One of these things is not like the other,
One of these things is not the same…

Can you guess which one?

Oh, I take it back. They’re all hilarious.

Tariq sent me this link from a NYT article, which I later read in my backlog of post vacation newspapers.  The article discusses Dr. Mary Bucholtz’s research on the connection between nerdiness and whiteness.  The article says,

Nerdiness, she has concluded, is largely a matter of racially tinged behavior. People who are considered nerds tend to act in ways that are, as she puts it, “hyperwhite.” 

Later the author, Benjamin Nugent, makes the following argument based on Bucholtz research,

By cultivating an identity perceived as white to the point of excess, nerds deny themselves the aura of normality that is usually one of the perks of being white. Bucholtz sees something to admire here. In declining to appropriate African-American youth culture, thereby “refusing to exercise the racial privilege upon which white youth cultures are founded,” she writes, nerds may even be viewed as “traitors to whiteness.” You might say they know that a culture based on theft is a culture not worth having. On the other hand, the code of conspicuous intellectualism in the nerd cliques Bucholtz observed may shut out “black students who chose not to openly display their abilities.” This is especially disturbing at a time when African-American students can be stigmatized by other African-American students if they’re too obviously diligent about school. Even more problematic, “Nerds’ dismissal of black cultural practices often led them to discount the possibility of friendship with black students,” even if the nerds were involved in political activities like protesting against the dismantling of affirmative action in California schools. If nerdiness, as Bucholtz suggests, can be a rebellion against the cool white kids and their use of black culture, it’s a rebellion with a limited membership.

I personally would like to read more about the methodology of the researcher before I make too many criticisms of the actual research, but at the same time, I worry that this research and the article could be misinterpreted.  It could be misconstrued as saying “black people are hip, cool and in style.” One problem potential problem with making any generalizations from this work is that the research comes primarily from California schools, which are not representative of the US.  The reporter also doesn’t discuss the distinction between being in a predominantly white school, a mixed school, or a predominantly Black/Asian/Latino/American Indian school.  I suspect the racial make-up of the school could make a difference in how race and nerdiness or hipness is constructed.  I’m not sure exactly how nerdiness is operationally defined in this study, but it seems to me to be more a set of behaviors and images that transcend race.  Additionally, if we are talking about nerdiness, we also need to address it’s counterpart coolness/hipness. 

I’m not sure we should want any racial group to be cool or hip after all fashions come and go.  For example, a few years ago many pop culture pundits were talking about the “Latin explosion.”  According to the “Latin Explosion” proponents, Latinos were hip and cool, and they were taking over American pop culture.  This claims was based on the success of about 4 or 5 musical artists and actors.  Do 4 or 5 people really make a trend?  Not really.  In fact, just a few years later you don’t even hear about the Latino explosion, unless it’s some bigot lamenting how many Latino immigrants are entering the US.  Does this mean that Latinos aren’t hip and cool anymore?  Would we ever hear the claim that whites and whiteness are hip and cool?  Probably, not. 

One reason whites aren’t cool, hip or trendy is that we are always in style.  Cool whiteness is usually coded as the All American or Preppy style and it is epitomized by thin white people with blond hair and blue eyes¹.  Perhaps hyperwhiteness, whatever that is, is not cool.  I have heard people on occasion pejoratively say–”That’s so white.” But what is most striking to me is that in American culture there are always white celebrities and pop culture icons who get to define the trends.  There are a few token blacks, Latinos, and Asians as pop culture makers, but whiteness always gets a place at the cool kids table.  In fact, it seems like many people of color aren’t really cool until they are embraced by the “mainstream,” which is usually a code word for whites.  Two artists that exemplify this are Jamie Fox or Queen Latifah, both of whom have been well established actors and musical artists for at least 15 years.  Now that they are embraced by a whiter audience; they are Hollywood A-listers.  Some would use this example to say, “Well, many Black Americans were way ahead of whites in noticing how cool these two artists are.”  I’m reluctant to make such a claim because I think cool is a moving target, and it is obviously very subjective.  Moreover, if being cool means being in style or being someone who is very popular than it is mostly whites who dictate coolness because there are more whites here in the US than other groups and whites disproportionately own and operate media outlets and other businesses that strongly influence coolness.  So, if black people get high cool points from pop culture makers, it’s because a critical mass of whites say black people are cool not because black people see themselves as cool. 

The other question I’m left asking is, “What about black nerds?”  I know some, and of course, most of us know America’s favorite black nerd Steve Urkle.  Are they labeled nerds because they allegedly “act white” or is it something else?  To me it’s something else.

Unlike Blacks, Asians don’t fair so well when it comes to the hip and cool portrayals in pop culture.  The last time I checked “the racial stereotypometer,” Asians were scoring very high on nerdiness.  I’m not sure how the Asian students fair in Dr. Bucholtz’s research, but I’m having trouble imagining that whiteness is considered less cool than Asianess, given the very common racist stereotype that Asians are nerds.  I suppose one could argue that Asians are stereotyped as both cool and nerdy, but it is clear that many portrayals of nerds and geeks include the token Asian². 

