sleeping with the status quo

[kaigou]

When I was in sixth grade, my Mom taught people how to write resumes (and interview, get hired, etc). Being her kid meant also being guinea pig & having my "unskilled, unpaid labor" resume used as example in her book. The one major change she made to my draft (and that I've retained ever since) was my name: from first+surname to initial+initial+surname. She told me, this is how the world is: there are jobs you qualify for, but that you will never get if they think they know your gender.

She was right.

That may be less, now, but it's still fundamentally true. I use initials+surname all the time, and have learned to shrug when recruiters get confused about whether I go by initials or an actual first name. I can't do anything about the fact that my surname is obviously Anglo-saxon, which can work for you or against you, as much as an obviously Middle Eastern or Asian or Russian or any other distinguishing surname can do.

For a long time, when I saw authors' names on published books and it was also initial+surname, I would think, ahah, you got past the gateway where they would've stopped you for being the wrong gender! (Although, over time, this gradually extended to include, "or maybe your parents gave you such an embarrassing first name that this is your compromise for publishing with a close-to-real name without everyone knowing that first initial stands for Eugene.") A'course, that's ignoring those SF authors who were women writing with men's names, or the romance novelists who are actually men but use a woman's pen-name... or (in my opinion, the most egregious) authors with quasi-Native-sounding surnames who are actually Jewish kids from the suburbs who've never even been on a reservation.

The more you know about how authorial names are fluid -- like Nora Roberts, Anne Rice, Andre Norton, etc -- the less trustworthy is the first impression. Just like the more paperbacks published without an author's picture, the less you tend to look for it, as though this might tell you something about the book.

Slight tangent, but related: author biographies.

Most biographies are maybe a paragraph in length, and usually have some personal detail about the author, maybe list that they're married or not, whether they have animals, general area of residence or childhood hometown, that kind of thing. You could treat it that way, and most authors do, but sometimes I think authors forget (as I have, myself) that the biography is just as much a tool for selling. I mean, if you look at Barry Eisler's bio, he mentions time spent in CIA/State, and black belts. Okay, he writes about a mixed-culture assassin who's conversant in several languages and martial arts. The bio makes sense. Or historical fiction authors like Catherine Jinks (The Inquisitor, the Pagan YA series), who has a grad-degree in Medieval studies.

These are very compact chunks of information, these biographies, and there's not a word to spare -- so I don't think I'm alone in instinctively interpreting them (on some level) as having those words, for some reason. This got mentioned, instead of some alternative, because this is important enough to take up the space. Okay, so why's it important?

I mention this because I've been waffling over buying a book solely because of the author bio -- that is, I dunno if I would've bought it by this point without the bio, but the bio is definitely what's got me hesitating, now. It's SFF. The teaser is adequate, and the example first chapter isn't the worst I've read, and the premise seems interesting, so maybe if I were really bored (or desperate), I'd pick it up. But then I read the bio: standard non-selling fare, where the author mentions where she lives, that she has a boyfriend, X number of animals, and that she's a laid-back Christian.

At which point I have to admit I tripped. I mean, I don't know what that's telling me, and I don't know what it's telling me to therefore assume about her book. I see that Eisler spent time at State, so I think: okay, when he talks about govt agencies, he has a clue. When Pikes talks about bathing superstitions in the Crusades, I figure she has a clue. Does this mean that this SFF will have Christian characters, and the author is telling me she has a clue? Or is she telling me that the characters aren't necessarily Christian because she's laid-back about such things?

I realized then, that I'd think the same thing if presented with any predominantly-secular work for which the author's bio identifies their religion. Okay, so you're Buddhist, and you have a certain expertise in Buddhism. But the book is about aliens. What does Buddhism have to do with this? Or does it? Why are you taking up that space to tell me this? What are you expecting I will conclude about you/your-book, now that I know this?

And since I can see no visible connection between the text as presented in its selling form, and the author's notation in her bio, I find myself leery, like I've just smacked up against a dog whistle or something. Like I'm getting warned, somehow, that later the story will have this trapdoor, and if I don't want to go down that chute, I should just avoid the book and find something else to spend my money on. And maybe be thankful, or something. I don't know.

