bluerabbit

Note: With China blocking LJ, I can only read certain discussion posts, which is disadvantageous. Also, FYI, I currently don't have a lot of time to discuss this in comments and such (I barely have enough time to follow along), but here are my thoughts on the matter so as not to be complicit in silence. Other people, have, of course, said just about everything I want to say much more articulately than I.

. . . I'm deeply depressed about RaceFail 09. I mean, I was already upset about it (and all previous iterations AND AvatarFail and . . . aw, shit), but previously, none of the authors involved were ones I actually read, so even being upset I could at least think to myself: Whew, at least so-and-so is not involved.

So of course, MammothFail has to be based around the new Patricia C. Wrede book (And to illustrate why, to me, this is a Big Deal, I have been telling people since grade school that I'm naming my oldest daughter Cimorene. The Enchanted Forest Chronicles books were my childhood "comfort books" because at least Cimorene had black hair and was awesome even if she wasn't PoC.). I was really excited when I heard she had a new book coming out, looked at the concept (13th child and twin sister to 7th son of 7th son) and thought it sounded neat. And there was something about a frontier, which, I, uh, took to mean a magical frontier in a world unlike our own, not an AU version of Earth.

Yeah, so, the blurb I read left out the "and Native Americans never crossed the Bering Land Bridge so we can have Woolly Mammoths and Steam Dragons instead!" bit. Which is, admittedly, deeply problematic, not the least of which is because when you do stuff like this, you have to do it carefully. What are the effects of no Native Americans (no corn, starving Pilgrims, a completely different settlement and expansion of the country, etc.)? This could clearly be mitigated if it was a story about the initial first settlement of the country because the lack of Native Americans would not yet have a chance to butterfly effect everything to hell and back (it would just be about the hard struggles of the settlers to find food, grow crops, survive the winter, and tame mammoths without help from any natives), but this is set in the 1890s, I believe, and apparently Columbia (aka America) is not much dissimilar aside from place names and the resident megafauna, oh and magic, of course.

And the other reason is, of course, that it disappears an entire race of people (which disturbingly echoes real history) because depicting them as anything but a stereotype was too hard (there are quotes as to her reasoning for no Native Americans). The thing is, I can understand this line of thinking, the "OMG rather than screw up I'd rather not deal with it at all! because it's 'safer' and 'easier' that way" line of thinking. But Patricia C. Wrede does not get a pass on this. Actually, nobody gets to pull the avoidance card without getting called on it (if I ever do it I expect to get called on it), but especially not Patricia C. Wrede. Because, you know what? I have spent my life being a fan of hers and the woman does a pretty damn good job of characterization. So you cannot honestly tell me that she could not write ONE (errr, hopefully not falling into the Magical Indian stereotype, though, uh, given the premise, maybe not) nuanced Native American character without resorting to either the "savage" or the "noble ecologist" viewpoints. Yeah, I'm holding you to a higher standard. I mean, I would hope that everyone could manage to write Native Americans as people, but the rub is that I know that you're actually capable of it.

But apparently the story is all about family dynamics and maybe Native Americans wouldn't have come into play anyway? Fine. I'm sure there were settled areas where Native Americans were scarce (driven out and/or killed) so maybe the story in question wouldn't have dealt with them at all. There could have been a few lines to the effect that there weren't any in the general area couched ambiguously so she wouldn't have her characters spewing out time-appropriate vitriol (which is what she was trying to avoid, I gather). I mean, that's still problematic but at least they're THERE and not magically disappeared away, which is, really, what most of the PoC having this conversation are trying to say.

We're here. We've been here all along. And, dammit, we're here to stay. So don't ignore us. Don't exclude us. Don't act like we don't matter. Just listen to us. Think. Read. Inform yourself. Put some thought into how what you write or do affects your readers. ALL your readers, because some of us may not look and think just like you, but we are still human beings with feelings and histories just like you.

This is the story of how I started to write my first book: It started off as an Old Yeller fanfic (. . . yes, srsly). I had recently read White Fang and Call of the Wild. My main character, who lived in an abandoned hunter's cabin on a mountain in Virginia, was an orphan because his mother ran off (and later died though my main character was currently unaware of that fact) and his father was killed two years ago in a struggle with an Indian who had broken into their cabin to steal a radio.

I was five years old.

Fortunately, a couple years down the line in grade school I looked back on this inauspicious beginning to a story (which, by the way, had nothing to do with Native Americans AT ALL) and realized my complete and total logic fail. How would his father have been killed? Why would a Native American even bother trying break into a cabin to steal a radio? Wouldn't a Native American have better things to do like sitting at home and watching TV than trying to steal someone's old radio of all things? Where there even Native Americans in Virginia anymore? Hadn't "we" Americans forced the Indians off their ancestral land onto tiny reservations in the West? What the heck was I writing?

Why do I tell this story? Because racism is endemic in our society. Because as a PoC, the plight of other PoCs was a completely alien concept to me at the time because of my own privilege. Because I saw nothing wrong with painting an "Indian" as a killer of a white man as a minor background detail. Because I was five years old and this line of thought was reasonable. Because I was five years old and didn't know any better and thankfully, I grew, very quickly, to know better, if not to have a full understanding. Because over two decades later, grown, intelligent people who ought to know better are having similar logic fails again and again and again to the one I had when I was five. Because it has taken me the better part of my lifetime to examine my own privilege and my own ingrained racism, with no hand-holding and no one to teach me but myself and my own experiences, and see it for what it is, and to see too all the subtle racism directed at me that I and the people around me shut our eyes to growing up. And I'm still struggling to understand.

So no, I don't expect anyone to "get it" overnight, and I expect you to struggle with it. You, Ms. Wrede, and you too, Ms. Bujold, should either, or, hopefully, both of you, choose to open your eyes and your minds to the problem and acknowledge that yes, you've made mistakes. What's done is done. It's all history now and you have three choices: 1)ignore it, 2)cover up and erase it, or 3)learn from it. Personally, I WANT YOU TO CHOOSE THREE. Because, selfishly, I want in good conscience to read more about dragons and strong women and I do love the majority of your books, and I have friends who want to read about Miles. The future is wide open and there's nothing holding you back from doing better. Nothing but yourselves.