Here we go again (race and scifi part ???)

Thanks to this post from Nalo I just found a comment on my Octavia Butler obituary that I must have missed the first time. I guess that's what happens when I get lazy and start occasionally skipping my daily blog reading.

Since that quote was attributed to Nalo, she went ahead and answered it here and covered the topic pretty well. I still felt the need to address it though. I guess something in my ego just keeps me from just letting this slide.

Of course, the really amusing thing about that blog entry is how generic it was. Generally speaking, as Pam noted, there seems to be a generic white response to these kinds of complaints about genre writing. Namely, the assumption that any mention of the whitewashed nature of the genre most imply some sort of automatic dislike of white people. Usually this is just followed by some kind of MLK-lite suggestion that we judge the writers by the content of their works instead of the color of their skin. I have seen it over and over again in discussions of race and science fiction and comics. At this point I can pretty much see them coming.

What is really amusing about these statements is that they tend to reveal how little critical thought the person making them has really put into the issue.

Why do I say this? Simple. How exactly would a black person who hated white people get into a whitewashed genre to begin with? Who would they be reading?

Personally, I've been a science fiction fan for the better part of two decades. I already made a post about the books that most influenced me as a child. Long before I'd ever heard of Octavia Butler, Samuel Delany, Steven Barnes, Nalo Hopkinson etc. I was reading Asimov, Heinlen, Ben Bova, Andre Norton, John Brunner.... Obviously I have absolutely no idea what it means to relate to someone who does not look like me. Ok, bad sarcasm aside, the truth is that every genre fan of color must by definition be able to relate to people who are different from them. There is no other way to get into the genre. There just aren't that many non-white people in it. The chances of there existing a black science fiction fan who has only read black authors and/or characters is so small I'd rather lay odds on that snowball in hell first. On the other hand, it would be remarkably easy to find white fans who have almost never read a science fiction book which didn't have a white writer and/or character.

Hell, as far as I know there isn't a stigma against putting white faces on a book because they might not sell as well. Which makes it remarkably interesting that the question being asked is why people who have to make a special effort to *not* read a genre story which requires them to identify with someone who doesn't look like them are prejudiced. If anything, the question should be reversed.

Why is it that putting a black face on the cover of a book is automatically a bad thing?

Why are non-white authors such a rare thing?

Where are the non-white fans?

What keeps them out of a supposedly universal genre?

And why is it that those who do exist tend to cluster into their own communities?

What is the cause of this defensiveness that shows up chiefly among white fans whenever the racial makeup of the genre is discussed?

Like I said, that piece displayed an all too common lack of critical thinking about the issue. I understand its probably due to long standing unquestioned assumptions that people are not even aware they hold. Still, since cornute was kind enough to ask.....

The "David Chappelle's Block Party" playlist

I finally saw "David Chappelle's Block Party" last weekend in my brother over the weekend. Personally I think its brilliant. There have been a couple of comparisons to 'Wattstax' in a some of the reviews I have read so far. To me they are more than apt. This is by far the closest thing I've seen to that movie ever. I'd review it, but far smarter and more eloquent people have already done that in several places online. My favourite so far is the Boston Globe review. I am simply going to talk about the music.

Now if you are one of those people who has made up their minds to treat all hip-hop music as violent, angry, nihlistic, misogynistic musoc with little if anyredeeming social value then you will not get what made the music so great. If you aren't, you might have heard of some of the people who played, or at least you should have. That concert basically got together some of the best musicians alive today. People whose music has kept me company for literally thousands of hours over the last decade or so. At the very least you might want to open up your minds and grab the soundtrack when it hits. I know I will.

Otherwise, these are the albums that I have been inspired to play this week.

The Roots: Things Fall Apart, Phrenology and The Tipping Point
Mos Def: Black on Both Sides
Takib Kweli: Train of Thought, Quality
Black Star: Black Star
Common: Like Water for Chocolate
Kanye West: The College Dropout
The Fugees: The Score
Dead Prez: Lets Get Free
Erykah Badu: Mama's Gun
Jill Scott: Who Is Jill Scott? Words and Sounds, Vol. 1

Sidenote: While I'd personally love to see this movie get some Oscar recognition in the documentary category, I'll wager a small amount of money that it'll never happen.