I don’t know exactly what this author’s methods or study found, so I can only comment on the New York Times write-up about her research, but I personally think that most of what defines nerdiness is not racially coded–wearing thick glasses, being clumsy and nonathletic, being bookish, and being socially awkward.  To the extent that race enters our discussion of nerdiness it is more about racial stereotypes than it is about racial realities.  Thus, we need to tread lightly into this territory, focusing on how racial stereotyping creates images of hipness and nerdiness.  We also need to discuss how media and business influence pop culture, keeping in mind that most businesses and media outlets are run by whites and those arbiters of taste are catering primarily to the tastes of a predominantly white audience.  If we don’t make this clear, then many people in the audience, are going to come away from the article saying yeah blackness is hip and cool, and whiteness is not.

1. Undoubtedly, this is class coded was well–middle and upper income whites get way more cool points than working class or poor whites. (back)
2. My own sense is that Asian cultural products are considered cool, but Asian people are not as cool.  I haven’t studied this, so it is just a anecdotal observation. Perhaps the same distinction could also be made for African Americans–African American cultural products are cool, and African American people are not as cool. (back)

Wow.

This was what I was waiting for. This is a story of scope and shape that you couldn’t tell on TV, and it’s a story worth telling.

The Chain is the story of the slayer who is working as a Buffy decoy underground. We see her becoming, learning and doing and dying.

She tells her story in fragments, as she’s dying. We get moments out of place, people we don’t know asking her questions, and there are huge gaps in the story. She’s trying to convey her experience and she doesn’t have time to tell her life.

She’s trying to convey one idea with her story - the importance of working collectively. She learns with the slayers, she learns what it means to work together, that it’s actually amazing. Then she goes underground, and they build something together: her, the fairies, the slugs, the ravenclan and the thing that looks like a leaf-blower. We don’t know the details, but we know that she forms relationships that matters. We see some of the joy that comes from working together.

Regular readers of my blog will understand that this would have been enough to make me absurdly happy and forgive the art.* But Joss gets to explore an idea that he could never explore with Buffy the character.

Because in reality it’s not about individuals, even great leaders. It’s not about Buffy, (or Che Guevara, Sylvia Pankhurst, Jock Barnes, Rosa Parks…) - “there’s millions of people go into making a name. People facing things they couldn’t imagine they would.” It’s the workers who go on strike, not the leaders whose work matters. In every movement the people who you’ve never heard of are as important as those whose faces get on T-shirts.

Then at the end, is the bit that made me cry:

The real questions run deeper. Can I fight? Did I help? Did I do for my sisters? My Comrades, Children, slimy slug-clan… There is a chain between each and every one of us. And like the man said, you either feel its tug or you ignore it. I tried to feel it. I tried to face the darkness like a woman and I don’t need any more than that. You don’t have to remember me

When I’ve been killed by an underground demon who is holding by body above his head (which I hope won’t happen for many years yet) that’s how I will judge my life.

* I loved the comic so much that my usual complaint about drawing is relegated to a footnote. Could we have one comic where a female character doesn’t get naked for no reason? I also thought the slayers looked too generic, the one punk girl the exception which emphasises the similarities.

Then there was the line that this slayer needed her breasts padded to imitate Buffy. It was unnecessary, but also completely ridiculous. We can see the slayer’s breasts right there in the panel, we know what comic book and SMG Buffy look like; she didn’t need padding.

I have a new favourite Christmas song. I’m not sure what my old favourite Christmas song was, but there’s no way it can be as awesome as Merry Christmas Maggie Thatcher from Billy Elliot: The Musical. This is the chorus:

So merry Christmas Maggie Thatcher
May God’s love be with you
We all sing together in one breath
Merry Christmas Maggie Thatcher
We all celebrate today
‘Cause it’s one day closer to your death

I wasn’t particularly fond of the movie Billy Elliot. I felt it wasn’t particularly well written, and the mining strike was too far in the background. I wouldn’t have expressed any interest in the musical, but my sister has just come back from the UK, and she brought the Cast Recording with her.

I’d consider a song about celebrating Maggie Thatcher’s death enough to make a musical anyway, but there’s more. There are songs of solidarity and struggle, which give workers’ struggle weight and importance.

I’ll probably never see the musical, for all I’m loving soundtrack and I’m still a little unsure about the idea. I believe passionately that we need to tell the stories of our struggles. Knowing about fighting and winning, even fighting and losing, is the hope in our history. I don’t know much about the miner’s strike, and I’m a trade unionist and historian, who was born in Britain. Billy Elliot: The Musical will keep the history of the miners strike alive.

But this a West End musical, with seat prices to match. At what point do people telling their own stories become the commodification of resistance? Does it matter that the creators don’t see themselves writing about someone else’s life, but feel resonances in their own life for the story that they tell?

Do ex-miners and their families get in free?

Note for Comments No derogatory comments about the miners in the strike in particular, or workers more generally.

