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

[chang3002]

I definitely share your indignation about the genocide of indigenous people in this country.

And... What if it was a Mexico without indigenous people? Or a WWII in which no Jews died? How about an England where the Romans encountered no one to conquer? Might you feel the same way? I'm just curious.

[hermetic]

With respect, indignation only begins to describe my feelings on that subject. But I know what you mean, and thank you for the solidarity.

Your examples serve to make the point:

Mexico wouldn't be Mexico without the indigenous people. It'd be New Spain, and that's it. Remember, the vast majority of Mexicans are mestizos, a hybrid people who literally would not exist without the reality of the conquest having occurred. Without the Indians, you don't get Mexico, you get Uruguay. More, the story of the Conquista is at the heart of the Matter of Mexico

[chang3002]

You make good points against mine with regard to Rome and WWII. I'll have to think about those more

[hermetic]

I not sure that she's flinching or sweeping aside the issue. I see your point, though and I respect the outrage. She's just imagined a world without a Native American presence in America. In fact, your outrage seems to arise from a work of fiction not addressing something that happened in the real world. Does it have to? Does Wrede have to?First, there's no "just" about it: it's a HUGE change, a major point of divergence with history, as important to what can happen in the world of the story as the continued existence of megafauna or the fact of magic

[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

[chang3002]

From an AMazon review of the book:

I also deducted a star because of the worldbuilding, though I waffled on this. That's because I enjoyed a lot of it, such as the explanation of the world's three main magic systems (one corresponding to Europe, one corresponding to Asia, and one corresponding to Africa, though they all have different names here). And I loved the idea of a fantasy-alternate America populated with dragons and mammoths (!) and other "magical" wildlife. But I was actively offended by the apparent erasure of indigenous people from this America -- there's nothing on the continent but forests and animals, making for a spooky sort of Manifest Destiny message as the mostly-European settlers make their way across it. The author appears to have considered what this absence would do to her alternate America -- for example, all place-names based on Native naming have been changed (e.g. the Mississippi is now the "Mammoth river"). But this actually adds to the problem, because it suggests Native Americans contributed nothing to

[hermetic]

Sigh.

You know, I really don't know that I want to ever read this book. However, part of me feels like I should, so I can completely deconstruct it academically.

But then, just one of the key conceits alone is enough to disgust me.

Argh. Life was so much easier when the morality of readership wasn't something I thought much about--not that I'm actually complaining, mind you: it's much better this way. Just complex, is all.

[skywardprodigal]

I too find the very idea vile.

From what I've read in Walton's review, I think Wrede's book slots neatly into a narrative tradition, a series of lies, that claims that "Human life wasn't native to the Americas AND Native life wasn't human."

The idea that the first people of the now colonized Americas were dangerous, wild, powerful, primitive animals that walked on two legs instead of four is very much a part of European narrative traditions.

[hermetic]

It's part of the sense of justification for the colonization of the Americas, yes. I mean, Manifest Destiny much?

However, the problem I have hear is tied to your first point--that the Americas were empty, and thus, it's okay to have colonized them, when in fact they weren't, and it wasn't.

The Thirteenth Child elides the issue by making sure that the paleo-Indians never make it to the Americas, leaving it blessedly free for "Avropan" and "Aphrikan" colonization and skirting the moral and ethical dilemmas of colonization for its characters.

Which means the author has to take the full weight of them. I opine that by erasing the Native Americans (if the paleo-Indians don't make it across Beringia, there will never be any Iroquois, Maya, Pueblo, or Inca) from the narrative, the author participates in the cultural eradication of the Native peoples.

[skywardprodigal]

I opine that by erasing the Native Americans (if the paleo-Indians don't make it across Beringia, there will never be any Iroquois, Maya, Pueblo, or Inca) from the narrative, the author participates in the cultural eradication of the Native peoples.

I'm right with you on that.

[sanguinity]

:: "Human life wasn't native to the Americas AND Native life wasn't human." ::

Yes. Both parts. And because commenters on this post are clearly getting the first part, I especially want to second the second one.

My first thought on reading the book's description was, "Oh, god, they've gone all the way. Instead of just making Indians into New World elves -- wild, free, mystical, see-sawing between the roles of "magical helper elves" and "will capriciously turn on you for no reason other than they're inherent and dangerous antipathy to proper humans" -- this book went so far as to make Indians over into dragons. Magical wild animals instead of magical wild people."

hermetic, you may be more sensitized to the one false narrative than the other, but the inclusion of dragons (which are often sentient or quasi-sentient, riding the gray area between human and animal) reads strongly of the colonialist narrative that Indians were magical, dangerous, quasi-sentient animals. Dragons may seem like a random, innocuous artifact of this book being

[spiralsheep]

It's not the Matter of America any longer. You're writing something else. So, for the sake of common decency, have the respect to make it be some place else, too, would you? I mean, at least that way, your readers won't have to trip over the bones of all those erased Indians.

::applause::

[hermetic]

Um, thanks.