Either way, good listening.

Universal Black Constant #1

I kind of wondered into this post topic by accident while writing about Eric Jerome Dickey's new 'Storm' comic book. One of the things I found interesting about it was the fact that he showed the animosity that sometimes tends to exist between Africans and black Americans. At the same time I've been thinking about a post on the genius of the boondocks character 'Uncle Ruckus'. What they both have in common is what I tend to refer to Universal Black Constant #1. Namely black people don't like black people

The most damaging legacy of slavery and colonization is , in my opinion, the widespread inferiority complex it left across all of those affected. The truth is that most black people, regardless of where they are born, have to deal with the message that the very fact of their birth makes them less than everyone else, but especially white people, from the day they learn how to communicate. Maybe a little after if they are lucky.

Africans and West Indians have the advantage of only being stuck with each other, which means that we are required to acknowledge each other's competence to a degree that isn't necessary here. Its still there though. Just about every African I know can tell you stories of Ruckus style comments made by other Africans. Most notably a wish for a return to colonial rule because the Europeans ran the continent better.

Now consider the fact that human beings have a natural tendency to place themselves in a hierarchy and consider what happens to those who know from day 1 that they are assigned the bottom rung. A struggle to stratify the bottom rung begins with everyone trying to be on small of that little space so at least they are better than someone. Hence all of the above reasons are amplified by the need to put down the other group in order to feel a little better about yourself and your group. Not the smartest solution known to man, but definitely understandable. And that right there is a vast majority of the reason different groups of black people stay at each other's throats.

The genius of Uncle Ruckus, in my opinion, is the fact that he brings light to the thoughts that lie buried in the minds of a lot of people, black and non black, tend to carry around with them and avoid talking about. I think there's a lot to be gained by actively admitting to and confronting the mindset instead of pretending it doesn't exist.

We just lost a Giant.........

Octavia Butler died on Saturday. I found out maybe an hour ago.

I'm looking for words to describe how this makes me feel but I keep coming up short. Better writers that me will have to deal with that.

Here's what I will say. Like a lot of black science fiction fans I came across her work at a time when I was growing increasingly frustrated at the lack of people who looked like me in a medium I enjoyed so much. As such she wasn't just a great writer to me. She, and writers like her are symbols of the fact that the subtle limitations that the world tries to place on who I can be and what I can do with my life are illusions. For that I will forever be grateful.

Rest In Peace Miss Butler. You will be missed

Some things of interest

My first Prep Time Posse piece is up. In true Die Whitey warrior tradition (yes Pam, I'm stealing that from you) I talk about marvel's new family of black Captain Americas and how much they irritate certain fans. Enjoy

Pam also sent me this link which covers a lot of the frustration I feel whenever I hear people talk about the continenent: How to write about Africa

Found it: Commentary on Steven Barnes' "Lion's Blood"

This was the last commentary essay I wrote on black science fiction in college. I posted the others up earlier but couldn't find a copy of this one.

Luckily one of the advantages of liking to play around with linux distros as a hobby is the fact that I change and reinstall operating systems a lot. Which also means I try to keep backups of all my important stuff. Of course, I have to find them first, which was the cause of the original delay.

anyway, without further ado, here it is




With “Lion's Blood”, Steven Barnes attempted to write an alternate history of alternate history of America that raises a lot of incredibly interesting questions. In his alternate world, Africans conquer Rome and are the ones who find America. Since they have all that land and require manpower to farm it, they begin to capture slaves from various parts of Europe. The central characters in this story are Kai, the son of a plantation owner and Aidan, a celtic slave who becomes Kai's best friend. Using both of their perspectives. We are shown a view of slavery as it would have looked had it happened to white people. That premise alone makes this book worth reading. The way Barnes chooses to handle that premise only serves to make the book a more interesting read. It is definitely very disturbing in parts and there are creative decisions he took in constructing his history that I am not necessarily a huge fan of. I am also not especially happy with some of his decisions regarding Kai's character. All of that aside, this is still a good read and a book which should be recommended to any white person claiming slavery was benign or a good thing for black people since Barnes pulls very few punches, especially in the earlier sections of the book.