I wasn’t going to buy Harry Potter: The Deathly Hallows. I could have scraped together the money, but at the moment if I have a spare $35 sitting around it should go to the lock-out fund. But I remembered that I had a $20 Whitcoulls voucher, and wanted nothing more than to read the book in one sitting, and it was an enjoyable and engrossing five hours or so.

A lot of what bothered me in the last few books really worked in this one. There’s much better pacing and much less artificial tension, and plots that only exist because the characters aren’t talking to each other. From the seven Harrys on I was totally there for the ride. When I ended the book, I felt satisfied (the epilogue was another matter), and I was certainly cheering at times.

As I’ve said before, I love serial story-telling. The only thing I like better than enjoying serial story-telling is picking apart serial story-telling. I like the sense of collective ownership that fans feel over these stories.

So I’m going to spend rather a lot of words analysing the meaningover the meaning of these stories, what I liked about them, and what didn’t work for me. If you don’t enjoy this then go somewhere else. I’m using headings because I’m too tired for transitions.

Read the rest of this entry »

The science fiction magazine Helix SF, which describes itself as publishing “controversial” stories, has posted an issue featuring all women writers.

It features fiction by authors such as Esther Freisner, Eugie Foster, Yoon Ha Lee, and Samantha Henderson. There’s also a nice selection of poetry by authors including Jane Yolen and Joselle Vanderhooft.

William Sanders is well-known for stirring up controversy, and participating in flame wars, on the Science Fiction Writers of America site. I’m not totally sure of his politics, but I believe he’s positioned as a right-libertarian. He’s certainly a colorful figure in the SF world.***

Sanders wrote an editorial about his decision to make this an all-women authored issue. I appreciated this bit: “Certainly it’s not intended to prove that women can write SF, or that they can write it well. That’s something that doesn’t need proving; it’s been proved over and over again — anybody who needs further proof by now is beyond hope.”

I was also interested in his discussion of the motives: “The truth is that all of the stories you see in this issue had already been accepted before I decided to do this. In fact that’s where the idea originated: I was looking over the stories I had in stock, choosing which ones I wanted to use for the next issue, and I noticed that I had quite a lot of excellent stories by women — and had in fact already picked several of them — and suddenly the light bulb went on and I said to myself, “Self, you ugly old son of a bitch,” (myself understanding this to be in the spirit of good-natured bandinage)**, “why not an all-women issue?”

And indeed, why not?

He adds, “But you know, in a way it’s a pity that this should even be worth talking about. Really, if things were as they should be, nobody should think it surprising or remarkable that an SF magazine should publish an all-women’s issue — any more than if, say, all the contributors were from Illinois, or all their last names began with R, or they all had red hair…Or if they were all straight white guys. That happens all the time, and nobody seems to find it strange.”

When I first read that last line, I was cheering it, but then I realized that its meaning is ambiguous. It could mean that the editor acknowledges that straight white men are the default state, and that no one finds it odd when issues are all straight white men because the assumption (pre-feminism and anti-racism) is that everything everywhere will be all straight white men. He could be referring to the phenomenon whereby a group of people that is less than half women will be perceived as “all women.” He could be referring to the recent study about conversation in which it’s demonstrated that if women and men are forced to speak for equal lengths of time, both parties perceive the women as completely dominating the conversation.

However, it’s also possible to read the statement another way: which is that no one pays attention to straight white male authored issues because feminists and anti-racists want special rights, and whites and men have “no one” arguing for their interests.

The more I think about this comment, though, I have trouble sustaining my second reading. In order for the second reading to work out, Sanders would have to believe that there are as many all-women tables of contents as there are tables of contents filled with authors who are straight, white, and male. But that doesn’t seem to be the case, since he acknowledges that an all-female TOC is still worthy of comment, while TOCs of only straight white men happen all the time.

However, an editorial by Helix guest editor Melanie Fletcher reveals an unambiguous example of the condescending attitude I’d feared: “it’s not a big deal that the Summer ‘07 issue of Helix is pretty much all female — like the almost all male Hugo ballot this year, it just shook out that way. And yet there was much hue and cry across the land about the 2007 Hugo nominees’ preponderance of testosterone, so we’re probably going to catch some shit about the clouds of estrogen wafting about this issue. Frankly, both complaints strike me as pretty damn stupid because it shouldn’t matter what flavor of gonads a writer is packing; what does matter is whether or not they can tell a cracking good story.”

Fletcher appears not to understand what is meant by systemic sexism or unconscious bias, from the way that she mischaracterizes the feminist critique of Hugo awards. She appears to be offering this issue as an example of how sometimes things “shake out” to female benefit — but she’s countered by the very fact that there was a conscious effort to put together an all-female table of contents. There was no conscious effort to skew the Hugos. Unconscious gender bias did that all on its own, as it does monthly in the table of contents for magazines like Harper’s.

I am inclined to give Sanders the benefit of the doubt and say his heart was in the right place when he orchestrated it. It’s harder to believe him when he says this isn’t a publicity stunt since he complained about the lack of attention he received for doing it. But I’m inclined to forgive publicity stunts; he’s trying to grow the audience for a small magazine.*

However, the editorial by Fletcher makes it clear why an effort like this isn’t usually greeted with open arms. It’s hard to tell what kinds of concealed motives people have for these kinds of actions. In this case, Fletcher seems to have been trying to hide a GOTCHA under her coat, even if it was a particularly ineffective one.

