Safe Stories in Long Hidden

I started this post a bunch of times, and kept getting bogged down.  And then the Hugos happened, and Kameron Hurley's "We Have Always Fought" won (deservedly) and I re-read it (you should to), and I stopped focusing on arguing about the place of women in wars (not really the point, and the fact that I was focusing there showed I was missing the point), and instead started focusing on llamas and the way they're written about versus how we actually experience them (hint, not actually about llamas).  And then I realized that not only had I re-read a darn good (and award winning!) essay, but also I could lean on Kameron for this piece.

So let's take as a given that stories give us a lens to look at the world, and that sometimes the lens of story can be as influential as our actual experiences, particularly when we don't have a lot of firsthand experience.  And if you don't want to take that as a given, then maybe go read "We Have Always Fought", don't argue with it like I did, and then come back here.  I'll also drop some more links at the bottom.

Long Hidden is an anthology of stories from the margins of history.  (Have I mentioned you should buy it?) Many of those stories are about experiences and histories that I have very little firsthand exposure to, and haven't even read much about.  One of the things I'm most grateful to the authors and editors for is creating a safe space to read these stories.  I don't have to go in with my guard up, looking for a Magical Negro, Damsel in Distress or other damaging stereotypes, but could instead open myself up to unfamiliar experiences.  Two stories in particular really created a safe space for me: The Witch of Tarup and A Score of Roses.  (Witch of Tarup discussed first, with few spoilers, Score of Roses second with all the spoilers).

In The Witch of Tarup, there are a number of characters with physical disabilities.  Some permanent, some temporary.  Traditionally, disabled characters tend to be portrayed as either bitter and angry or else fonts of wisdom who transcend their disability.  Either way, they are defined by that disability.  The Witch of Tarup features neither.  The disabled characters fit into their story and community.  They need assistance at times, but can function with their disability, and are defined by their other characteristics and other ways they've fit into the community.  The story was one of my favorites from the anthology simply in the way it spun out and revealed the very touching conclusion, but also because it gave me a safe space to think about disability as a part of the whole person, rather than the defining characteristic.

Troy Wiggins' A Score of Roses also provides a safe space to tell a story too often negatively stereotyped in both fiction and media.  (Spoilers ahead!)  The two characters in 1870's Memphis are clearly identified as members of the black community by the use of African American Vernacular English (since I had to look up AAVE when I first saw it), but also as non-human spirits.  Together they fall in love, court, raise a child, and the mother (at least) leaves the family.  It is, viewed baldly, a story about what could be described as a broken family, where the child is growing up with only one parent present, the other absent with no clear indication when or if she'll return.  But mostly it's an incredibly tender story about parents falling in love and passing on their strength and identity to their children.  I did not, at all, get the sense from A Score of Roses that the family was broken in any way.  Instead I found myself smiling at the affirmation of strength and love that the characters had for each other.  It was only reflecting afterwards that I realized Troy was threading a needle by telling a story about strength and love in a family situation so often demonized or characterized as broken.  A Score of Roses may not all by itself tear down all of my preconceptions about what family means, but it certainly highlighted some of the ways those preconceptions are dangerous, flawed, and created by narratives.  (Scaly llamas!)

(After re-reading A Score of Roses, I've also remembered what a simply beautiful story it is.  Unfinished: a more detailed response to A Score of Roses by itself, because I have done this story an injustice by only bringing up the way it presents a nontraditional family in a safe, loving and supportive way).

Many of the stories in Long Hidden create safe spaces in one way or another, or challenge the stereotypes that other narratives have created.  I'm grateful to the authors and editors for doing so in a respectful way, and providing me a space to read stories that may make me uncomfortable, but also always challenged and rewarded me.  It's an incredible anthology.

If "We Have Always Fought" wasn't enough for you, more resources on the way our worldview is shaped by narrative, and some of the dangers that entails:
MedievalPOC, which shows how people of color have been removed from our view of medieval and early modern european society.
Nnedi Okorafor on The Magical Negro
Mary Robinette Kowal on writing the stereotype of the "psychotic half breed" while trying to combat other stereotypes
Ta-Nehisi Coates' point that Isabel Wilkerson's The Warmth of Other Suns blows up the myth that black ghettoes were caused by illiterate broken families migrating to the north
Ann Leckie on restaurants that do (or don't) punch people in the face.  (Again, not really about restaurants)

Edited to correct title of The Witch of Tarup

Unfinished -
Review of A Score of Roses

I don't know how to read this

Scott Lynch's Republic of Thieves punched me in the gut recently, and made me aware of just how much I've grown accustomed to the tropes of fantasy.

Partway through Republic of Thieves (oh, um, spoilers.  Blanket policy: I'll be spoiling the books I'm talking about. This one is not ruinous to the book), our protagonist Locke is traveling with his companions including Sabetha who he's had a crush on since he was about six.  Locke wants to talk about feelings, and since he's told her he likes her, wants to hear that reciprocated.  Sabetha is interested, but she's also the only woman in this band of thieves, which she's been in charge of until Locke took over. She's also probably the more ambitious of the two, and Locke has had her up on a pedestal all this time.  It's complicated. Sabetha sees this. Locke doesn't. Over the course of a few scenes, Sabetha guides Locke, and the reader through this.  She doesn't use the terms "male gaze" or "male privilege", but the concepts are there.  She doesn't call herself a feminist, but her message is recognizable to a modern reader.

I don't know how to read these scenes.  And that's empowering, rather than a problem.

I can read the words and process the ideas.  I even often agree with them.  But they're outside my reading experience.  I grew up on the generations following Tolkien, and studied Medieval History in college. I can read a pseudo-Medieval European Epic Fantasy with a man at the center that only exposes it's social agenda by reinforcing the status quo like nobody's business.  

And when I do, I yell at anachronisms, and I yell at "message" passages that might illuminate the author's views, but break me out of the story because I don't believe the character would say that, dammit!

MedievalPOC has been busy challenging my belief that I actually understood what "the reality" of medieval and early modern Europe was.  Scott Lynch just challenged my belief that I understand how to create a believable secondary world that the reader is immersed in.  I'm still reeling a bit.  (In other recent readings, Kate Elliot's Spirit Walker series, written intentionally and emphatically in the head of a female protagonist also knocked me out of my comfort zone on a number of occasions).

I've been learning, slowly, and primarily from authors and critics on Twitter, just how many assumptions I've let pass unchallenged as I grew up on Epic fantasy.  And for a while I started to walk away from Fantasy and Science Fiction because all I was seeing was more of those assumptions being fed back to me.  (I'll save the story of being brought back to the fold by Saladin Ahmed and N. K. Jemisin for another time).

I'm also learning, slowly, how powerful "I don't understand" is.  I could read these scenes that aren't what I'm used to and reject them.  Bad writing.  Not for me. Political/Message fiction.  Or I can read them and ask why the author includes them.  I can use these scenes that I don't understand as jumping off points that expand my view of the world.  I can take Kate Elliot's Spirit Walker series as an invitation to the (a?) female gaze.  A gaze I rarely look through.  I often say that one of the reasons to read SFF is to be exposed to new worlds and new ways of thinking, and to see our own world in a new way.  I'm learning, slowly, that every scene that makes me say "I don't understand" is an invitation to do exactly that, and to learn to understand.

A final note: my current reading pile:

(Lightspeed Magazine's "Women Destroy Science Fiction" #wdsf, which is definitely bringing some "I don't understand" moments, and The Annotated Dragonlance Chronicles, which is about as comfortable a genre read as I can think of)

**Unfinished - how I came back to fantasy.