I was really, really pleased with the way Valente grew the series with September in this book -- I definitely don't think you'll be disappointed on that score!
I hadn't read the Q&A, and I've gotta admit my initial reaction to September being Word-of-God multi-racial is a bit of a side-eye. I've now read the first book twice and the other two are fresh in my memory, and I didn't notice any hints that she was anything but white. I'll admit I wasn't looking for them -- based on the illustrations and the books Valente was obviously in conversation with (all those Victorian fantasies!) I assumed she was white, but nothing in the books ever twigged me otherwise. It's like Dumbledore being gay -- if most of your readers are going to miss it, it doesn't really count. Next time I read the books I'll be paying more attention, but at the moment I'm a little reluctant to count her.
For Saturday, no. Just no. Somebody made a comment about the Prester John books too, when I said they failed the Johnson test, arguing that they read all the creatures as POC because of the way they were othered, and it made me mad enough to spit. A lot o SF/F novels do that thing where they use non-human creatures as analogous to POC in our world, usually to make a political point (often even one I agree with!), but ultimately they do that to make a point to white people. POC don't need that lesson, and it is frankly gross to basically tell POC "People like you don't belong in my book, but here, you should relate to this robot/alien/mythological monster instead, they're oppressed just like you are!"
Obviously I know you aren't making this argument, and Valente hasn't made this argument, and Saturday is actually more of an edge case than the Prester John characters because he's human-shaped and dark-skinned and drawn from Arab mythology, but ultimately he is BLUE, not black or brown.
Sorry for the rant, but this is one component of a very long blog post I've been meaning to write for a couple of years about looking at who the audience of a thing is, who it's aimed at and who it affects -- to me, the Bechdel Test, ultimately, is about and for women, and the Johnson Test, ultimately, is about and for POC, so when I look at if something passes or fails I am looking from those perspectives, looking at "Can a woman/POC find a community in these characters?" rather than the white/male dominant perspective of "Will a man/white person be alienated from these characters?" I hope that makes sense?
On my reread of the first book I noticed that descriptions of September's skintone were darkone passage midway through the book that I of course can't find now seemed to explicitly, although very briefly, indicate her as non-white. But the art most distinctly does not support this, and in a book like thiswritten for children, with lots of illustrations, illustrations in which I'm pretty sure Valente had direct inputthe art becomes part of cannon.
If I were to guess, I'd say that Valente is aiming for "multiracial in the sense that white is not a default but her race doesn't really impact this story, therefore it can be a non-explicit background detail." It's an optimistic viewpoint but a flawed one, for reasons you don't need me to tell you!
Likewise, no worries about the rant. These were exactly the caveats I held; I'm just not in the position to pretend to speak on them, especially when you're more familiar and entitled to give voice to them.
The distinction you make about these tests functioning as tools forand aboutwomen and POC is damn useful, and indicated why the tests are so useful, no matter their other flaws.
If I were to guess, I'd say that Valente is aiming for "multiracial in the sense that white is not a default but her race doesn't really impact this story, therefore it can be a non-explicit background detail."
Yeah, that seems to be where a lot of liberal white SFF authors like to hang out. But it's a cop-out, because race is *never* completely irrelevant, because it changes the way the other characters and the audience perceive you. So, for example, there's a scene early in (I think) the second book where September's classmates are being kind of mean to her, and the book states that this is because she's *different* now that she's been to Fairyland. And her classmates, as far as I can tell, are white (I remember one of them being blonde, and that being the only physical descriptor, so I extended that whiteness to the rest of them for lack of any other detail), so if September's white I can take the reason given (her difference post-Fairyland) as basically factual, but if she's *not* white in a predominately white school then I wonder if she was *always* an outsider (because of her race) and it's only post-Fairyland that she's more aware of her outsider-ness, or that she's happy that Fairyland happened because it gives her a *reason* the others shun her, or any number of other more complicated readings.
The only way her multi-racial background would be meaningless to the story is if the world itself was equally mixed-race, normalizing her racial background. Which I would be fine with! I'm all for ahistorical fantasy, because it's just as important to imagine a better world as it is to point out the flaws in this one. But if *that's* the case, then Valente *really* needed to do more to make that explicit -- it's the flip-side of Kate Elliott's " The Status Quo Does Not Need World Building" post, things that differ from the status quo *do* need explicit world-building because otherwise the reader will simply bring all their normal assumptions to bear.
