment may be slightly warped.

Meghan:On another note, I loved the world-building in this novel. Oree has way more access to the underworlds than we’d seen before, so that scene where she actually ends up in the palace is massively different and provides a ton of perspective. As I’m thinking about this, I’m finding that to be true of all aspects of this novel; it shows us how a shift in perspective can change everything, which I think more people need to consider in real life as well. Even her own brand of magic was symbolic of that, what with drawing people into a new place for better or for worse, don’t you think?

Jodie: I think that’s a fantastic point. Like you, I think the whole narrative is built around the idea that approaching old things in a new way can lead to a totally different way of seeing things. Oree’s perspective on events (ordinary citizen) is different from Yeine’s (member of the Arameri family, invited to live in the palace of Sky) because she wasn’t in the palace when the god’s coup took place. As far as she knows Itempas is still in control. The Bright’s explanation for why godlings appeared ten years ago stands as truth, even though it is rather confusing. The appearance of the Lady Tree in Sky is a source of wonder, but a mostly unexplained miracle growth for regular people like Oree. I hadn’t thought about Oree’s painting being a symbol for shifting people forcibly into a new space/way of considering things, but it totally fits with the overall themes of showing the different ways people view the same situation and changing how the reader sees characters and events from the first book.

While Oree’s lack of knowledge can be a little bit frustrating for people who read the books in order (ok, me, I have no patience when it comes to waiting for characters to catch up to reader knowledge), it’s also a great reminder of how information is controlled by those in the know. Historically that creates an interesting parallel between the early control of the church (where regular people were often illiterate, so they relied on their priests interpretation of the Bible) and religion in Jemisin’s world.

I also like how even the name of a place, in this case the city Oree lives in, can be different when viewed from two perspectives. The Arameri family call it Sky after the palace they live in, which towers above the city. The people who live there, like Oree, call it Shadow, because Sky is the one thing they can’t see while in the city, since a huge tree appeared ten year ago. The citizens of Shadow are engaged in creating their own way of seeing the world right at the point when the reader arrives, as they break from the old gods to form ‘heretical’ groups of worshippers. With that and the unofficial renaming of their city it’s like they’re starting to build things for themselves, outside of the control of The Bright and the Arameri (although both still exert considerable ability to punish people who try to take too much control).

Is that maybe a theme too? Like change can happen, but that change takes time and is often painful? I’m thinking of Itempas’ punishment again there.We’ve both said we feel the amount of time he has to wait before he can be forgiven should be long, but I know I’m willing The Bright’s control to end and for the Arameri’s power to somehow be undone faster, without negative consequences, which is probably impossible. As much as I loved T’vril’s reappearance, I still think any one family having that much power is dangerous. So, I guess the novel contains an interesting gesture to the difference between the optimal speed of change and justified punishment vs the optimal speed of change and oppressive societies. Mostly I am just like - themes are awesome :)

Maybe we should finish by talking about demon blood? Such a cool idea.

Meghan: Yes - I loved the concept of demon blood! I think it kind of goes with my whole not-so-black-and-white idea earlier. It’s so cool that demons can actually kill gods - more, that gods can suffer without killing one another. We already knew they weren’t infallible because of the previous book, but it’s adding that extra layer of complexity in the whole world as it stands. I’m really curious to see if she uses demon blood in the next book somehow - in fact, I really just want to read it now and see how Jemisin goes further with this whole idea.

It all makes me think - what is a god, really, in this world? Are they only powerful because they subdued the demons, so conceivably could it go the other way and the demons could be gods?

Jodie: That is an amazing idea. Imagine a demon/god war where the odds are so much more evenly stacked maybe even than in the original gods war. I guess the only way to see where Jemisin takes the demons is to read on to ‘The Kingdom of Gods’. So excited to see how this trilogy turns out!

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Chime - Franny Billingsley

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 20:05:56 GMT

I purchased Chime last year after I read Ana and Thea's review. Immediately after, meaning I closed my browser and we went to the bookstore and I bought it right off the New Young Adult shelf. Their review is wonderfully concise. I agreed with them for the most part, although in different ways. To orient myself, a few things that pinged me from their review. The rest of this post is vaguely spoilerish if you want to go into the book knowing very little:

1. The cover is gorgeous. It has a wonderful texture. It's just unfortunate that out of all the ways they could have gone with a book with such rich imagery and secrets, they chose to feature Briony. I love Briony! But there were such a plethora of other ways to talk about this book artistically. Oh, YA publishers! Try harder.