---

That slight tangent is somewhat relative to my point, which is that we all make assumptions based on the information available to us: author name, the genre, the characters being written about, the premise, even the author's biography. In absence of actually having, y'know, read the freaking book, we do what we can.

Which in turn ties into the fact that I am particularly uncomfortable with the notion of author intentionality (a thing I've discussed before, plenty of times). The fact that Lewis intended his works to be strongly Xtian does not change the fact that his works are also (or instead?) strongly mythical, even non-Xtian. The fact that the author intended to write a lovely vampire romance novel for the YA crowd does not change the fact that the book is crammed with anti-women refried tripe and stars a doormat as the main character and a cinder block as the love interest. I don't care what the author intended; I care what's on the freaking page.

(Yes, this also raises issues: if you read a wonderful moving book about someone's time in Tibet among monks, and then find out the person was a leading SS officer in WWII, does this destroy the book for you? Does it make it less valid? If you learn the author never once sailed, never fished a day in his life, is the book suddenly quite hollow for you? Does it no longer speak to you? Does it matter if the book is fiction or not?)

And that brings me round to why I had such trouble with the entire RaceFail-whatever-it's-called-now. Because it seemed to me that there was an awful lot of, "if you are X, then you cannot (or should) write Y"... but after enough years hearing how Andre (boy's name!) Norton was actually not a boy, and being fully aware that most extraneous info (teaser, bio) is intended as sales pitch (and thus of dubious trust) -- I was annoyed as a writer and doubly annoyed as a reader. As a writer, I would prefer a work stand or fall on its own merits (with name, bio, etc set aside). Furthermore, if the book sucks, okay, it sucks, but that shouldn't mean that I suck, as a person, and I dislike the conflation of the two -- the book's quality and my quality.

As a reader, it annoyed me even more so because many of the arguments seemed to be saying that I should, as a reader in good faith, try to avoid those works that are exploitative -- but no one could be bothered to give me any hints on how I'm supposed to be able to tell. There really isn't an authority out there, so if all I see is first name plus surname and not even a picture on the back, and it's in general SFF, how do I know that I'm picking up a book by someone-who-lived-it (whatever that means in SFF, honestly) versus someone-with-a-clue (like, say, what you get when you read Captains Courageous by Kipling)?

(And by "able to tell", I mean, "before I've read the book, spent the money, and can't return the damn thing and now discover I've just monetarily supported an exploitative work.")

Because I also know, after enough books read in my life, that there are plenty of cases of people who lived it who still can't freaking write for crap. The simple truth is that not everyone can write. It's a hard skill, and a delicate art. Some folks can write well, some can write passably, some could love their topic for now until the stars fall and they still can't make me want to turn the page. And sometimes, someone who can write amazingly well can be a total outsider and still make me, an insider, feel like I'm reading an insider's text. Ignoring the question of whether I should dismiss the outsider's appropriation (or input?), the real question for me, as a reader, is: how the hell am I supposed to be able to tell?

That lack of being able to tell is much of the reason I found myself repeatedly annoyed with some of the arguments going forth during RaceFail. ETA: this lack-of-tell is not to excuse or rationalize support, even accidental, for an exploitative work, so much as to make clear that the entire conversation about whether one is X or Y enough to write A or B is still, essentially, opaque to the reader. When the reader gets to the printed page, all that talk that went before..? Likely unheard, and even if heard, possibly dismissed along with rest of sales-geared noise, like bio, teaser, etc.

The corollary to this "haven't asked, can't tell" is when, online, someone posits a less-popular argument and gets slammed -- only to reveal that actually, yes, s/he is trans / disabled / of color / lesbian / whatever other minority. Except having failed to establish cred ahead of time in proper disclaimer, his/her arguments were dismissed as non-legit for being non-minority. Works the same as how some readers may dismiss "J.A. Smith" as having no clue when writing a romance based in Bangalore, or presume that "Lee Zhang" wouldn't really know what it's like to be on a footy team in Ireland. (Both made-up examples, btw.) No cred established, assumptions made on limited info, conclusions been done leaping.