But all of that's a little beside the point, because I agree, in this book the illustrations do have to be considered part of the canon, and while it's problematic with real multi-racial people to say they don't look non-white therefore they don't count as POC, in deliberately crafted artwork a character's perceived race is all there is, and I'm pretty sure most people (in the U.S. at least) would perceive September's race as white and white only.
I hadn't read the Q&A, and I've gotta admit my initial reaction to September being Word-of-God multi-racial is a bit of a side-eye. I've now read the first book twice and the other two are fresh in my memory, and I didn't notice any hints that she was anything but white. I'll admit I wasn't looking for them -- based on the illustrations and the books Valente was obviously in conversation with (all those Victorian fantasies!) I assumed she was white, but nothing in the books ever twigged me otherwise. It's like Dumbledore being gay -- if most of your readers are going to miss it, it doesn't really count. Next time I read the books I'll be paying more attention, but at the moment I'm a little reluctant to count her.
For Saturday, no. Just no. Somebody made a comment about the Prester John books too, when I said they failed the Johnson test, arguing that they read all the creatures as POC because of the way they were othered, and it made me mad enough to spit. A lot o SF/F novels do that thing where they use non-human creatures as analogous to POC in our world, usually to make a political point (often even one I agree with!), but ultimately they do that to make a point to white people. POC don't need that lesson, and it is frankly gross to basically tell POC "People like you don't belong in my book, but here, you should relate to this robot/alien/mythological monster instead, they're oppressed just like you are!"
Obviously I know you aren't making this argument, and Valente hasn't made this argument, and Saturday is actually more of an edge case than the Prester John characters because he's human-shaped and dark-skinned and drawn from Arab mythology, but ultimately he is BLUE, not black or brown.
Sorry for the rant, but this is one component of a very long blog post I've been meaning to write for a couple of years about looking at who the audience of a thing is, who it's aimed at and who it affects -- to me, the Bechdel Test, ultimately, is about and for women, and the Johnson Test, ultimately, is about and for POC, so when I look at if something passes or fails I am looking from those perspectives, looking at "Can a woman/POC find a community in these characters?" rather than the white/male dominant perspective of "Will a man/white person be alienated from these characters?" I hope that makes sense?
Reply
If I were to guess, I'd say that Valente is aiming for "multiracial in the sense that white is not a default but her race doesn't really impact this story, therefore it can be a non-explicit background detail." It's an optimistic viewpoint but a flawed one, for reasons you don't need me to tell you!
Likewise, no worries about the rant. These were exactly the caveats I held; I'm just not in the position to pretend to speak on them, especially when you're more familiar and entitled to give voice to them.
The distinction you make about these tests functioning as tools forand aboutwomen and POC is damn useful, and indicated why the tests are so useful, no matter their other flaws.
Reply
Yeah, that seems to be where a lot of liberal white SFF authors like to hang out. But it's a cop-out, because race is *never* completely irrelevant, because it changes the way the other characters and the audience perceive you. So, for example, there's a scene early in (I think) the second book where September's classmates are being kind of mean to her, and the book states that this is because she's *different* now that she's been to Fairyland. And her classmates, as far as I can tell, are white (I remember one of them being blonde, and that being the only physical descriptor, so I extended that whiteness to the rest of them for lack of any other detail), so if September's white I can take the reason given (her difference post-Fairyland) as basically factual, but if she's *not* white in a predominately white school then I wonder if she was *always* an outsider (because of her race) and it's only post-Fairyland that she's more aware of her outsider-ness, or that she's happy that Fairyland happened because it gives her a *reason* the others shun her, or any number of other more complicated readings.
The only way her multi-racial background would be meaningless to the story is if the world itself was equally mixed-race, normalizing her racial background. Which I would be fine with! I'm all for ahistorical fantasy, because it's just as important to imagine a better world as it is to point out the flaws in this one. But if *that's* the case, then Valente *really* needed to do more to make that explicit -- it's the flip-side of Kate Elliott's " The Status Quo Does Not Need World Building" post, things that differ from the status quo *do* need explicit world-building because otherwise the reader will simply bring all their normal assumptions to bear.
But all of that's a little beside the point, because I agree, in this book the illustrations do have to be considered part of the canon, and while it's problematic with real multi-racial people to say they don't look non-white therefore they don't count as POC, in deliberately crafted artwork a character's perceived race is all there is, and I'm pretty sure most people (in the U.S. at least) would perceive September's race as white and white only.
Reply
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