While I remain cagey, I’m going to go ahead and say this: Good on you, Sanders. Cookie allotted.

But you know what’s better on Sanders than an all-women issue? The fact that (if we are to go by the statistics listed in his editorial) of the 28 stories he published in his first year, 13 were by women. Sanders, and editors like him who publish an equal or near-equal gender ratio, are definitely part of the solution.

There’s one more net result that’s unambiguously positive: seven female short story writers, and six female poets, have sold their work. They will be paid and their work will be read. I urge people to read this issue, and throw in a couple of bucks to the authors if they think the stories are worthy.

UPDATE: Sanders points out that there are a lot of people of color who have written stories for this issue, also, such as Eugie Foster and Yoon Ha Lee. The name that jumps out at me is N. K. Jemison who I was fortunate enough to see speak last year at Wiscon. She’s brilliant. You can find her at her personal blog, but she’s also got the keys to Angry Black Woman’s place, where she’s recently written aa guest post or two. There may be other writers of color on the TOC besides these talented three, but those are the only three I know of for sure.

–

*And hey, complaining worked. I wouldn’t have written about this if he hadn’t complained. Of course, the fact that my health issues have been mostly cleared up! meant that I now have time and attention to write, which I didn’t have when the issue initially came out. (I did consider writing about it then.)

**Sanders also gets a musical-theater-related cookie for quoting Ruddigore.

***Sanders has written to let me know this wasn’t an accurate statement. Sorry!

When I was walking to the movie theatre we were talking about what they would include and one of my friend’s said ‘don’t spoil me’ (and then claimed he was too busy to read the books, but apparently has plenty of time for the movies). Just to be clear that this post has spoilers for the movie, and every book that has been published.

The movie theatre had big stickers on the back of every fourth seat saying “1 in 4 women and children are the victims of domestic violence.” Apart from my dislike of running together ‘women and children’ I thought that was an awesome way of representing the effect of violence within families. This week is refuge appeal week so give money if you can (last year the government gave more money to Clint Rickards than Wellington Women’s Refuge, so it’d be good if other people could pitch in).

That wasn’t the only good thing to happen before Harry Potter started, because they showed a Northern Lights preview (well they’re calling it a Golden Compass preview, but whatever). I’m terribly excited.

I think the Harry Potter books are getting worse, and the movies are getting better, as the series progresses. I think this might be related. In the later books J K Rowling has no page limit, and doesn’t have to listen to an editor so they just sprawl. She’s particularly prone too over-foreshadowing, and overlengthy explanations by Dumbledore at the end of each book. I think all the unnecessary bits in the books make it easier to make a movie (even as the books are getting longer), as the movie can tailor itself to the essential story (which I think J K Rowling has been two drafts away from in every book after the third).

I’m not suggesting that Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is the greatest movie playing, but it is very engaging. David Yates was previously a TV director, and I think in some ways this services . In TV you are servicing characters and a story first and foremost. Previously directors (particularly Chris Columbus who directed the first two) were far too interested in set pieces to do either of those. Alfonso Curon, is a brilliant director, but in Prisoner of Azkaban he was more interested in creating mood and atmosphere than characters and story.

The casting directors did very good jobs and were very lucky, because the actors’ physicality continues to work for the parts. Ginny was a walk-on part in the first movie, and would have been 9 when she was cast and that the actress has grown up in roughly the way the character in the book did.

Imelda Staunton was brilliant as Dolores Umbridge, and everything about her costumes, and design of her room emphasised her character, and made the movie. To underscore the banality of evil isn’t a particularly new point, but it was incredibly well done. The movie is worth seeing just for Dolores Umbridge’s room alone (you’ll know what I mean when you see it).

While I have an affection for J K Rowling, it’s next too impossible to put a radical reading on the Harry Potter books.* But I feel this book, in particular, has a good heart. The students getting together to fight authority is a theme that works for me, and the movie really emphasised this angle. The simple scene of Fred and George sympathising with the first year who had had the (creepy and totally sadistic) crazy cutting lines thing underscored that nicely (and their departure was spectacular. And the ending is a reiteration of ‘we’re stronger together than we are alone’, which always makes me happy.

And just to go on the record with my (rather boring) predictions for the final book: Snape isn’t evil, Dumbledore was telling him to kill him, Snape was in love with Lily and the reason Dumbledore trusts him will be something to do with that love. More than one Weasley will die in the final book. The love stories will annoy me.

Feel free to add your own thoughts about Harry Potter in general and predictions (but no spoilers, although I don’t suppose there are any).

*And don’t even get me started on the gender politics - which are made worse in the movies by upping the ways Mrs Weasley conforms to a stereotype (which is quite an accomplisment in itself).

Serious Sondheim and “Into The Woods” fans might be interested in this… a “second midnight” song, from the first act, which was cut at some point. I assume this audio recording was made during a rehearsal; the accompaniment is just piano, but the people singing are the original Broadway cast.