The other thing that got me was that only one author (whose name now escapes me, sadly) had the temerity to explain that even as an author of color, that she, herself, had fallen into the dominant-paradigm in presenting her characters of color, and what happens to them. (Don't get the girl, for starters.) That kept tugging on my brain, this quiet side-comment that fits what I know to be true on a much broader -- if less-admitted or acknowledged -- scale: that even those authors who are minority in some way, can, and will, write to the dominant paradigm. Natch, that begs the alternative of whether one who is truly of the dominant paradigm can successfully write a story/voice of the lesser-paradigm, to which I say: absolutely. (If the writer can actually write, of course. Otherwise, all bets are off.)

It wasn't until spacehawk posted about RaceFail that I finally found a comment that really nailed what I was feeling -- in the sense of what I felt was under all of it, the elephant in the entire freaking auditorium that everyone was ignoring (and that I, until then, had been vaguely aware of but unable to really pin down, myself). This is important, I think, so it's getting styled to REALLY stand out.

The status quo privileges the author's right to engage in stereotyping, cultural appropriation and misrepresentation over the reader's right to be authentically portrayed in SF/F and the community's right to have authentic diversity in the genre.

Because right there, right in black and white red and white with orange around it, is that big honking elephant.

It's that the author, regardless of real-world experience or mindset, can still appropriate the status quo. Every time Georges Sand picked up a pen, wrote a story with a male protagonist and sold it to a men's reading market and published it under a man's name, she was taking that privilege for her own. For the SFF author who unintentionally but effectively played the how-SFF-treats-POC in her story despite being POC herself, she was, as well, accessing the privilege of the status quo.

Which means that it does not matter who you are; it matters what you write. Yes, it's entirely feasible that if A) you are a good writer and B) you have real-life experiences, you can master a level of verite that another may miss. It's also possible you won't, for being so close to the 'real thing' that you can't see the trees for the forest, to see what makes that real-world experience so distinct, and thus your voice becomes bland. But it also means that when a writer sits down to write, no matter where we came from or who we are, we must all make the active choice to refuse that privilege.

Because taking on the mantle of this privilege, accepting this status quo, is easy. That's the real problem with this elephant. It's accepted, it's even expected. The boy gets the girl; the boy does not want to become the girl. The black sidekick dies after bestowing magical power on the Hero; the black sidekick does not get to deliver the final blow against the bad guy. The bad guys are "of the Dark" and the good guys are "of the Light" (if not outright "White Light"). The Princess in the tower may rescue herself (we have come some way, after all), but she doesn't turn around and then rescue another Princess as her beloved. And sure as things go up and things come down, drawing on mythologies and folklores and perceptions and cultures from a non-European source can be edgy, and different, but doing that means probably scaling back in other things because, y'know, readers can only handle so much of Oh Noes Teh Newwww at once.

That's where subversion comes in, and it's what I felt, at some points, was getting the least amount of credence in a lot of the more strident arguments that really dominated the discussion. Writers like Andre Norton, Georges Sand, Samuel R. Delany, Octavia Butler, so many, too many to count. Writers who knew that resting in the strict arms of the status quo was the only way to get published, so they rode the status quo and slowly, bit by bit, subverted it. Here and there. Subtle-like. Hell, Mark Twain did the same thing, publishing a boy's adventure story that's really a massive argument against the dehumanizing effects of slavery, bigotry, and prejudice -- for everyone involved. Sure, it's a fun ride. But when Huck starts thinking about how things work in his world...

Dealing with the elephant means realizing that the issue isn't "please present your cred at the door to be taken as having the right to say jack about this non-majority culture, behavior, experience, plskthx" ...but is instead: "sometimes, no matter how much you think it's important that you've experienced enough of that non-majority to have some authority, the fact remains you have not divorced the status quo."

It sure takes the wind out of any sails currently filled with the (often, but not always) hot air of those establishing their cred for some minority element. It takes the weight off of proving that I, personally, am (or am not) of X quality, and puts it where it belongs, where from a reader's perspective is the only place it even exists at all: on the freaking text. Either you've written to the status quo, or not, and if you have, AND you are also of a minority, then the message is: you should know better! If you have not written to the status quo, and you are of a minority, the message is: good! If you have not written to the status quo, and you are majority, the message is: good!