It is going to be hard for me to discuss themes in this book, not because it isn't full of them but because my reaction to it left me with more than enough questions and issues with the book that, in this case, I thought taking a closer look at the reaction it caused in me might be more interesting. There are several things about the book I find worthy of comment. First is Barnes' description of the middle passage and slavery through Aidan's eyes, a section of the book I think a lot people need to read. Second is his choice of Islam as the religion most of the Africans adopted and some of the interesting turns he takes in exploring religion. There is also his portrayal of Kai and his father as almost benign slave masters in certain places, which I find myself not entirely comfortable with.

The book opens up with a look at Aidan's life in a little village learning how to be a fisherman from his father. We are shown enough of his life and his community for us to realize that he has a good life here. Immediately we grasp that picture, his world is torn apart by vikings with guns who kill his father and several other members of the village before the rest of them, including his mother and sister, are carried off to a larger ship, bound in chains and stacked next to each other like sardines. During the trip, we watch through Aidan's eyes as his friends die and are thrown overboard, his mother is raped and miscarries and the survivors begin to form into a larger family in order to keep each other alive. After arriving in America, his family is split up and sold. He ends up with his mother and his sister ends up by herself. The language in which all of this is described is chosen to be as disturbing as possible, perhaps so white readers of the book, who will already empathize with Aidan's family, gain a clearer understanding of the pain that comes with being in his position.

Religiously, Barnes makes some very interesting decisions and asks some interesting questions. He chooses to have almost all of the Africans be Muslim, except for the Zulus, who are regarded as bloodthirsty savages for the most part. I fail to understand his choice of Islam as opposed to a more traditionally African religious system, even that of the Egyptians. It makes very little sense to create a grand African civilization and then make its religious base an imported religion. However, it is worth noting that the book critiques certain Islamic practices by choosing to make Kai become a sufi an then having him question several Islamic beliefs. Another interesting set of questions is raised by Aidan's view of slaves who leave behind their religions and convert to Islam. In his eyes, it is almost unpardonable that slaves choose to adopt the religion of their oppressors, even though in a lot of cases, it is done to gain extra freedoms for them and their family. Still, it does raise very interesting questions. Since Barnes' beliefs seem to be more in line with eastern religions than christianity, it is easy to see this also as a question about the large numbers of black people all over the world who adopted christianity from slavers and colonizers.

As I mentioned earlier, I have issues with the way Barnes writes about Kai and his father, Ali because he turns them into benevolent slave masters. Ali seemingly believes that his slaves are human beings. He treats them with respect and allows them to practice their beliefs and retain their names. However, they are still his property and several members of the house do seriously maltreat them so his benevolence is highly suspect. I suspect Barnes may have written him in to show the impossibility of the concept of a benevolent slave master who respects the people he considers his property. Kai is probably a lot closer to what a person would truly have to be like in order to be maintain his principles and treat his slaves like real people. In the beginnings if his friendship with Aidan, he sees him as less of a person, almost a pet or plaything. However, as they get older and wiser, he begins to realize that he owns fellow human beings. This leads him to free his slaves at the cost of his social standing. I felt that part of Barnes' point with him was to show that a really benevolent man couldn't own other people even at the cost of most of what he held dear. Although, technically, Kai doesn't lose everything but he is willing to kill his uncle in order to save Aidan and his family. In doing so, he gives of himself a lot more than most people would in his situation and gains very little in return.

“Lion's Blood” is a very interesting and intricate book. Barnes' future history is incredibly well researched and his characters ask questions that I have a hard time answering. It is definitely something I would recommend to anyone interested in taking a look at slavery from a totally different perspective to open up their minds.

