Comments | hamsterwoman: Very belated reading roundup

hamsterwoman

Very belated reading roundup

May 10, 2017 17:04

I am so behind on reading, you guys... Partly it's work being crazy, but mostly it's the phone, quite honestly. Well, that, and feeling sort of adrift, fannishly -- nothing I've read recently has really grabbed me, and I haven't even managed to finish watching a movie since Moana, like 2 months ago. But I finally managed to scrape up a couple of ( Read more... )

a: toni morrison, a: dave barry, ya, rivers of london, a: c.b.lee, a: ben aaronovitch, reading, a: v.e.schwab

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_profiterole_ May 11 2017, 12:56:14 UTC

Not Your Sidekick is super adorable. <3 It feels very YA, but I don't mind when it's that cute.

YA which takes great pains to be diverse in all ways, and that's really, really transparent, and a little on the nose
Should it be more white? Should it be more straight? The author is Asian and bisexual, so the diversity is definitely not tokenism.

hamsterwoman May 11 2017, 15:40:45 UTC

Should it be more white? Should it be more straight? Not at all! I really liked the mix of main characters in terms of ethnicity and non-straightness, and appreciated also that Jess and her family weren't the only Asian characters -- there was a real sense of nicely non-monolithic community ( ... )

_profiterole_ May 11 2017, 16:05:20 UTC

I don't remember finding these scenes too PSA-ish. I remember thinking that in Malinda Lo's Adaptation/Inheritance, so I see what you mean, but I think it's important that some books, especially YA novels, do the PSA aspect. Not everybody has access to spaces like Tumblr (and Tumblr sometimes does it aggressively anyway). It's super important for queer kids especially, who wouldn't yet have a network of queer people. It's also important for other minority kids, but at least most immigrant kids have their family network. And it's important for kids who are not minorities, because a lot of them probably have never been taught anything like that.

Also, where else do you see scenes about preferred pronouns? I've seen it recently in the Black-ish backdoor pilot for the Zoey show, and it was awesome for 5 seconds, until it turned out the character was the butt of the joke. I'm so pissed, they can be sure I won't be watching it.

hamsterwoman May 11 2017, 18:09:56 UTC

I do tend to have kind of a hair-trigger for PSAs in books (even on subjects I wholeheartedly agree with) -- IDK, maybe it's a result of a diet of Soviet fiction which was meant to be Educational and hold Moral Positions? I know you and I have talked about this before in other books, where something felt too didactic/PSA-y for me but didn't bother you.

but I think it's important that some books, especially YA novels, do the PSA aspect. Not everybody has access to spaces like Tumblr (and Tumblr sometimes does it aggressively anyway)I definitely agree that it's important for people, and younger readers especially, to have those kinds of things shown and role-modeled for them, for all the reasons you say. I do think it is theoretically possible (although really hard!) to do this well without it being PSA-y. There probably needs to be a critical mass of books doing just that to have a nice range, and we are (unfortunately) not there yet, and books like this are getting us there. Would I rather have books doing it a bit clunkily (like ( ... )

_profiterole_ May 11 2017, 19:48:46 UTC

Jess could just go, "Oh, it's 'he', not 'they'. Anyway, so about our plan--"

Well, you're already familiar with the issue, so you obviously don't need to read the 101 again and again. But a trans person would have to explain the 101 again and again, to most of the people they meet for the first time, and that kind of discussion doesn't necessarily go well, which is why it's better if as many people as possible first encounter it in a book or in a TV show, in more than just 2-3 words.

hamsterwoman May 11 2017, 20:16:34 UTC

which is why it's better if as many people as possible first encounter it in a book or in a TV show, in more than just 2-3 wordsI definitely agree that it's good if as many people as possible first encounter the 101 from a source that does not put the burden on a trans person having to explain it again and again real time. I don't know that fiction is the best/necessary place for it, though -- it is for REPRESENTATION, but I don't know that it is for explicit education/role-modeling. (I mean, outside of fiction explicitly designed to be educational, like "Sesame Street ( ... )

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