Read the rest of this entry »

Some paparazzi took pictures of actress Maggie Gyllenhaal breastfeeding her child in public. Somehow I missed this, when the “scandalous” photos were taken a couple weeks ago. They are posted all over the place at entertainment blogs. I thought I would pick out a few choice comments from sexist pigs for your reading (dis)pleasure.

Here are some comments from A Socialite’s Life

Here’s one from Conrad:

I am sure plenty of women find this beautiful, but thats a beauty that needs to be shared between mother and child in a quiet, discreet location. She had to know 1 million plus ASL readers would be viewing this spectacle. I never had much of an opinion of her, but now I know she’s an animal. It reminds of that childhood question - “what’s grosser than gross…”

Another from What Betheny said:

Gross. I like her, but this picture is gross. There are more private ways to breastfeed your baby in this country. We’re not living in Africa. I can’t stand the self-righteous breastfeeding moms who just show absolutely everything without thinking for one minute that just maybe not everyone is comfortable with seeing their body parts and their child sucking off of them. It’s a personal bond between you and your baby, so make if personal.

Now here is the good news: most people on the thread were supportive (at least the last time I read the comments a week ago).

Then, you have this site, where they put up a not safe for work warning and blurred out her breast (But apparently the pictures in this post are A-OK). Here are a few of the comments (out of 490+).

From eva:

hmmm… imo if you want to breastfeed in public, pump your tits at home, bottle it, and feed them that way.

From combustion8:

shes so ugly… look at that puppy sag.

From Frenchie:

Ewww…not good. She could have covered up a bit with a blanket. I know it’s a natural act but that is pretty tacky. Her tit hanging all over the place is not natural. She should be more conscientious of not offending the general public by being more subtle.

From Rebecca:

Discusting! I’ve seen women do that before but at least they had the decency to cover their breasts. What a freakin peasant! Yes breastfeeding is natural but so is urinating and defecating, does this mean we’ll catch people doing that in public too? This is what I call no self-respect. (Gee where has Rachel heard this one before.)

I couldn’t bare to read through all of the comments. This thread had many breastfeeding defenders even though it wasn’t quite as pro-breastfeeding as the other thread.

The fact that this was covered as a controversy reflects anti-breastfeeding attitudes. A few sites treated it as such, and I found a few that put disclaimers admonishing people to behave. A Hollywood actress is feeding her child in a public place should be a non-issue, and I even hesitated to post this. However, people do need to be reminded that many anti-breastfeeding attitudes are puritanical, sexist, and unhealthy. I think the number of commenters who feel the need to personally attack Gyllenhaal commenting on her appearance, her sexuality, and her morality (or supposed lack there of) is indicative of why breastfeeding is such an important feminist issue.

Shout Out to Jennifer at Black Breastfeeding Blog!

I don’t expect from Joss’s openings, they’re not as strong as his endings. Every Season (except possibly Season 6 where Joss wrote neither the first episode or the last) the first episode has been much weaker than the last, and less satisfying than many of the episodes in between.

Now I’ve read all of it, I’m not that impressed with The Long Way Home. I’d say it was about on par with Lessons, possibly slightly better than the season openers not j. But much worse than Anne, When She Was Bad or Sunday, which were more concerned with letting us see where the characters were, than setting up a whole bunch of new plot. Because setting up plot is often boring, and should be done really slowly.

A lot of the on-going ideas I really like I’m really looking forward to more Giant Dawn, and the army hating them. But there’s too much that is just a little bit off. Amy and Warren bear only the most superficial resemblence to the people they were on the show. Dawn’s ’she’s like a Mom to me’ about Willow doesn’t reflect the relationship we saw, and certainly not the events of Season 6.

I’m really unsatisfied with what had happened between Willow, Xander & Buffy. Even if we don’t know now what happened to Willow (and there’s no reason we shouldn’t, except contrivance, because surely Willow would tell Buffy & Xander as soon as battling stopped), we should at least know what happened from Buffy’s point of view (remember number one rule, we should go through what the characters go through).

I hope that the writers who wrote on the show soon get tired of the thrill of an unlimited budget. Just because you can now have battles of hundreds doesn’t mean that two battles (and a practice fight of dozens) are that interesting. Likewise the five spirits added less than nothing to the comic as a whole.

I’ll buy the next one, and I’ll probably buy the Faith arc. But so far the story has been more about the cool things they can do than people, and that’s not Joss at his best.