New writing duties

Those of you who also read Pam's blog already know about my new hobby, a collaborative comics blog called Prep Time Posse. This is another one of those things Okayplayer has gotten me into. The people on this blog are people I usually end up discussing comic books with on the boards. Between all of us I'd imagine there probably hasn't been a significant comics event in the last two or three decades that we lack expertise in. The stuff currently up is definitely gold and I expect that to continue.

(sidenote: the name comes from our version of the standard 'which hero would win in a fight' argument where it was eventually agreed that given enough prep time batman could defeat pretty much anyone)

I don't have a piece up yet but it will be coming soon. In keeping with my comics talk here, it will probably border on the sticky issue of race and comics fandom at some point. I'll also talk about comics I think you should be reading, recommend old stuff I like and maybe work in at least one Milestone Comics post. There will also be some general 'what is wrong with comics' posts

I'll definitely let you know when my stuff starts to roll out.

I'm also taking part in an online food log where I shall be providing all the gory details of my daily eating patterns. I might also use it to log exercise. That I haven't decided yet.

I'm back!!!

hey people. Merry chrisrmas and a happy new year to you all

Sorry I've been gone for a while. First there was school and then there was me just being distracted by other things. I'm back now though.

Just in time for my return, we finally have Pam's long awaited post on race in science fiction and specifically what happened to the sci-fi channel's adaptation of Ursula LeGuin's 'Earthsea' books here.

She told me about this one a while ago and I've been waiting for it ever since. Please read it soon, that site is apparently going away. Especially since she's a better writer than I am and it shows.

(Incidentally, Pam, that thing I promised you is supposed to ship tomorrow so be on the lookout)

Anyway, I'm back on schedule as of tomorrow. I'm not sure what I'll be talking about yet, but I'll try to surprise you.

Comics plug: What's a Nubian?

Rich Watson, the writer of Glyphs (which, for those of you who haven't clicked on the link, is a pretty comprehensive look at comics with black characters or creators) is now writing a column for Buzzscope entitled 'What's a Nubian?'

For those of you who missed the reference, its from Kevin Smith's 'Chasing Amy'

Its basically a continuation on the theme of his blog, but in front of a larger audience. For any comic book fans looking for new stuff to pick up I think its very much worth reading, and especially for comic fans of colour its a great resource to find out about books that usually get little to no mainstream exposure

here are columns #1 and #2

I hope you like them

the insomniac personality test

from Mushtaq

Your Personality Profile

You are elegant, withdrawn, and brilliant. Your mind is a weapon, able to solve any puzzle. You are also great at poking holes in arguments and common beliefs. For you, comfort and calm are very important. You tend to thrive on your own and shrug off most affection. You prefer to protect your emotions and stay strong.

The World's Shortest Personality Test

On: politics, sectarianism and ego in the martial arts

I was relatively lucky in the beginning of my martial arts experience. For the most part everyone's focus was simply on training, getting better and having fun while doing it. We only had a little friction we had with the local karate club, mostly because their teaching style was supremely horrible (their yellow belt test still gives me nightmares)

Post college though, I entered the world of the Chinese martial arts and things changed. While I generally managed to end up with people on the periphery of all the drama, I also saw enough, and spent enough time hearing stories from people who had been training for far longer than me to realize how much ego gets tangled up in the martial arts.

Among the things I've personally seen of heard about:

People creating their own style/organization to give themselves a higher rank

Teachers spreading rumors about each other

Teachers within a style poaching good students from each other

Talented martial artists purposely teaching students the wrong thing for money

Teachers who get offended at the thought of a student learning something from an outside source

Lineage wars (who trained with who and where and for how long)

I could tell you a couple of stories to cover each of those, and I'm still an amateur. I shudder to think of the kind of stories the more experienced martial artists who read this blog could come up with. Its sad really.

Initially I thought this was an issue that was particular to the Chinese arts but as time went on I realized that they seem to be tied into the arts in general, unfortunately. For reasons that probably lie somewhere between ego and greed a lot of people seem to stray in focus from the core idea of training to make themselves better, or teaching to make their students better, and focus on other, more destructive, things instead.