...And if you have written to the status quo and you're from the dominant paradigm, the message is: Wake up! Stop taking the easy way out! Subvert, hell, overthrow the status quo, refuse that privilege, at least wake the hell up and see what you've done!

You can be a good person of any paradigm, and still write a bad text. Period.

---

It's hard to talk about what we write without the personal getting in there. And it's even harder to talk about it when the personal is fast becoming so damn political. I'm not arguing that the personal is not political -- it is -- but I am saying that sometimes it's just not so productive to make that the major emphasis of a discussion. Quite counter-productive, instead, because political remarks become personal become heated become hurtful. A single comment about the story's quality is, thereby, also a comment on the author's quality, and that's where you get a whole lot of people beating their chests (for better or worse) to establish their cred. Myself included. I think it's just a knee-jerk reaction. Understandable, but still tough to take and tougher still to take when you're also being instructed that as a "member of the dominant paradigm that your role is to shut up and listen and only speak when told it's okay."

And this is what is really hard to say, in that discussion environment, without sounding particularly offensive. I get the disgruntlement with feeling like, as a visible member of a sub-group, that you must also be willing to educate anyone at the drop of a hat about What It Is Like. I get that this gets tiresome. Many of us have had, and continue to have, this discomfort when around members of a majority group of which we are not a part. The token either gets knocked down, or is forced to become an educator.

Thus I empathize fully with the frustration, with the inclination to say, "look, just don't even bother me, you can't get this, don't you see that? you'll never get the inwardness of it all, so just leave me the hell alone."

Except -- and this is the potentially offensive part -- I don't want to "be" part of anyone else's culture or paradigm. At all. I don't long for someone to tell me "what it's really like" to be A, or B, or C. Most people I know, in fact, who've hit their third decade or greater, are pretty much resigned -- or accepting, or even embracing -- of the knowledge that who they are is who they are, and here they are, and that's FINE. Most people are innately curious, sure, but getting a statement tossed at me that I couldn't get what it's like "to be X, Y, or Z," gets the thought right back from me: but I don't want to be anyone other than myself, for good or ill.

I just want to be able to freaking assess if I'm doing a good job writing it.

And that goes hand in hand with my observation, culled from so many damn books over the years, that not everyone who can answer that question is automatically a member of the paradigm in question. There are plenty of examples of dominant (and non) paradigm'ers who have refused that privilege and written without exploitation or dismissiveness. (Hello, Rudyard Kipling, Ralph Ellison, and Ursula LeGuin.) Okay, so many more who do claim (by birth or adoption) the status quo's privilege, but still, it's not entirely unheard of for some to break free.

---

So for a minute, forget the cars and the smog and the arguments and the authors, set aside the tarbaby called author intentionality, and ask yourself: does this book -- not the author, not the author's life, not the author's agent, or the cover, or anything else, just the goddamnned TEXT -- speak to an authentic experience?

How? How does it manage that? Where does it fall short? Where does it surpass? What did you first notice? What stood out? What disappointed you? What do you see in it that you also see in your own writing? What do you see that you haven't done in your writing?

I am completely behind the notion that there should be more women writers, more gay/lesbian, more of non-Western and/or non-North-European cultural derivation, more of non-Judeo-Christian religions, more, more, more who are not Important White Males. But book after book after book has proven that sometimes, there are writers who could write a grocery list from the point of the damn notepad and make me believe. And there are other writers who lived it, were there, breathed that air, and I fall asleep after two pages. The key is that none of these authors are bad people in and of themselves: I can't say, I don't know, as the reader. I can only say, this text works and this text does not.

And then I say: does my text work? How can I tell? How do I know? Where are good writers to help me learn what to look for, who can point out the signs for identifying when I'm slipping back into the embrace of the status quo, when I'm co-opting that appropriative voice for myself versus when I'm being authentic to the text's characters and context and cultures?

Beyond the issue of being a good writer, not everyone is cut out to be a teacher, but that's what this kind of elephant needs. Not entirely teachers who can tell you what-it-is-like-to-be-me, but teachers who can write well, and are able to articulate how to write better, for those who've woken up from the status quo, who want to reach for something other than just appropriating what someone else has done and start answering to the authentic experience couched in the text, and only the text.

