Alma Alexander (
Twitter,
LJ) is a Pacific Northwest novelist, short story writer, and anthologist. Her books include “The Secrets of Jin Shei”, “Embers of Heaven”, “The Hidden Queen”, “Changer of Days”, the YA Worldweavers series, and “2012: Midnight at Spanish Gardens”; short stories have appeared in a number of recent anthologies, and “River”,
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There's a long conversation about Connie Willis that one could have but it's possible that's already happened here in your blog, and I don't want to cause thread drift. Suffice to say, I'll be on the lookout for Alexander's books.
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The post is public, and I'd be happy to revisit it.
Kari
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I'm also interested in the issues that arise when you are writing, more or less, from your own experience/culture... but your own experience isn't everyone's experience, and so there is still a high likelihood of getting it "wrong" in the sense of not representing the experiences of others from similar backgrounds, and/or not presenting the experience which others would like to see presented.
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don't think anyone could have handled the sense of danger and fear of the Blitz with as much attention to historical accuracy and respect for those who lived through it as did Willis.
I think you're setting the bar very, very low. You can understand how historians work and think without making it your life's passion; Willis' portrayal did not strike me as realistic at all.
to experience for themselves the human suffering the Blitz caused and the bravery it called forth
How is that not treating history as a themepark? If you can stop suffering and go home, it's not real.
Sometimes a joke is just a joke.
It's a joke if you have privilege. For the people at the opposite end of suffering, the casual use of words like 'deathmarch' or 'Nazi' or 'rape' isn't funny at all. And if you feel that your right to make offensive jokes trumps other people's pain, well... you might reconsider that stance.
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If so, I missed them.
But most of the academics I know I have heard at some point referring to their subject matters in terms similar to Willis's quoted remarks.
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