A few links of interest from around the web, plus an update on the reading group:

• I wondered if this would happen: “John Lewis’s clash with Donald Trump sends the civil rights hero’s book to No 1“.  Yes, it happened.  After hearing about the initial exchange, I reminded myself that I had planned to get a copy of March myself some time ago, but hadn’t yet.  So I’ll be adding to the sales….
• So much is happening right now in US national, state, and local politics that events can be difficult to follow.  Here’s a useful article from The Texas Tribune on how to narrow your focus: “Analysis: When watching lawmakers, think of the high school cafeteria“: “Here’s a trick for observers who want to keep up with at least some of what’s going on: Figure out which group you want to follow, and then watch what they’re watching. Think of your high school cafeteria: cool kids, nerds, band kids, tough kids, jocks, cheerleaders.”
• Reading Group: I will have this month’s reading group post up on the 21st for The Left Hand of Darkness.  And as a reminder, the book for February will be Monteverde: Memoirs of an Interstellar Linguist, by Lola Robles and translated by Lawrence Schimel.

The Future Fire, a speculative fiction journal and press, is raising funds for their next anthology, Problem Daughters, to be edited by Nicolette Barischoff, Rivqa Rafael and Djibril al-Ayad. This intersectional feminist anthology  will contain speculative stories and poems focusing on marginalized women.  Djibril al-Ayad answered a few of my questions about the anthology, and the Q&A is below.  Chip in if you can–it’s a much-needed project in a time when the voices of the authors need to be amplified all the more.

Freethinking Ahead: I’m curious about the title, “Problem Daughters,” as it’s been noted that the “you should care about this woman because she’s someone’s daughter/mother/sister/wife/etc.” argument obscures the personhood of the subject of this argument (as opposed to “you should care about this woman because she’s a person”). How do you see daughterhood functioning in the anthology?

Djibril al-Ayad: That is an interesting question: we hadn’t thought (well I hadn’t, anyway) of the title in terms of the word “daughter” humanizing women, which as you say is a distraction from considering all people human in the first place. Nor do we necessarily expect stories to focus on daughters in a family context (we’re just as interested in featuring mothers and grandmothers, for that matter!) or to take the title literally in any other way. For us, the title started with the word “problem,” both because we were highlighting issues with exclusive feminisms (most obviously the kinds that focus on white woman, or that exclude trans women or sex workers or any other “problematic” category), and because we wanted to problematize feminist conceptions and speculative genres by including stories and voices that are marginalized and excluded by some gatekeepers in one or the other world. We wanted to highlight women, yes, as humans in all their complexity and relation to each other. The word “daughters” came later to our working title, partly I suppose because it has a nice ring to it, echoing “daughters of the revolution” and with connotations such as heiresses, receivers of the baton. Daughters are not always listened to, are often expected to be seen and not heard (and ideally not seen either), but they are the future, they are stronger than their families think, and when they’re willing to make trouble, they can turn everything upside down. (And we need that, don’t we?)

FTA: In light of the current US/UK political climate, some who would have not previously voiced bigoted opinions publicly are doing so, and others who have are feeling more empowered. How might fiction, and in particular speculative fiction, work against this trend?

DA: Yeah, in this dangerous political climate all over the world we need a hell of a lot more than art to fight for progressive values! But I think you’re right that there is a place for fiction in helping to encourage and empower people who push back against bigotry, who believe in inclusiveness and diversity and tolerance. Just as hearing people in a position of power (whether political or in art/media/Hollywood) normalizing fascism is giving courage and voice to an ugly undercurrent of society that has never really gone away, so hearing people speak up loudly and successfully from a variety of platforms in publishing and other arts with a more liberal, feminist, intersectional and social message can help to remind those of us that are terrified by world events that we’re not alone, that there are others who want to hear our voices, that we are also here and strong. In Ursula Le Guin’s words: “If we don’t keep preaching to the choir, the choir will stop singing.” (In this case, of course, it’s not we who are preaching at all—rather we’re inviting the choir up into the public to let the world hear what they have to say.)

FTA: What would you like readers to take away from this anthology? What can they expect?