Here's to hoping I never become one of them

A slight detour

At the moment, I can't find my Lion's Blood commentary. Since I backed up my documents on more than one occasion I have to dig through a bunch of poorly labeled CD's to see if I can find a copy of it anywhere. I hope its not lost, I like to keep track of these things. Plus, if I may say so myself, it was a decent piece of writing.

Anyway, since I don't have that, I decided to transition over to one of my favorite activities, martial arts. I've been slowly getting back into training and its been kicking some stuff loose in my head that I'd like to talk about and get feedback on.

I'll start with a topic that Mushtaq mentioned in his podcast and I have some experience with. The sectarianism and politics that seems to accompany the martial arts, since it is by far the my least favorite part.

Look out for it sometime tomorrow

commentary on Nalo Hopkinson's 'Skin Folk'

“Skin Folk” is Nalo Hopkinson's third published work of fiction. Unlike her other works though, it is a collection of short stories. Her stories are all extremely engaging and attempt to cover a large range of issues in a fairy small space. The one theme that is prevalent in all of her stories is the concept of facades and the people inside our skins, hence the title. Obviously in a work by a black female author dealing with appearances, there is a strong focus in a lot of stories on issues dealing with race. In dealing with race, she also takes a close look at self-loathing among black people when it comes to both appearance and culture. Specifically our tendency to idolize 'white' features and culture over our own natural appearances and heritage. She also spends a fair amount of time examining that heritage by writing modern stories inspired by Carribean (and, by extension, West African) myth and storytelling. Another theme fairly common in her writing is that of human sexuality in general, the stigma that we have been taught to associate with it and how unhealthy the level of and repression is. Overall, these stories are mostly about discovering and being comfortable with what is in our own skins.

The first theme that really caught my attention was the continuous theme of the tendency in black people to reject our appearance and culture. The two stories which have this specific issue as their themes are “The Glass Bottle Trick” and “A Habit of Waste”. “The Glass Bottle Trick” is the story of a light skinned black woman who marries an extremely dark skinned man only to discover that he has a rather extreme color complex. The only reason he isn't married to a white woman is the fact that all white people intimidate him. Therefore she is his closest replacement to a white woman among black people. He worships her skin and hates his own so much that he killed his two previous light skinned wives so they wouldn't have dark shinned 'monsters' like him. At the end of the story, she discovers the bodies of his ex wives and accidentally releases their spirits to take their revenge on her husband and maybe her as well. “A Habit of Waste” is the story of a black woman with Carribean parents who trades in her body for that of a 'more attractive' white woman and attempts to live life as a white person only to end up missing what she left behind when she sees someone else proudly wearing what used to be her body. In the end, though, she returns to her roots and begins to embrace her culture and family again. In both of these stories, the color struck characters are driven by an intense self loathing to become as white as they can. He does it by marrying fair skinned women and living through them, she does it by actually becoming a white woman. Unfortunately, neither of them is any happier with themselves by the end of their stories.

A lot more stories in this book deal with the issue of sexuality. They examine both homosexual and heterosexual relationships in an attempt to look at and deal with the unhealthy stigma people tend to attach to human sexuality. In “Riding the Red”, “Slow Cold Chick”, “Fisherman” and “Ganger (Ball Lightning)” one of her central themes is sex. “Slow Cold Chick” and “Fisherman” her central female characters are unsure of themselves and their sexuality. Blaise, the female protagonist in the first story suppresses her desires because of her insecurity until they take physical form and begin to lash out at people, forcing her to learn how to take responsibility for what she wants, sexually and otherwise and to accept her bisexuality. The fisherman in her story is actually a woman who takes part in a traditionally male occupation, fishing. At at the end of the week, she accompanies the rest of the fishermen to a whorehouse where the story describes her first time with another woman. Again, it is mostly about her getting over her own insecurities over who she is attracted to and then other people getting over the fact that she doesn't correspond to who they think she is. Both of these stories end with the women embracing their sexuality.