Within western fiction written by whites, there is always the problem of writing about other cultures. I don’t mean writing about people not of one’s own race, although that sort of diversity poses its own problems.*

I mean, writing about other people’s cultures and not falling into the many, many traps that await the unwary writer. These problems are especially acute in science fiction and fantasy, where most writers trade in describing places distant in time and space. Some of the goals of the informed writer should include:

• Not sucking
• Not including incorrect information
• Not reducing incredibly complex cultural formations to bite-sized, simplified versions that have no resemblance to the original except that they include whatever Westerners find sensationalistic
• Not sucking
• Not being racist
• Not exacerbating colonial power structures any more than is inherently unavoidable in the process of a privileged person making money off of a non-dominant culture
• Not making your characters into marionettes that wander around reciting a westernized understanding of their cultural values (e.g. a Chinese character who enjoys proclaiming, “I care a lot about family and duty, more than I do about my own individual identity!”)
• Not lazily playing into historically damaging stereotypes, such as portraying African women as not caring about their children
• Generally not reducing the other culture (or its people) to a westernized caricature
• Not sucking

That’s not a complete list.

My own preference as a reader often leans toward the slow and imagistic. I like things with careful, precise language, things that feel beautiful. However, I’ve recently begun editing for a podcast (see adendum). This has shifted the way that I’m reading stories. I’ve found myself yearning for things that are more fun — things that grab me and make me laugh.

I also hope to find and publish a good number of stories that are set in times and places other than the generic European setting filled with generic European characters that The Angry Black Woman aptly titles Blandy McWhite.

My slush pile* has thus far included a few fun medieval stories, in which Whitey McBread characters duke it out with swords, while Whitey McPeasants and Whitey McMilkmaids go for a tumble in the totally-not-English pastures. These stories are great. I’ve put a few of them on hold, and we have a few in stock from the previous editor.

My slush pile has also so far included several beautiful, carefully detailed stories that take place in non-western settings, stories that are written with a respectful, perhaps even reverent gravity.

But so far, I’ve seen very litte funny work that takes place outside of the default fantasy setting.

Now, I don’t want to criticize the stories in my slush pile. I have lovely slush. I’m mostly looking at reprints, so the stories I get have already been deemed excellent by more experienced editors than I. I’m also getting subs from some of my favorite writers, from established masters like Peter Beagle to newer writers whose fiction is funny, moving, and startling in turns. My slush is less like dirty snow than it is like a bed of pearls. In any case, the problem is with no one individual story, but with the overall pattern. The problem isn’t the excellent stories that are present; it’s the stories that are missing.

The near absence of comedic non-western stories is not a unique feature of my slush pile. It’s also a pattern that I’ve observed in many different kinds of media. Fantasy novels, especially, but also television shows and mainstream books.

When I went to the Book Expo last weekend, I heard a variety of writers whose books were set “against the tapestry of war-strewn foreign lands.” I am sure these books contain moments of humor, but the framing is about the seriousness of life outside the west. This emphasis on understanding the social and economic problems of third world nations is a first step toward anti-racism. However, it’s also a variety of orientalism, exoticism, and/or romanticism.

Binyavanga Wainaina describes this effect in an essay that was published in Granta, “How to Write About Africa.”

Never have a picture of a well-adjusted African on the cover of your book, or in it, unless that African has won the Nobel Prize. An AK-47, prominent ribs, naked breasts: use these. If you must include an African, make sure you get one in Masai or Zulu or Dogon dress.

…

Taboo subjects: ordinary domestic scenes, love between Africans (unless a death is involved), references to African writers or intellectuals, mention of school-going children who are not suffering from yaws or Ebola fever or female genital mutilation.

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Since I don’t have time to write a post today — or, rather, I don’t have time to write a post NOW, because I’ve just spent a bunch of time leaving comments on a thread at “Feminist Critics” — I thought I’d just reproduce a comment I left over there. (By the way, Renegade Evolution is now posting at “Feminist Critics,” which improves the blog substantially, in my opinion.)

The context is a discussion of a scene in the most recent episode of Dr. Who, “Blink,” so consider this a spoiler alert.

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Two Nigerian writers have garnered major prizes in literature within the past week. 

Renowned Nigerian author Chinua Achebe won the 2007 Man Booker International Prize for fiction, which is awarded biannually for a body of work. If you are not familiar with his work here is a little summary from the AP article announcing the prize:

The author began work with the Nigerian Broadcasting Co. in Lagos in 1954 and studied broadcasting at the British Broadcasting Corp. in London.

During Nigeria’s 1967-1970 civil war, Achebe’s Ibo people of the eastern region tried to establish an independent Republic of Biafra, and Achebe tried publicize the plight of his people.

Achebe is currently professor of languages and literature at Bard College, New York, and has lectured in universities around the world.

In 2004, he refused to accept Nigeria’s second highest honor, the Commander of the Federal Republic, to protest the state of affairs in his native country. Nigeria held a presidential election in April that marked the first time one elected leader handed over power to another in a country plagued by military rule and dictators since gaining independence from Britain in 1960.

Achebe, who was paralyzed from the waist down after a 1990 car accident, is married with four children.

“Things Fall Apart” has sold more than 10 million copies around the world and has been translated into 50 languages, making Achebe the most translated African writer of all time.