DA: I hope the first thing every reader who consumed this anthology thinks is, Wow! That isn’t what I expected. I hope the stories blow them away, fill them with fear and wonder, confound them, shatter preconceptions and open horizons. I’m sure every reader will fall in love with some stories and be left shaken (or even cold) by others. I would love readers to come out thinking, This is a story I’ll never forget! For good or for ill. I hope we will all (editors included) learn about experiences and marginalizations and intersections that we hadn’t considered before, as well as recognize problems and personalities and emotions that we thought we were alone in feeling. But we also won’t forget that we’re reading an anthology of excellent science fiction and fantasy—and related genres—and we’ll be carried away by escapist adventure, thrilled by magic and gods and monsters, dazzled by astrophysical and xenobiological mysteries, oppressed by dystopias and apocalypses, terrified by nightmares and tyrants, caught up in struggles of good against evil. Or y’know, maybe even less cliché than that!

FTA: In turn, what do you hope writers—including those whose work is accepted and those whose work isn’t—take away from writing stories aimed at this anthology?

DA: There are a few different ways to look at this question. For one, authors of “own voices” stories—who are writing about marginalizations and intersections of discrimination that they live—already know the issues they face, and have probably written and talked about them before, and don’t need our invitation to work through issues, dreams, utopias, healing, or whatever in fiction. That said, sometimes the opportunity to write something for a particular call can open the floodgates, be cathartic, or lead to new ideas that you might never have written otherwise. I hope it will also be encouraging to have a publication ready to pay 6¢ per word (which is not a living wage, by any means, but it is the SFWA qualifying professional rate) to hear voices that are sometimes actively sidelined and excluded even from feminist venues. For writers who are filling their stories with marginalizations and intersections different from their own (as well as travel to planets they’ve never visited, dragons they’ve never fought, laws of physics they’ve never broken…), I think every time we try to write the other, to walk in differently shaped shoes/look through different colored lenses, we learn to use our primordially evolved empathy that much better.

While rereading Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness for this month’s reading group post, I found a quote that seems all too appropriate for the current political climate here in the US.  Estraven, the king’s adviser, asks Genly Ai, an envoy from off planet, if he knows what patriotism is.  When Ai answers that he doesn’t know, aside from love of one’s country, Estraven explains:

“No, I don’t mean love, when I say patriotism.  I mean fear.  The fear of the other.  And its expressions are political, not poetical: hate, rivalry, aggression.  It grows in us, that fear.  It grows in us year by year.  We’ve followed our road too far.”

I’ll have the reading group post up later this month, but I wanted to note this passage before then.  How do we keep ourselves as a nation from following our own patriotic road too far?

A few links of interest from around the web:

• Roxane Gay has a wonderful essay in Poetry Magazine regarding her appreciation of poetry: “Reading poetry is such a thrill that I often feel like I am getting away with something.”
• Greta Christina’s post, “Depression and Novelty,” explores the importance of new experiences to those of us who get caught in the loop of harmful moods: “As long as it’s reasonably pleasant (or at least not actively unpleasant), novelty of almost any kind knocks me out of my self-perpetuating spirals, fairly reliably, at least for a while.”
• In this week’s letter to an elected official, I wrote to my state senator to express my opposition to Senate Bill 6, the so-called “Privacy Protection Act.”  Here’s an article from the Texas Tribune on the bill: “With bathroom bill, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick plows into ‘tough fight’“.  I’ll post more on this in the FREETHOUGHT RESISTANCE blog.

On the topic of writing to elected folks, I may start posting the content of my letters if that would be useful–let me know.  Caveat here is that I’m writing to my Texas state representative and senator, so the content may not always be relevant to everyone who’s writing letters.

After holiday travel that entailed spotty internet access, I’m happily back home and in front of my trusty PC.  Here are a few links of interest for the new year.  I’ll be back to blogging about SF shortly.

