As I keep mentioning, I'm off to Wiscon today, so my replies on this and other things will be spotty till Tuesday, but this article just popped up in my mail (yes, I'm shallow and I have a Google search for myself!), and I had to share. It doesn't just affect me, but writers I respect and love.
When Harry met sexism
Critics just won't accept female fantasy writers, as the latest round of JK Rowling-bashing shows
* Bidisha
o The Guardian,
o Thursday May 22 2008
o Article history
This article appeared in the Guardian on Thursday May 22 2008 on p38 of the Comment & debate section. It was last updated at 00:06 on May 22 2008.
It's no revolutionary thing to honour JK Rowling, the brains behind wizard icon Harry Potter and now a globally respected philanthropist. Indeed, she's been invited to give Harvard's graduation day commencement address in June. It's a logical choice: Rowling's story is as epic as any fantasy novel and her lone rise to genius/mogul status suits Harvard's credo of individualistic excellence.
Or maybe she's just a pathetic waste of space. Writing in the university paper, the Harvard Crimson, student Adam Goldenberg rips into Rowling as "a flash in the pan", "a petty pop culture personality" who "tricked parents into letting their kids read books filled with sex, murder, and homosexual role models". Furthermore, "writing bedtime stories is lame".
Goldenberg's attack isn't new. Rowling-bashing has been a feature of the Potter myth from the start. First came academic Harold Bloom, mocking her style with zeal. Then AS Byatt jeered at the infantilism of adult Potter fans. Thus men and women united in putting a gifted woman in her place. Earlier this week children's laureate Michael Rosen gave an interview with the Scottish Sunday Times in which he said, correctly, that the Harry Potter books are hard going for children under six. The media jumped all over it, trumpeting his "denunciation" of Potter as unreadable dross.
Rosen has refuted this mass misquoting, picking up on the acceptability of belittling Rowling. I agree, but the issue doesn't stop with her. It extends to all female fantasy writers, world-creators and myth-makers. According to the backlash, Rowling is swell for dim kiddies, along with Susan Cooper and Diana Wynne Jones (but none are as good as CS Lewis or Roald Dahl, of course), while Philip Pullman and Philip Reeve are worthy of adult analysis. Critics ignore the tough heroines created by Tamora Pierce and Trudi Canavan, but acclaim Lewis Carroll's creepily pliable Alice, who obediently consumes whatever cupcakes and potions she finds in Wonderland. Darren Shan and Garth Nix are rising stars thanks to the Potter-fuelled fantasy bandwagon, but there's no casual namedropping of female speculative authors Robin Hobb, Mary Gentle or Malorie Blackman, whose Noughts and Crosses is a modern classic.
A subtle mechanism is operating here, clanking into gear to restore the dominant man-worshipping default mode while reserving a few token high-priestess places for the ladies. In speculative fiction that would be Doris Lessing, Margaret Atwood and Ursula K Le Guin, geniuses all. These women are the real deal, rightly worshipped for their vision, philosophical trenchancy and pertinence. But apart from the hallowed three it's men-only when it comes to casual recommendations of mainstream books.
In terms of which books sell plentifully and are acclaimed among knowledgeable fans, speculative fiction is not male-dominated at all - quite the opposite. It is the critical establishment which marginalises women. Bestselling female contenders remain unacknowledged while their male counterparts are robustly namechecked, absorbed reliably into the official history of the genre.
Readers who rave about the scope of Lord of the Rings, in which a club of white men flee (a) a big burning vagina and (b) some black guys in hoods, are simply unaware of the awesome complexity of Katharine Kerr's Deverry sequence of Celtic fantasy novels. They hail William Gibson's prescience, oblivious to Marge Piercy's prophetic sci-fi masterpieces Body of Glass and Woman on the Edge of Time and Liz Williams's intelligent, knotty novels like Darkland.
Speculative fiction - whether that is historical epic, space psychodrama or telepathic warrior quest - has always been about infinite possibilities. Why is it so hard to imagine a world which acknowledges the importance, multitude and sheer brilliance of its women writers?
