Sidetracks - April 27, 2013
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ladybusinessSidetracks 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 started a podcast! The entire Internet wept and didn't know why. iTunes has seen fit to approve our existence even though they are ignoring the massive piece of art I made per their requirements, so you can find us on iTunes, sans art.
➝ I came across The Defining Science Fiction Books of the 1960s via SF Signal. He's also done the 1950s, the 1970s, and the 1980s. I found it fascinating to read his memories of the genre; it was a nice personal project.
➝ In the same vein, 200 Significant Science Fiction Books by Women, 1984–2001, by David G. Hartwell.
➝ Guide to the Supreme Court. My favorite part of this is "SUCK ON THAT WASPs". a;sdal;ksd;lkds
➝ Kiki's Delivery Service is getting a live-action film? WHERE DO I SIGN UP???
➝ Bill Clinton is my favorite president and Arkansan ever in the entire world. *_____*
➝ I forget who linked me to this, but Electro Swing & Gospel Breaks is so awesome.
➝ Last Wednesday author Kari Sperring started a #womentoread Twitter hashtag to promote women writing SFF — because, as she put it, someone has to. I collected some of the tweets on on storify, and the result is a long list of women SFF writers to try out. I slightly favoured "if you like x, try y" type recommendations because that's a format that really works for me, but there's plenty more on the hashtag, so make sure you peruse it too.
➝ And of course I can't mention this and neglect to remind you that there's still time to contribute to Renay's list of SFF books by women at Fantasy Café.
➝ From Stop Saying That Men Don’t Read Women:
Holding the establishment to account for its oversights and entrenched prejudices is key, and it benefits all of us that a range of public intellectuals, from the brilliant Roxane Gay to the tireless soldiers of VIDA, continues that depressing work. But merely repeating the simplistic myth that men don’t read women discourages women and other underrepresented groups from following Amazon’s No. 1 best-selling author Sheryl Sandberg’s advice. It further codifies the noxious idea that men are intellectually uninterested in women as the Way It Is and the Way It Has To Be, because it’s the Way It Always Was.
This post draws attention to the fact that some of the wording in the above piece puts the onus on women and implicitly absolves men of responsibility, which I think is a fair point. But I do like how it addresses the "This is The Way It Always Was" mentally, which is also behind the "we cannot expect men to read dark romance" type comments we addressed recently. In sum, I do think men are socialised to be intellectually uninterested in women, because everything about our world tells them (and women themselves too) that they matter less. But I don't think we should accept this as inevitable or as an immutable fact we simply must take into account and find our way around, and it frustrates me to see proposed solutions that do this.
➝ Intersectionality: a fun guide.
➝ This made me really happy: go my adopted town! (via Ana)
➝ Writing advice written in the hands of 14 writers. I'm not a writer of fiction, but there's still lots here that I find useful.
➝ Zoe Whittall on the diversity of the Granta Best Young Britsh Novelists list and the proclamations of surprise that followed:
When a publication like Granta can proclaim they just happened upon a diverse list, it’s actually the direct result of oodles of unnamed people working very hard in the background to bring about change. Our refusal to acknowledge that work is part of the wider problem that defines these conversations, and is what author and activist Sarah Schulman calls the tendency to “falsely naturalize change that people fight for.” It is failing to recognize changes in our culture that have allowed previously marginalized voices to inch closer to the centre – for the Other to gradually become the author.
This is an important point to keep in mind, I think. I often people see people claim they're gender blind when it comes to their reading choices; Renay demolished all those arguments brilliantly here, so I'm not going to rehash her points. But I think it's worth remembering that even if you don't make a deliberate effort to read more women and find yourself favouring their work accidentally, that doesn't prove that there's no institutionalised sexism — instead, it suggests that this accident is the result of many, many people's deliberate efforts to make the works of women (and other marginalised groups) more visible and accessible.
➝ Speculative Fiction 2012 is out! Congratulations on being published, Renay :D
➝ Lastly, brilliant essay is brilliant:
This is why we need stories I think. At least, we need the kind of stories that are willing to really let us inside someone else’s head and to give us everything we can handle. There’s so much, so, so much, which desperately needs caring about that we just can’t take all that need in without collapsing. Stories can be tools to let us understand why it’s important to care for a few hours, a short amount of time that we can handle, and then put the white hot immediacy of the world’s need somewhere we can process it effectively. That need is not so overwhelming if you break it down into chunks and digest it. Stories block out your constantly screaming fear that OMG everything is wrong and nothing’s changing, without requiring you to cut yourself off from feeling, empathy and the world. As long as they’re complex, stories can be a wonderful help.
In the end, I don’t think the problems of our world come about because people don’t participate or because we don’t care. They come about because there is so much to do and so little help available. It’s not that we can’t dream, or that we are broken, or that we can’t reach out. It’s that we are all reaching our limits in a world that is very hard to navigate. I used to worry that I was fundamentally hollow inside because I couldn’t support everybody and or care about everything that was of the moment. Sometimes I poke at that idea, but mostly I don’t feel that way anymore. Empathy, community, just living — these are difficult tasks. Let’s not forget it and let’s cut ourselves some slack. Fuck knows no one else is going to.
➝ The book fair for Ballou is back. If you have money (or good copies of any of the books on their wish list) this is a great project to donate to. Basically the organisers behind Guys Lit Wire are working with Ballou’s librarian to try and make sure the school’s library has the ALA’s recommended level of books per student.
➝ The Literary Ominvore reviewed 'We Killed', an oral history of American women in comedy. I thought this might be of interest to Ana after we saw that terrible stand up set recently.
➝ Maggie Steifvater says 'Publishing doesn't want to eat your heart' and makes some good points about the practical reasons behind rejections from agents. I'd be interested to hear from people with more experience of publishing than me whether they think it's fair, just a little mercenary (to paraphrase the post).
➝ The West Midlands publisher Tindal Street has been acquired by Profile Books. I’m sure Profile and Serpent’s Tail will do good things with the imprint, but for obvious reasons I’m sad that the operations seem to be moving to London (it’s the only major publisher I can think of operating out of my home area). I wonder if the Tindal imprint will keep putting out authors from the Midlands, or if its list eventually become full of authors local to London?
➝ The Rejectionist talks about some books she's read recently. I love these kind of posts because they always remind me how exciting being into books is. There's so much out there that looks so good.
➝ Another link from Maggie Stiefvater because she got some fainting goats and what kind of blog would we be if we didn’t link to adorable goats owned by a YA fantasy author?
➝ You know what goes good with goats? Sheep!
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Date: 2013-04-29 09:35 am (UTC)Also, love that you have a podcast now <3
Iris
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Date: 2013-05-02 09:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-04-29 05:57 pm (UTC)Y'all saw a terrible stand-up set recently? Care to share?
As someone who rejects people's work at my regular gig as an agent's assistant (which I'm actually leaving on Friday!), Stiefvater is completely right. I just finished Cheryl Strayed's Tiny Beautiful Things, where she counsels someone who feels entitled to a book deal to remember that the book is one thing; the deal is quite another. I've rejected works that I would have loved to seen grow to fruition, but I would have been the only one. That does not a book deal make.
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Date: 2013-04-30 12:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-05-05 12:32 pm (UTC)Time stamps is a wonderful idea.
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Date: 2013-05-02 03:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-05-05 12:34 pm (UTC)I never doubted you for a second! It's a really interesting read; I'd love to hear what you think.
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Date: 2013-05-07 03:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-05-02 09:21 am (UTC)