Achebe was not the only Nigeria write to make news in recent weeks.  A writer, much his junior, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie won the Organe Prize, which is given annually for the best full-length novel by a woman author written in English and published in the UK.  Here’s a excerpt from a interview with Adichie:

Adichie resists stereotypical views of Africa. “We have a long history of Africa being seen in ways that are not very complimentary, and in America [where she has been studying for the past 10 years] being seen as an African writer comes with baggage that we don’t necessarily care for. Americans think African writers will write about the exotic, about wildlife, poverty, maybe Aids. They come to Africa and African books with certain expectations. I was told by a professor at Johns Hopkins University that he didn’t believe my first book [Purple Hibiscus, published in 2003] because it was too familiar to him. In other words, I was writing about middle-class Africans who had cars and who weren’t starving to death, and therefore to him it wasn’t authentically African.”

 Adichie makes several other important points in the interview about race, media coverage of Africa, collective memory, and the middle class in African countries.  It’s well worth the read.

I also found it particularly interesting this has been framed as a great success for “African” writers, and it is.  But is shouldn’t be lost on people that both writers are Nigerian; they are both from the same ethnic group–Igbos, and they both have similar subject matter in their work.

If anyone has read the works of either of these authors and would like to add any reviews or discussion of the works in the comments section, feel free.

My grandmother died on the weekend. I’m going to try and write something about her life at some point.

In the meantime all I’ve got energy to write about is TV. They aired the season finale of Heroes* in NZ yesterday. My main reaction was to miss Joss Whedon. I know that he could never have kept as many threads going as the creators of Heroes did, but the season finale would have been much better if he’d written it:

1. The ending of Hiro’s story for this season wouldn’t have been him leaving Ando to go kill Sylar alone. I have no time for individualistic superhero crap.

2. The female characters would have occasionally talked to each other, this may even have lead to them developing relationships with each other.

3. The two characters with the most central arcs in the season wouldn’t be the rich, powerful, white guys.

Although we are spared yet another crazy, very skinny female character.

* A show I’ve only just started watching. It’s enjoyable to watch, and has its moments - but the virgin/whore complex is a problem and I’m not loving the existance of a mystical black man without a name.

(Spoilers are an inevitable part of life. And of this post.)

I loathe the mob-drama genre. But I make two exceptions: Miller’s Crossing and The Sopranos.

The smart opinions about The Sopranos’ final episode are split — some people hated it, some thought it “perfect.” At least one blogger has already posted on both sides, first con, then pro.

Not to mention the debate about that final cut to five seconds of black (you can rewatch the last scene on YouTube); did Tony get killed without ever knowing it?¹ The entire last scene was filmed and edited to give the audience the expectation that something horribly violent was about to happen, and my first thought was that Tony had been neatly shot through the head — instant death for the mob boss, horror for his watching family (exactly what happened to Phil Leotardo earlier in the episode).

But it wasn’t that ending, which everyone was expecting and wanting and probably would have found disappointing. It was an anti-ending; the Sopranos aren’t whacked. Life just goes on. Tony isn’t in hell, but he is in New Jersey. And at some level he and Carmilla are expecting the end every time a stranger walks through a door. As Berger says “It seems to me that, in the end, Tony is condemned to live perpetually in the kind of suspense that the restaurant scene developed so well.”

Tony doesn’t get whacked just then; but he gets whacked eventually. Or he doesn’t, and winds up dying miserable and hated by his relatives, like his mother and his uncle. But until he dies, he won’t grow, and he won’t change, because in The Sopranos people don’t change; they just become more refined and horrible versions of what they always were. Tony is what he always was, a sociopath who loves his wife and kids and doesn’t really feel a thing for anyone else.

* * *

The thing that most puzzles me: That creepy cat. Mikey suggests that it’s Christopher reincarnated, which would be pathetic; Christopher comes back and not only is he not pissed at Tony, he’s still a complete narcissist.

The two funniest moments: Janice declaring that she’s nothing like her own mother, and following that up by asking if anyone’s ever grateful to her for that? (Lord, those poor children.)

And Meadow saying that she was inspired to be a civil rights activist because of all the times she watched the FBI drag her father away.

1. ”You probably don’t even hear it when it happens, right?,” as Bobby asked Tony hopefully. As it turned out, the answer to Bobby’s question, at least as pertains to Bobby, was that you not only hear it, you see it as well, in agonizing slowmo. (back)

The students and faculty at Riverdale Christian Academy decided to have a plantation party for their graduation. Notice that the party was not to promote any kind of understanding of history; it was a graduation party with a “Southern plantation during the Civil War” theme. So the students and teachers decided to dress up wearing blackface, and mocking runaway slaves.  According to the school principal, the point of the skit was to “roast the graduates” and “poke a little fun at their mannerisms.” You can see him actually make this statement in the video posted at this link.

The photos were brought to light when blogger Tate Hill, at Urban Knowledge, found the photos at a photo sharing site called Bebo. The photos are no longer viewable via the links he provided; I’m assuming the poster either made them private or took them down.

Now Mr. Hill is getting deluged with comments from anonymous racism apologists, certainly not a big surprise for those of us who routinely blog against racism. Isn’t it so incredibly sad to see how people’s bigotry spews out when they think they are anonymous?

I also find the “well many of the school’s students are Hispanic” argument to be utterly unconvincing.  Apparently, some folks think it is acceptable for Latinos to be anti-Black, which several commenters noted is fairly absurd.