• The Future Fire, a speculative fiction journal and press, announced the launch of a fundraiser for their next anthology: “Problem Daughters will amplify the voices of women who are sometimes excluded from mainstream feminism. It will be an anthology of beautiful, thoughtful, unconventional speculative fiction and poetry around the theme of intersectional feminism, with a specific focus on the lives and experiences of women of colour, QUILTBAG women, disabled women, sex workers, and any intersection of these.”  I’ll have an interview with the editors of this anthology posted soon.
• All three editions of Lightspeed‘s People of Colo(u)r Destroy special issues (Science Fiction, Horror, and Fantasy) are now available.  From their website: “The People of Colo(u)r Destroy special issues exist to relieve a brokenness in the genre that’s been enabled time and time again by favoring certain voices and portrayals of particular characters.”  Also check out the Women Destroy and Queers Destroy series.
• Since I thought I might be away from the internet a while, I loaded up my mp3 player to catch up on podcasts I haven’t listened to in a while.  Among them were BBC Radio 4’s episode of Four Thought, in which poet Hannah Jane Walker (no relation) “makes the case for being a bit sensitive [….S]he thinks that people should embrace their sensitivity, and not pretend to be tough if they’re not.”  Refreshing listen for those of us who are told (again and again!) that we’re just too sensitive….
• And speaking of The Future Fire, I have a novelette over there that was published in late December, “Over the New Horizon.”  Pluto, alien signals, conspiracy theories, and the woman at the center of the discovery surrounding them.

All the best to you all for a happy 2017!

 

This is November’s reading group response post for Binti, Nnedi Okorafor’s Hugo- and Nebula-winning novella. Here are my thoughts on the piece—let’s continue the conversation in the comments. I also recommend checking out Vajra Chandrasekera’s February 2016 review of the novella in Strange Horizons.

The eponymous character of Nnedi Okorafor’s Binti has a notable gift: she’s a harmonizer. The act of harmonizing implies a separation between the objects of that act. For instance, voices in harmony are separate voices, regardless of how well they work together to create a coherent-sounding whole. These separations—these boundaries—drive the story forward, and they should give us, as freethinkers, pause.

Binti, an adolescent girl who is gifted at mathematics, lives these separations during her youth on Earth. Her talents set her apart among her people, the Himba. In fact, she must leave secretly for Oomza University, since leaving her homeland is not the done thing. The Himba are themselves set apart from the majority Khoush population that surrounds them. Binti feels this more acutely in the launch station, where she notes the differences in how she is dressed—in bright colors, as opposed to the black and white clothing of the Khoush—and her braided hair, which, like her skin, is covered in otjize. The Khoush treat her as an oddity, remarking on her appearance and scrutinizing her more thoroughly than one of their own travelers.

At the violation of these boundaries, Binti is irrevocably changed. She violates the boundary between her people and the outside world by leaving for Oomza Uni, and thus risks her station among the Himba and within her family. She inhabits a sort of in-between place: she’s Himba, but she is quickly accepted by the Khoush students aboard ship who see her abilities. She is not Khoush, however; otherwise, the Meduse would have killed her along with the others. In the end, transformed by the Meduse, she becomes something between human and Meduse, able to inhabit both worlds, to communicate with both peoples.

The professors seem to yield to Binti’s request almost too easily, despite her transformation. In fiction, we expect the protagonist to face more resistance during the final conflict, but this isn’t the case in this novella. Perhaps we should question this ease: it foreshadows the change she’s undergone but neither she nor we are readers know about until later. Perhaps Binti has simply been through enough. She’s left her home, and it’s possible she won’t be able to return. She’s witnessed the slaughter of her fellow students aboard ship, ones she considered friends. She’s survived her encounter with the Meduse. Binti is a master harmonizer, after all.

Which brings me to what we can take from the novella in the current US political climate. I’ve heard again and again that we freethinking liberals need to “build bridges” or “make connections” with those who feel marginalized by progressive politics. We need to harmonize, perhaps, in order to work within the system.

Except the system changes—compromises, really—those who must connect with others who view them as somehow “less than.” Binti is caught between the Khoush, who view the Himba as inferior, and the Meduse, who view all humans as Khoush. Though Binti is able to navigate this middle ground, this new identity, and both save Oomza Uni and the Meduse chief’s stinger, she’s exceptional. She survives because of her gifts. But she survives as a different person than she was before.

Your thoughts?