· Bidisha is a novelist and critic
bidisha@hotmail.com
----------------------------------------
I'm thrilled to death that I am not the only one to notice the vast chorus of crickets I hear when it comes to mainstream writing about fantasy. I do find more writing about women writers in the scholarly books geared to teen librarians and educators, but in the mainstream science fiction and literary communities?
You know, I love the sound of crickets, but not in areas where constructive thinking and talk is supposed to be taking place.
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Comments
I laughed in ways that are completely inappropriate to that. But the rest of it was just depressing.
One question I have is how affected is the fantasy community by new versus old? Obviously Philip Pullman is doing fine and is on the "newer" side of things, but authors like Tolkein, C.S. Lewis, and Lewis Carroll wrote their works at least 50 years ago, when the debate around sexism/feminism was a lot different. Could it be that they're just considered the canon now, and it's hard for *anyone* new to introduce themselves into the genre in a critically respected way? (I must admit there are several names up there that I don't recognize, so perhaps this whole idea is way off. But I'm willing to be enlightened!)
Could it be that they're just considered the canon now, and it's hard for *anyone* new to introduce themselves into the genre in a critically respected way?
Definitely they're considered as canon, and ought to be, but then what of E. Nesbit, who just about made the field? (Or to be fair, Edward Eager, ditto.) What about Christina Georgina Rossetti (Goblin Market)?
In my mind, and in the minds of a lot of writers, librarians, and teachers I respect, Ursula LeGuin, Patricia McKillip, Susan Cooper, Andre Norton, Diana Wynne Jones, Madeleine L'Engle, and Anne McCaffrey are equally canon. These are the writers we read to know the field, which is my definition of canon, and I think, most people's.
(I must admit there are several names up there that I don't recognize,
I think those may be the Brits or the Ozzies we haven't discovered yet.
I have a deadline looming, on an article about up and coming fantasy writer James A. Owen. I hope to write more for this and other venues. Maybe I should stick to pitching articles on female authors to try to combat this. It's just so infuriating, thinking of the fantasy I grew up reading, with such a high percentage of it being by women.
Very tangentially and yet delightfully, right after this post I saw this article about the 2008 Intel Young Scientist Awards. All of the winners are girls.
Who's this? An adult writer?
Maybe I should stick to pitching articles on female authors to try to combat this.
We'll certainly never sniff at the coverage!
I saw this article about the 2008 Intel Young Scientist Awards. All of the winners are girls.
::doing the Snoopy Dance::
You Go, Girlz!!!!
If the editorial in question was satire, it was satire so well-written as to be indistinguishable from ignorant bigotry.
Edited at 2008-05-22 03:22 pm (UTC)
That doesn't make her less awesome; it just means, when we talk about women in SF, she honestly is in her own category.
(And Atwood--don't get me started. Squids, indeed)
Not to mention she is all too happy to disavow any and all connection to the speculative fiction community altogether.
Just because female writers are clearly neglected and even outright shunned by academia doesn't negate what writers like Gibson or Tolkien accomplished. But it is deeply wrong that Marge Piercy and the others are often ignored when they should be taught and discussed right alongside them. I do think Tolkien's mythos, for instance, has been explored past of the point of much new being really discovered by Academia. But, again, that's an institutional problem with Academia...it tends to repeat and further dissect the familiar than an explore the new, because the new is not established.
In a related way, I run into this all the time in a parallel industry...comics. I chose to do my Masters degree in Women's Autobiographical narratives in Graphic Novels (ie. comics). I had to define my own curriculum and find my own literature. At the time I did it there was very little academic work on it, though since (because of books like Fun Home) there has been somewhat more.
But when I went to seek out academic articles, discussions, and joined a list specifically for academic discourse on comics...what did I find? While it was certainly "cute" that I was studying what I was, I was asked more than once "why?" and "isn't that a narrow, limited topic?". Not if no one had bothered discussing it yet. It wasn't (and still isn't) limited, it's just not explored. But they could talk about the same Superman/Batman etc. themes ad nauseum.
