unspeakable horror

[hermetic]

I've not read Patricia C. Wrede's Thirteenth Child, and I don't think I will.

According to Jo Walton writing over at Tor, it's "Little House on the Prairie with mammoths and magic," apparently. Which sounds awesome, and something I'd love to read. Only, one of its basic premises posits an alternate America ("Columbia") that's empty, where the

Comments

[t0rque]

To keep playing with this a little...

What if it's the conquerors who don't exist? For example, Kim Stanley Robinson's book The Years of Rice And Salt posits that the Europeans are wiped out in the plague. If this book was written such that the Native Americans were wiped out by a disease before the Europeans got there, it sounds like that'd be better?

[hermetic]

Better isn't the word, but it tends in that direction, yes.

I think that you can't, as an American writer, just handwave the Indians away. You have to deal with them, somehow, or else you're cheating. (Also, you're failing. Badly. And I will judge you. Harshly. See above.)

It's part of my own development as a writer and artist that I am coming to more fully realize that our work is a dialogue and that if we haven't considered how the work is going to interact with its audience... then we haven't done a good enough job.

Because it's not enough to just tell the story. You have to tell the story to someone.

And that means realizing you've got baggage with you, and so do they, and it may or may not matter to a greater or lesser degree. This ain't easy. Or as they say in el DF, estas no son enchiladas.

[t0rque]

You say "You can't, as an American writer, just handwave the Indians away". This raises the question for me:

Can a European writer do so? Can an aboriginal Australian? A Native American? What about an anonymous author?

I'm poking at this because I think it's interesting to you that there's a difference in the issues that an author must acknowledge based on the author's background--and then, how that's affected by the reader's perception of that background.

[hermetic]

Okay, I'm still feeling may through all of this and trying to use my reason to guide a clear path to where my heart is leading. Capisce?

I think that you can't, as an honest writer (and being a dishonest one is entirely possible) handwave the Indians (or what have you) away. I think it's particularly egregious for an American writer to do so. I mean, she's an American writer, writing about America, for an American audience. Erasing the native peoples of America from her narrative is a big deal

[boxofdelights]

For me, it would make a big difference if this book were written by someone who didn't grow up in North or South America.

It'd be like Stephen Fry saying "Red Indian", or a child playing "Lost Boys and Indians", or, for that matter, an American writing about a fantasy Japan with no Ainu. I can imagine pointing out the problem to any of those people and having them respond, "I had no idea!"

I can't imagine an American writer having no idea that there was anything troublesome about a story of the colonization of America with no Native Americans. And if she was aware of the problem but liked the fantasy of guilt-free colonization so much that she went ahead with it anyway... yeah, there's something wrong with that.

[boxofdelights]

(Here from the Tor.com site, BTW. I appreciate your willingness to write about this openly even while you're not sure of your conclusions.)

[hermetic]

Yes, I see your points entirely, and that's how I tend to feel, too. Like I say above, I think it's particularly egregious coming from an American writer.

(And welcome, and thanks. I'm just doing what I need to in order to understand this all better and get it clear for myself. I tend to write my problems out.)

[selki]

zeborahnj points to a newsgroup discussion a few years ago [edit: LJ name and link fixed], where Wrede said:
"The *plan* is for it to be a "settling the frontier" book, only without Indians (because I really hate both the older Indians-as-savages viewpoint that was common in that sort of book, *and* the modern Indians-as-gentle-ecologists viewpoint that seems to be so popular lately, and this seems the best way of eliminating the problem, plus it'll let me play with all sorts of cool megafauna)."

Sigh. FWIW. Too bad she never read anything more nuanced, like, say, some of Louis L'Amour's books.

(here via something pir-anha linked to)

[boxofdelights]

Great. Wonderful. Not only, "Wite-out the Native Americans so I can have a guilt-free good-parts-only colonization!" but also, "Wite-out the Native Americans so my people get to play with what would have been their stuff!"

[selki]

Yep. :/

[sparrow_wings]

... because, obviously, those are the only two ways to write about Indians, ever. There are no other choices. Especially not a nuanced, well-researched, realistic portrayal, heavens no.

I read the book and liked it, but all the way through I was waiting for the Native Americans to show up, and... they never did, because apparently Wrede felt it would be too much trouble to include them. I would have preferred a straight-up secondary world fantasy to alternate history, if she was so intent on having megafauna.