Getting diversity into Sci-Fi/Fantasy
In early Sept., I began posts on cultural appropriation, Young Adult Sci-Fi/Fantasy and latino lit. Here's more follow-up to that. If you're a brown writer reader or publisher/editor,
you should check out Stacy Whitman's Grimoir series that began with Beyond Orcs and Elves: Diversity in Science Fiction and Fantasy for Young Readers
Whitman is publisher of Tu Books,
an imprint of Lee & Low Books that
publishes fantasy, science fiction, and
mystery for children and young adults. To
give you an idea of why you should check it out, here's excerpts:
"SF
[science fiction, but let’s include fantasy too] has either totally ignored
women or presented them as squeaking dolls subject to instant rape by monsters—or
old-maid scientists desexed by hypertrophy of the intellectual organs—or, at
best, loyal little wives or mistresses of accomplished heroes. Male elitism has
run rampant in SF. But is it only male elitism? Isn’t the “subjection of women”
in SF merely a symptom of a whole which is authoritarian, power-worshiping, and
intensely parochial?"
Whitman
surveys "Old-school epic fantasy," i.e., white male-dominated, that has lists of such "good" novels.
The second part of the series, gets more into the question of minority readers and topics.
In the video by author
Chimamanda Adichie, called “The Dangers of a Single Story,” you'll find this:
"She
talks of how, when she was growing up in Nigeria (it was Nigeria, right?
The books she read most often (always?) featured white kids who ate apples. So
when she started to write, she wrote stories about white people who ate apples,
even though she had never seen an apple. - A powerful talk about the importance
of finding your own voice as a writer and how important to our body of
literature a wide variety of voices is."
Next
comes, "Black books don't sell? In
a world in which Will Smith and Denzel Washington are doing just fine, why is
this a problem in our books? There’s a lot of work to do in making sure that kids in poverty
also see themselves mirrored in books."
"We often talk in
multicultural book circles about the idea of mirrors and windows—mirrors to see
your own experience reflected back, windows to see into another world. Author
Zetta Elliott recently added a dimension to that which I like, the idea of
“sliding glass doors” to walk in and experience someone else’s world. That’s
what reading is, isn’t it? That’s where true interculturalism begins."
I'll
highlight points from that third installment next week.
Young Adult books in 2014?
Over at
About.com's Young Adult Books, Children's Books Guide, Elizabeth Kennedy interviews
the president of the Young Adult Library Services Association (part
of the American Library Association) about trends in teen reading for the
coming year. Among others things, is this:
"I've
been at publishing previews where the books written with female protagonists
outweighs books with boy protagonist 9 out of 10 times. Ditto for books with
characters of color or written by characters of color. So the publishing market
has definitely fallen into a rut, and they're missing out on drawing new
readers.
--------
By
Monday I will have attended 3 writers conferences and a four-day writer's
retreat within 5 weeks. I'm whipped. So. . .
Es
todo, hoy,
RudyG
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