So, I see the problem...and part of it is getting more female voices in Academia discussing these things, and part of it is addressing the institutions that marginalize (take your pick) "other" voices in content, subject, and analysis.
But I still love Neuromancer's tech western vibe, and I still love the world creation behind LOTR. I don't blame the works for the uneven and clearly disproportionate weight applied to their criticism and analysis. That would be like blaming The Sandman for the lack of discussion on A Distant Soil or Scary Godmother.
Certainly I agree. What--cut myself off from the sources of half of my reading material?! Hell no! So far this year I have discovered three rather jammin' boy-oriented fantasy series, so I am very glad I was never one of those who read only Sisterhood books. (Of course, all three series have very cool female characters, which helps.)
But it is deeply wrong that Marge Piercy and the others are often ignored when they should be taught and discussed right alongside them.
They tend to get covered more in women's studies programs. Ghettoized, rather than enfranchised. But this has been the problem of "women's literature" all along. We're still in that trap in which we're perceived as writing the speculative fiction version of the domestic sphere, Kinder, Küche, und Kirche for the swords and spaceships set. When our mainstream literary writers can't even get serious treatment by academics, I suppose we shouldn't even be surprised that our genre writers are marginalised.
Yet I have to specify that I am talking about adult academics and criticism. Women writers are considered and valued in the children's book literary establishment. There are scholarly books about their work, and their work is covered in books about the field, or aspects of the field. It is true that in terms of publishing houses and marketing, male writers get a lot more attention. But in terms of criticism, women are treated seriously.
that's an institutional problem with Academia...it tends to repeat and further dissect the familiar than an explore the new, because the new is not established.
And then they wonder why kids say school isn't relevant.
I had to define my own curriculum and find my own literature. At the time I did it there was very little academic work on it, though since (because of books like Fun Home) there has been somewhat more.
Did you publish? Because this sounds like you wrote the book for the field!
While it was certainly "cute" that I was studying what I was, I was asked more than once "why?" and "isn't that a narrow, limited topic?".
Gggrrrrrrrrrrrr..............
Fail, fail mighty Harvard!
Then again, I've seen this go the other way, too. Just the other day I came across a literary agent scoffing at the idea that a man could write a good book about lesbians - and yet she has no problems with women writing a good book about gay men. Sad, isn't it?
But the number of people in the comments insisting that there is no way that gender could possibly be affecting their perception of Rowling is just depressing.
Am I the only one who wasn't that thrilled with Narnia? Loved James and the Giant Peach, but hated Matilda...
The critic will soon be eating his foot.
And, I kinda hate Narnia. The heavy handed allegory about killed it for me when reading it as an adult.
I'm 20 years old, and I STILL re-read your books at least once a year (Alanna: The First Adventure I could read EVERYDAY) and Robin Hobb, Wynne Jones are spectacular...I just don't understand.
Men write good fantasy, but damn, so do us girls.
I like to think so!
(And thanks for the compliment!)
That's why you have to get `em when they're young readers--so when they realize they're eating sawdust with their adult books, they'll remember the last time their books were crunchy. ;)
The most common themes in the novels I read:
1. Genre is typically fantasy or sci-fi/fantasy.
2. 3/4 of the authors are female; including my very favorite book.
3. The protagonist is usually a very headstrong, well rounded and believably flawed.
"The protagonist is usually a very headstrong, well rounded and believably flawed female."
Is what I had intended to say.
I plan on, once I can
manage my lack of ability to focus on one thing for very longgo through some college writing courses, beginning a novel of my own.I think we need more female writers out there in the world; especially in the fantasy and sci-fi genre. Though a good horror writer wouldn't be bad either.
I don't mind criticism of JK Rowling, but I hate when people get mad about Dumbledore being gay. Instead of complaining about her having homosexual role models, why don't we complain about her keeping it secret and then admitting she didn't put it in the book for popularity's sake?