I'm sure there will always be people pinned to the wall as Our Latest Token, who are expected to teach on demand and be good little ambassadors for their culture, their creed, their gender, their whatever. And cross-cultural learning is a good thing -- don't get me wrong on that account -- but right here, right now, the focus is not on whether I, as a person, need or don't need or lack or even have too much of this culture or that paradigm or this skin tone or that accent. The focus is on whether I can freaking write a goddamn story that isn't sleeping with the status quo.

If someone doesn't want to teach that, then, the answer isn't: "I'm not representative of everyone who looks, acts, speaks, drives, cooks like me." The answer is: "I'm just not interested in teaching you how to write." And if you are a natural-born teacher, or interested, then the answer still isn't: "this is what it's like to be like me." The answer is: "this is what your text has that does not work, and this is what your text lacks, that it needs to make it work."

Because in the end, to overthrow that status quo will take all of us, regardless of our origins or environment. Waking up isn't easy, nor fun, and sometimes really frustrating, but it's at least a little easier to handle when we can finally distinguish between the author and the text.

You can be a good person, hell, you can be just about any type of person possible at all, and still write an inauthentic text. Be good, be true, but if the text don't work, the text needs work -- and that, as our elephant, is a very different issue indeed than whether or not you have the right to create a text that works, doesn't work, or does the can-can on alternate Tuesdays. Everyone has the right, I believe, to at least try -- hell, I'd go so far as to say every writer has the obligation to at least give it a good try, and then keep trying. What we do not have is the right, once we've been shaken awake, to allow ourselves to re-embrace the sleepy arms of the exploitative status quo and sink back down into an inauthentic text that disregards the Other.

It's one thing to write a misguided story, and another to purposefully, willfully, choose to disregard the power-play one is making: and that, I think, is a power-play that's open to all writers, and thus, one that all writers must -- to some degree or another -- learn to identify, tackle, and take down for the freaking count.

Comments

[ldragoon.livejournal.com]

@_@

Woooowww...

*prints out, adds to memories*

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

heh. Your fault!

[ldragoon.livejournal.com]

*noms on kaigou's brain*

(frozen)

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

I think that the notion that writing decisions should be made on the basis of whether they "uphold" or "subvert" the status quo is a bit pretentious. Furthermore, I think that you are making the unexamined assumption that "subvert the status quo" is good, "support the status quo" is bad.

What you may be forgetting is that the status quo of the modern West includes many things that we would deeem tolerant. Not all those interested in "subverting" the status quo want to subvert it in a direction that you would like -- what would you think of the "subversive" writings of a Communist, a Ku Klux Klanner, or a radical Muslim fundamentalist, respectively?

(frozen)

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

Mmmm... I can see your point in terms of 'status quo' as a generic term, except that within context it's been defined very clearly, as that which "privileges the author's right to engage in stereotyping, cultural appropriation and misrepresentation..."

Which is not, in fact, tolerant of anything except its own right to stereotype, appropriate, and misrepresent.

(frozen)

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

"Stereotyping" is part of the creative process to some extent or another -- every author makes use of audience expectations as to character, plot, setting and theme. Of course if one stereotypes too much, this is bad technique.

"Cultural appropriation" is a term I have never heard clearly defined, save as "using the creations of a culture other than the culture one was born to," which we all do, but which is hardly a bad thing. Indeed, another term for this would be "cosmopolitanism."

"Misrepresentation" is of course always bad technique, as a fiction should reasonably represent those realities which it depicts.

Defining the status quo as being that which "privileges the author's right to engage in stereotyping, cultural appropriation and misrepresentation..." is a very good example of "misrepresentation," as it is not a normal definition of status quo. A more normal definition would be "social practice as it is and has been in the recent past."

[hokuton_punch]

Damn I love you. D:

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

Blame ldragoon -- it was a post of hers that got me thinking about this topic all over again.

[atpolittlebit.livejournal.com]

This is excellent and thought-provoking. You voiced a number of the questions I had about the RaceFail issues and the arguments that sprang up around them. One of the difficulties with privilege is its transparency -- if you never experience the lack of it because you have it, then sometimes you need someone who's willing to point out that it's there. Without someone to speak to the inauthenticity of an accepted paradigm then its authenticity remains unchallenged. And on the author's side there needs to be a willingness to hear why someone who has lived the experience was turned off/offended/had buttons pushed in order to understand the what and why, and not go into defensive mode by default. Or at least be willing to come back after the immediate defensive reaction and revisit what was being said.

