Hello, ABW readers!
I’m Alaya, as the Angry Black Woman already said, and though I read plenty of blogs, I don’t blog myself. I hope to make the most of this opportunity!
Here’s some of what particularly interests me:
- Literature, in pretty much all genres (I write fantasy and science fiction, mostly, but I will read almost anything). I have this wacky idea that perhaps one of the things I will do is re-read, or read for the first time, a lot of those classics of African American literature that most of us encountered in high school or college: Their Eyes Were Watching God, Beloved, Invisible Man, The Color Purple, Go Tell It on the Mountain, Native Son. If you have other suggestions, let me know in the comments.
- Television, but only certain shows. I don’t watch very much, but when I do, the obsession flower has its full bloom. Past favorites include Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly, Veronica Mars and X-Files. My current obsession is Supernatural (and I will argue with all comers about how good it is). Being a socially conscious person pretty much guarantees that I find some aspects of all these shows problematic (and I’ll probably post about why), but each of them has enough stuff that I love to make me overlook the questionable decisions.
- Japan. I majored in East Asian Languages and Cultures back in college and I still love and am interested in most things Japanese. I also lived there for four months. I started my love with Sailor Moon (also a great show! Don’t pay any attention to the dub!) and still watch anime occasionally. Favorites include Cowboy Bebop, Samurai Champloo (the best hip-hop/Samurai mashup ever made) and Kareshi Kanojo no Jijyo (His and Her Circumstances).
- Music. I grew up on blues and R&B from the fifties and sixties. When I was in high school, my parents had to talk me out of singing “Meet Me With Your Black Drawers On” for the school-wide talent contest. I have also had long arguments with my mother about how Poison Ivy isn’t actually about, uh, poison ivy. I have lately come to love rock and some modern alternative, but in general, I always have something playing in the background. My favorite musician of all time is Stevie Wonder.
- And, obviously, writing. But you can find all that stuff on my personal web page.
So, pleased to meet you. Here’s hoping this blogging experiment works out.
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I’m very pleased to meet you as well. I studied japanese to fulfil my language requirements, and come to think of it, many of the black people around me have become really interested in East Asia. They study Chinese language or japanese culture or whatnot. You would be just another aquaintance who has spent time in East Asia. I haven’t, personally, but I have had sustained interactions with people there due to my High Definition video hobby that I’ve nurtured since ’01.
Not to put any pressure on you, but I’d really like to hear some interesting things about anime like PlanetES or Machiko to Hatchin, about the japanese SF/F scene (are they eventually going to go beyond the whole series of novellas concept made so famous by Juuni Kokki and Seikai No Monshou?). Music in anime (beyond the awesomeness that is Cowboy Bebop or Patlabor II or Jin Roh) would also be fascinating.
I’ve picked up your book when it was in the bookstores at first release…It feels quite a bit like Le Guin at first glance with the island cultures. Never got the chance to read it–My policy is pretty much never to buy fiction, mostly because I don’t have the room to house that kind of stuff and I have a Sony reader and not Kindle, for what are now obvious reasons…
You know, I still have a zillion more things to ask, so I’d stop here. I will still look forward to your ideas in future posts. We have waaaay too few black sf/f writers, and the number of prominent nonwhite authors doing anything completely noncontemporary world sf/f is pretty much satisfied with one hand, with you sitting next to Nalo Hopkinson.
“Sailor Moon (also a great show! Don’t pay any attention to the dub!)”
Just go and read the manga, really, the anime is at least as mangled compared to the manga as the dub was to the anime (and possibly more).
Probably be hard to find these days, though…
It’s not a classic — it’s a pretty new novel — but Lawrence Hill’s “Someone Knows My Name” (released as “The Book of Negroes” outside the US, I believe) was an incredible novel about a woman’s journey from Africa as a child, to a slave in America, to as “free” as possible in that time for a Black woman… Hill is a Canadian academic, and there’s a lot of interesting history (settling Nova Scotia with freed slaves?) that I had never heard about.
Shah – - Nojojojo, who also posts on alas via the angry black woman, is another black writer F/SF who also writes non-contemporary worlds. Her pen name is N. K. Jemisin.
She just started, you know. I can’t exactly read books before they’re released!
Ah, speaking of mangled mangas, one of the reasons I am interested in PlanetES is that the show, while still being good is missing many of the elements that made the manga one of the very best of its kind. I’m interested in the way stories are told, and in japan, the medium, whether it is novella, manga, or anime, determines the shape of the story–the whole process is so much more continuous than a book-to-movie adaptation.
She has a fairly decent list of short story credits, I understand…
Are you a writer, Shah?
I never read short stories. The shortest I’ll read are novellas, and most of those fustrate me. Pretty much the only exceptions I have made are, O Butler, Greg Egan, Ted Chiang, and Nancy Kress.
I am not a writer. You see my writing. I barely can write stuff other people can understand, and I am too introspectively narccistic (think Sheldon from BBT) to avoid offending people half the time. I do think I could create some good stories if I *could* generally handle the *details* of writing–after all, the purpose of me reading sf/f is to explore other worlds and craft them to my imagination and I’m pretty sure I’ve thought some fairly interesting thoughts. I sure haven’t ever been able to make them clearly to anyone else verbally.
“The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison. I read it as a young girl, and it is still one of the most powerful works of fiction I ever read by any writer.
I love all the shows you listed, including Supernatural, but hoo boy is it misogynistic (which I’m sure hasn’t escaped you). I look forward to hearing what you have to say about those shows, if you ever do.
shah8,
This is Alaya’s thread, and I don’t want to hijack it, but I do have a novellette, if that’s long enough for you. =) Otherwise no sweat, feel free to wait for the first book to come out.
I find it interesting to see other people who don’t like shorts. I went through a long phase of that, and only started writing short stories in 2002 after I went to Viable Paradise and realized they could help me become a better writer. So started reading them then, and have discovered some I truly love.
But I digress. =)