I have posted just one of the pictures above, which apparently had the caption “Bringing home the runaway slave in the Senior skit.”

Readers can go to Urban Knowledge blog to see some of the other photos, and their captions.  Mr. Hill also has two follow up posts in response to the bigots who tried to take over comments in his first post.  You can check them out 1st here and 2nd here.  Plus, I know that my readers realize that we can’t let the comments on Mr. Hill’s site be overtaken by people who think a Civil War Plantation themed party is a good way to “roast graduating students” and ”poke fun at some of their mannerisms” (in the school Principal’s words not mine).   Go give the man some love for fighting these ignorant folks.

I find it very sad to see how so many people think racism and slavery are a joke, but the themed parties show no sign of waning.

I went to a reading by Khaled Hosseini last night, at the bay area Book Group Expo. Khaled read from a section of his new book A Thousand Splendid Suns, which someone described as being the history of Afghanistan viewed through the eyes of two women.

The reading was fascinating/frightening: it detailed the search of a pregnant woman and her surrogate mother for a hospital that would take them in while she gave birth. Women had been banned from all the hospitals in Afghanistan, bar one, and that one lacked water, electricity, and basic medical supplies. When the woman’s baby turned out to be in the breech position, the doctor apologized for the lack of anasthetic, and then continued to do a cesarian section anyway.

Khaled Hosseini is a physician who has worked internationally; consequently, the medical details had a frightening heft. He described the way in which the pregnant woman’s mouth stretched back and frothed with pain.

As he passed into this description, the audience, which was full, began to shift. The demographic was mostly women, but with more men than last year (I’d make a guess at 25-30%). Everyone was uncomfortable. As Hosseini described the doctor’s whispered apologies, I heard people exclaiming to each other “There isn’t going to be any anasthetic…!” Everyone appeared to find the idea shocking, unthinkable. Hosseini himself said that when he had gone into Afganistan as a physician, hoping to lend aid, he’d been shocked to hear from doctors that the sheer number of injuries that had been incurred by the war when the warlords entered Afghanistan meant that physicians were constantly running out of basic supplies. A doctor told him that it had, during the war, become expected to perform cesarian sections, and even amputations, without anasthetic. “As a doctor from the west,” said Hosseni, “the idea was wild…”
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Ann is working to put a stop to Aunt Jemima (and the mammy image of black women in popular culture).  You can read her entire post on the history of Aunt Jemima here, and you can sign the petition here.

Rachel’s Note: This is for all of those people who like to blame hip hop for everything.

We have a problem in this country–classical music is corrupting our middle aged white male population. It has really gotten out of hand when you have middle aged white men fighting each other to hear this music. Egged on by the violent melodies of the Boston pops, two angry white men disrupted the performance with a violent altercation. The fight was so bad that one man had his shirt ripped off, and women were screaming with fear.

Any music that could drive people to such violence, must be regulated. These conductors and musicians are bad role models for the middle aged white men in this country.

You can check out this shocking video, which shows how our middle aged white men are reacting to classical music.

You decide. Classical music–has it become too violent?

I try to think how we got here. The theory I developed in college (shared by many I’m sure) is one I have yet to beat: Womb Envy. Biology: women are generally smaller and weaker than men. But they’re also much tougher. Put simply, men are strong enough to overpower a woman and propagate. Women are tough enough to have and nurture children, with or without the aid of a man. Oh, and they’ve also got the equipment to do that, to be part of the life cycle, to create and bond in a way no man ever really will. Somewhere a long time ago a bunch of men got together and said, “If all we do is hunt and gather, let’s make hunting and gathering the awesomest achievement, and let’s make childbirth kinda weak and shameful.” It’s a rather silly simplification, but I believe on a mass, unconscious level, it’s entirely true. How else to explain the fact that cultures who would die to eradicate each other have always agreed on one issue? That every popular religion puts restrictions on women’s behavior that are practically untenable? That the act of being a free, attractive, self-assertive woman is punishable by torture and death? In the case of this upcoming torture-porn, fictional. In the case of Dua Khalil, mundanely, unthinkably real. And both available for your viewing pleasure.

It’s safe to say that I’ve snapped. That something broke, like one of those robots you can conquer with a logical conundrum. All my life I’ve looked at this faulty equation, trying to understand, and I’ve shorted out. I don’t pretend to be a great guy; I know really really well about objectification, trust me. And I’m not for a second going down the “women are saints” route – that just leads to more stone-throwing (and occasional Joan-burning). I just think there is the staggering imbalance in the world that we all just take for granted. If we were all told the sky was evil, or at best a little embarrassing, and we ought not look at it, wouldn’t that tradition eventually fall apart? (I was going to use ‘trees’ as my example, but at the rate we’re getting rid of them I’m pretty sure we really do think they’re evil. See how all rants become one?)

That was written by Joss Whedon, you can find the rest here. I’m not even going to make a snarky comment about how well he knows objectification. I’m just going to say I’m feeling pretty good about naming my blog after him.