And that, yes, the text and the reader response to the text needs to be detached from the quality or worthiness of the author and the reader.

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

Thanks... I'm just thinking the order you list should be reversed: first we separate author-from-text, and then we ask the valid questions of whether or not a text does speak to an authentic and respectful view of the Other. Which maybe it does, maybe it doesn't, but it's a lot easier to take criticism (and improve on it) when you don't feel like every critique is also an attack on your person.

One of the difficulties with privilege is its transparency -- if you never experience the lack of it because you have it, then sometimes you need someone who's willing to point out that it's there. Without someone to speak to the inauthenticity of an accepted paradigm then its authenticity remains unchallenged.

Which also raises the question, for some, I think, of: who gets to do that challenging? That was also hidden in RaceFail, too, and if it got discussed then I missed those sub-threads ( I honestly couldn't take following every single thread; I just didn't have the time!) -- do we give more credence to someone challenging who is also someone of X or Y value? Most cases, yeah, I think so... but if we aim for author =/= text, then first the person must pass the "you can write good" barrier.

Or maybe that's just me -- sometimes I have especial trouble taking criticism if it's from someone I just plain don't think can write. I try to, anyway, but it's harder. I think I'm just the kind of person who prefers teachers who are beyond me, that I can reach for, instead of people behind me pushing me up. Uhm, so to speak.

[mikkeneko.livejournal.com]

The phrase 'author intentionality' makes my stomach hurt.

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

(what, were you a philosophy major, too?)

here, babe, this (http://www.sinfest.net/) should make it all better!

[mikkeneko.livejournal.com]

No, but my older sister has a master's in children's literature, so I got to hear her talk about it. A lot.

[miladyinsanity.livejournal.com]

And sometimes, someone who can write amazingly well can be a total outsider and still make me, an insider, feel like I'm reading an insider's text. Ignoring the question of whether I should dismiss the outsider's appropriation (or input?), the real question for me, as a reader, is: how the hell am I supposed to be able to tell?

Not fiction, but this is what annoys the hell out of me about development economists who think they can fix the problem of poverty, especially the ones who talk about the time they've spent in Africa etc.

I just dropped the entire RaceFail thing because I decided it was a waste of my time. I very much agree about the privilege thing...then again, I'm female with a distinctly non-white name (most people can't pronounce it), and I've ignored the entire race thing by coming up with my own, for most part.

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

Not fiction, but this is what annoys the hell out of me about development economists who think they can fix the problem of poverty, especially the ones who talk about the time they've spent in Africa etc.

But you can see the same subtle attitudes in some fiction, too. Like the oh-so-classic (and much detested by me, personally) story where the Hero is white college guy and he befriends black guy and helps him and they end up best buds forever. Because, y'know, black guy needs white guy to come along and help him. And stuff.

[miladyinsanity.livejournal.com]

Oh. I don't think I've ever read something like that -- at least, not something as overt.

Either I'm lucky, or just oblivious.

[werekat.livejournal.com]

Ooh, I have problems with author intentionality. Your post just finally helped me figure out what these problems are, for which I thank you. And thus, I break my LJ silence to post here, even though my diploma is not half finished yet.

See, when an author declares something in life and then writes something completely different on the pages of their book - it irks me on a basis that has nothing to do with either the author or the book. It reminds me of how pitfallish human beings can be: of the difference between declared intent and real action. And I'm the kind of person whom it is hard to pull the "Refuge-in-Audacity" stunt: if you tell me you did something, I'll likely believe. If you tell me your motives, I'll likely believe. All this, of course, without the added calculations for reputation and other reasons for believing\disbelieving. But in a generally "normal" setting I believe.

And, like anyone for whom this is a conscious position, I've been hit over the head with it a few times. So this is a sore toe, one I'm willing to live with, but it's sore nonetheless. I try to keep it from being stepped on. Finding such a discrepancy will not ruin the book for me per se, but it will make me require more internal resource to read it without cringing.