2. The sense of place in this book is fascinating. I never felt like I was in England even though the book told me several times. I do agree with Thea that this felt like the United States, but to me it felt more like the South. I admit I may be biased. For example, I was convinced it was set in Louisiana or somewhere else in the Gulf for the first fifty pages. The hanging witches thing didn't throw me. Hanging witches is not only an American tradition. Hanging witches happened across the ocean before the United States of America was a thing. 1692 was a busy year in the colonies, that's for sure, but poor baby US, we can't pin everything on it considering the nature of those hangings is vastly different from the nature of some of the hangings in the book. Those jerk Massachusetts colonists came from somewhere! What threw me was the swamp and the way Briony spoke of it, reverent, terrified, and needy and to me that screams Louisiana and/or Florida. She yearned for the swamp and this is true literary magic, the swamp yearned back and did so in such a specific way that I thought for sure this story was set anywhere but England. Fantastic and otherworldly, much like the young wilderness of North America was often framed in some of the readings I did last term.

3. I thought the "twists" weren't supposed to be twists. The more I read about the book it feels like the twists were meant to be the reader meeting Briony and recognizing quickly what was happening. Then came learning how it had happened and wondering why in the world Briony was blaming herself, and being as concerned and worried for her when she didn't get it as she became concerned for Eldric. I didn't consider this book a mystery. I thought the book was blatantly showing what was going on and the whole point was for me to figure it out.

This is how the book starts and this is how it hooked me when I plucked it off the shelf:

I've confessed to everything and I'd like to be hanged.

Now, if you please.

I don't mean to be difficult, but I can't bear to tell my story. I can't relive those memories—the touch of the Dead Hand, the smell of eel, the gulp and swallow of the swamp.

How can you possibly think me innocent? Don't let my face fool you; it tells the worst lies. A girl can have the face of an angel but have a horrid sort of heart.

I really loved this book and this story. Everything about it, from the romance to the world-building to the seductive writing, was lovely. It was both subdued when necessarily and also marvelously over the top and it was so good for me. I love romances that are uplifting the best and this book delivered on that score, and kept delivering, until the very final scene that made my heart ache. Ana talked about how it's infinitely more complex than it seems: "It was quite moving to see Briony slowly come to the realization that she’s a human being and as worthy of love and acceptance as anyone else. But that’s the tip of the iceberg, really. What’s going on here is far more complex than Girls Regains Her Self-Esteem." I agree with this! This is a gorgeously realized character study, an examination of blame and guilt, a fascinating but careful and unspoken thesis on the nature of creativity and pleasure and how we assign importance to creativity. Every time Briony talked about her stories, I winced. How much different is the journey of Briony and her writing different from how the larger culture conditions women writers? Not that much, I would argue. There is a plot, but it is small, and ultimately, the plot isn't the point (or wasn't for me).

Also, I loved Rose. Rose was my favorite character. Am I alone here?

The only complaint I have about this book concerns the amount of patience you have to have. Events, because of Briony's perspective, refuse to coalesce until far past the first chapter. I am not a patient person! It took me four days of pick-up-read-a-page behavior to get far enough into the book to want to figure out why this girl didn't get what was obvious to me. I am not great with unreliable narrators, because I often don't realize when someone is an unreliable narrator. Normally I spoil the hell out of books as I review them, but promised myself that when I read a book and didn't have 4000 word of thoughts about it, I wouldn't force words. Instead I will say that I loved the book wholeheartedly, and thank Ana, Thea and Ana for reading and reviewing it and allowing me to find it. It was wonderful and interesting and I have thoughts I don't know how to express, about unreliable narrators and gender roles and secrets and favorite characters and kissing. Ah oh, do I ever have thoughts about the kissing let me show you them. My rating of this book is best represented in image form:

Ana, I meant to read and review this for your birthday, and managed it a month late (still counting that as a success). There aren't any concrete thoughts here, but I would love it if, as I've seen done you do before when others have had trouble finding their voices about a book, you would join me in the comments and ask me all the questions and we can have a long chat and it will be exciting and illuminating (everyone else can come, too!). ♥ I will preemptively warn for rampant spoilers in comments.

Other reviews:
things mean a lot, The Book Smugglers, books i done read, Bookfoolery and Babble, Janicu’s Book Blog, Maggie's Bookshelf, Steph Su Reads, YA Bibliophile, skygiants, yours?

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