Anyway, as to your status quo thoughts: I would like to contradict in that it is the author's - and the reader's, of course! - right to uphold any position, regardless of whether it holds to the status quo or not. I believe that a text does not depend on being within or without the dominant paradigm, but rather on a well thought-through (lived-through?) position. I believe in the author's right to ignore the powerplay, and go where the text leads.

It might lead the person to oppose the status quo. But a well thought-our position might lead someone to become the status quo for a new generation. In this power play, I believe, honesty matters. I am afraid of fanatics of any sort (including fanatical left-wingers - I've had my share both of those who take tolerance to a ridiculous extreme and of those who would say that they were tolerant, but when faced with something outside their status quo would lock up faster than any right-winger I've ever met), and I oppose them. However, for those of them who have good reason behind their conviction, I hold respect that I cannot recede.

It is a powerplay, a gruesome one, as all powerplays are, and in which I, of course, hold my position. But the understanding that all others, even those most repulsive to me, hold a position, too, has helped me keep my sanity throughout it all.

[werekat.livejournal.com]

Darn you, you have gotten me thinking at a time when I should be working. $-)

To add more concisely, and perhaps better-worded: the author has to decide whether he is fighting a war or creating a text. While there is nothing that prevents him from doing both (and successfully!) there is nothing to prevent him from separating those tasks and engaging in only one of them. These tasks, I think, are technically separate, and even though a text may be used later for this cultural war - well, you can use a bar stool as a weapon, as well. The creation of a text is ideologically influenced and influences ideology later on, true - but so does any object of culture, including the aforementioned bar stool in its own sphere.

In short, consciously working within the paradigm of cultural war is an ethical and cultural choice. It does not have anything to do with putting a text together so that it works, at least from my experience. I would be much interested in experience to the contrary, however. :-)

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

the author has to decide whether he is fighting a war or creating a text.

okay, you're thinking way past anywhere that I was going, because the idea of fighting a war -- making the story political, as it were -- is one that I personally just don't like. I don't like reading stories (of ANY ilk) where I can sense the author's got a point to make, and I've never been any good at writing them, either. And I sure don't like feeling like someone's just shoved their political concepts down my throat. Write nonfiction, then, if that's your goal, sheesh. (At least Bradbury et al are entertaining and inventive enough to allow both ambiguity and subtlety.)

I really wasn't thinking about waging much of anything other than a good story, and recognizing that to a be a good story by this one particular standard is to be a text that does not marginalize, stereotype, misrepresent or otherwise disrespect (or even outright dismiss/ignore) those non-dominant paradigms present in the work.

That by this standard (does the work speak authentically to all of its contexts and characters?), having the blond chick be an bubblehead, the one Hispanic guy be a janitor, the Jewish mother be short and fat and ill-mannered... that to willfully allow oneself to perpetuate those story-expectations/assumptions, one is perpetuating a larger, and damaging, status quo. But the flip side is that to write a story where every cast member gets respect and dignity can only improve the story, if you ask me.

Or shorter: you can write good characters who are real people and not be waging war on anything.

Except maybe bad stories.

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm more with kaigou; for me, racially problematic stuff usually falls in the same category as cliches-- why would I want that crap in my writing? I can make it better without leaning on it.

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

See, when an author declares something in life and then writes something completely different on the pages of their book - it irks me on a basis that has nothing to do with either the author or the book.

I think that'd been to be qualified: because sometimes, authors can be making statements even though -- on the surface -- it appears as though they're agreeing with the status quo. That way lies some brilliant satire -- Ray Bradbury, George Orwell, even Mark Twain. The point at which you're not sure whether the book is arguing this, or that, and what does the author believe?... that kind of ambiguity is hard on some readers, it seems, but that's no reason (IMO) to stop.

I would like to contradict in that it is the author's - and the reader's, of course! - right to uphold any position, regardless of whether it holds to the status quo or not.

Well, of course. The point here isn't that the 'status quo' is a position so much as an attitude: that to stereotype, misrepresent, and generally marginalize is an indication that one has adopted privilege -- but, in this context, privilege within writing fiction. Not necessarily anywhere else. Just to be clear.

That is, I can write about a multicultural city neighborhood, and so can you, and one of us may stereotype and the other of us may not. Same topic, same setting, maybe same premise in the story: are we arguing political points, or just storytelling? Does it matter? The issue isn't whether we're bucking the system in some greater theme but -- plain and simple -- whether we treat the non-dominant paradigm with the same respect that we grant The Guys On Top.

But if you accept (as not all do) that the vast majority of mainstream fiction (and, I would say, Hollywood/media as well) not just condones but actively encourages the stereotyping and marginalization of non-White, non-WASP cultures/peoples, then this is the status quo about which one is being asked to actively choose. If you play the game, don't do it ignorantly; allow yourself the active choice to walk away.

Fantastic

[erisian.livejournal.com]

I came across this via naraht (http://naraht.dreamwidth.org/297845.html), and just wanted to say that it's really damn good. I've always believed that what matters is what you write, not who you are, but you've captured how that interacts with the mechanisms of the status quo beautifully in this post (and particularly in the white-on-red-with-orange-border section).

Thank you for writing this.

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

heh, thanks, I'm flattered. I'm still baffled as to how naraht ended up with the link in the first place *shifty eyes at flist* but since (so far, at least) the discussions have been courteous and no one seems to have really noticed me...

Oh, I wish I could take credit for the white-on-red quote, but that's 100% spacehawk, who's also the editor of Expanded Horizons (http://expandedhorizons.net/magazine/), and gets entire credit for that quote, and probably a fair bit of my ensuing epiphany over the whole thing. I'm just hoping/glad the post comes across as non-confrontational as I intended, since this topic is, obviously, potentially volatile -- or at least I'd consider that a reasonable fear, given the recent past. So far, though... *fingers crossed*

(Though in all fairness I may be a tiny bit biased about Spacehawk's brilliance, seeing how that's also the editor who published my first short story. So, uhm, in the interest of transparency, etc. Heh.)

[keilexandra]

Yes. Yes.

This is why I have so much trouble with the Great Appropriation Debates, and with people who refuse to read Orson Scott Card because of his political views, etcetera. Author != text. I empathize with the boycott calls, but I don't think a reprehensible author automatically produces reprehensible story. And I think a white person CAN write an "authentic" story about a foreign culture. Non-fantastic, even! Cf. MY NAME IS SEI SHONAGON by Jan Blensdorf (an Australian journalist who lived in Japan for two years, thxGoogle)--it is awesome and amazing and better than most of the "Asian" books by PoC that I've read.

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

I think what's hiding under a lot of the 'appropriation' label, especially when the example is of a good writer/story, is that it can be really hard to stomach an outsider's viewpoint, even when it's well-meant. It's like seeing a therapist who tries to tell you how you appear, and the person on the sofa keeps saying, "but see, you don't get it, it's not that simple." Because sometimes, to accept it might be that simple is to have to accept that external (apparently) critical view, and it's just easier to dismiss any criticism, even unheard, by brushing it off as ignorant without all the facts. Whatever those may be.

And having done that culturally -- feeling like I had to defend Southern culture while living in Boston (when did my accent turn me into the walking educational hotspot on How Bigoted Are Those Folks Down There And Did You Marry Your Cousin*, Too?) -- and having read my share of foreigners' accounts of visiting the states... it can be hard to swallow, sometimes. I'm not sure if it's harder or easier than when the observations are made by an insider, but it does seem the outsider status makes it a lot easier to go into kneejerk mode.

Stranger in a strange land, and all that.

In re Card and those like him... I think I give a lot more leeway to fiction writers. I mean, they don't have to be smart, as long as they can write smart characters. If we're talking nonfiction, then my standards are a helluva lot higher, and someone's idiocy in everyday life will prompt me to conclude they're an idiot on paper, as well. Nonfiction is powered by the research-brain, fiction powered by the imagination... which is a really bad way to put it. But I bet you know sort of what I mean. (I hope.)

* I knew there was something I meant to add. The irony is that I only found out after the fact that I had, actually, married my cousin. Okay, like ninth cousin once-removed or something, but... still. Yes. A COUSIN. My gawdz, my Southern, let me show you it.