“Riding the Red” is an reinterpretation of “Little Red Riding Hood” in which little red riding hood is a young woman, the wolf is a young man and the hunt is a mating dance. The grandmother in this story is a n old woman reminiscing on her youthful encounters and despairing her daughter's prudishness. At the end of the story, she is waiting for the wolf to come by so she can dance for what may be the last time. “Ganger (Ball Lightning)” is about a couple who only communicate through sex because they are too insecure about who they are and how they feel to communicate any other way. Because of this, they buy electronic 'skins' to make the sex more enjoyable but this pushes them further apart. In the end, the malfunctioning 'skins' lead to them breaking down and discussing the way they feel. This story, is more about the habit some people have of using sex as a replacement for communication,and how unhealthy this practice is.

Just like in her books, Hopkinson also tries to bring the tradition of myth and storytelling that she grew up with into a modern setting. In this book, that results in a series of modern fables in the form of “Tan- Tan and and Dry Bone”, “Greedy Choke Puppy” and “ Something to Hitch Meat To”. The first story is an addition to “Midnight Robber”, her previous book. In this story, Tan-Tan picks up trouble in the form of Dry Bone who, once he has been picked up, cant be put down. So she is forced to feed him while she starves until she figures out that she doesn't have to carry him and lets him go. In the second story, a woman afraid of aging discovers that she is a succoyant, a person who can leave her skin at night and steal life from babies. In an attempt to remain young, she starts killing children around her until her grandmother is forced to kill her. The third story revolves around a young black man tired of the world in which he lives and the job he does. Finally at the peak of his frustration, he receives the gift of a magical adinkra symbol from Ananse that allows him to expose people's true forms. In all of these fables, the central theme is again being comfortable with who you are. Tan-Tan feeds Dry Bone while she grows weaker because she is convinced she deserves the hardship of carrying him. Once she realizes that she has done nothing to deserve him, she figures out a way to get rid of him. In the succoyant's case, she is so scared of growing old alone that she scares off the men who would be interested and resorts to killing children because she isn't comfortable enough with herself to wait for her man to show up. In the third story, the man is being given the ability to look past and make other people see past appearances to what truly is.

In addition to being in incredibly well written set of science fiction stories, this is almost an inspirational self-help book to people on the importance of being comfortable with who you are in order that you can be more comfortable with who everyone else is Hopkinson succeeds really well in making me think and hopefully it will have the same effect on others who read it.

Race and SF part 2 of??: Publishing (a.k.a. The Numbers Don't Lie)

In the comments for part 1 of my continuing discussion of this topic, Tiel mentioned the publishing companies and their reluctance to publish science fiction by non white writers. I feel that I should probably expand on this a little bit. Now, it just to happens that the volume of published science fiction by black writers is small enough for one person(me, in this case) to be aware of the vast majority of it. I noticed a very interesting trend that I mentioned on Steven Barnes' blog a while back and I figured I'd bring up here too.

Of the major SF publishing houses, exactly four have, to my knowledge, ever published something by a black author. They are

DAW
Charles Saunders

Del Rey
Minister Faust

Tor
Steven Barnes

Warner Aspect
Steven Barnes
Nalo Hopkinson
Walter Mosely
Octavia Butler
Levar Burton
The Dark Matter Anthologies

In other words, one SF publisher has published more black writers than all the other publishers combined. And this is without me stacking the deck and listing each of the writers in the two Dark Matter Anthologies by name (I might have to if Pam wants her name on the list). Also worth considering, DAW published the last Imaro book in 1985, which means they haven't published a black writer in 20 years.


Possible other reasons for this discrepancy besides race? You tell me.

Over on Steven Barnes' blog, he mentioned a while back that one of the most influential publishers in SF for a really long time was on record as stating that it was impossible for black people to create an advanced civilization. My guess, he wasn't the only one who thought that.

On the other hand, it is also impossible to discuss publishing without discussing the readers. Steve Barnes also mentioned that it is considered a publishing reality that a book with a black face on the cover will not sell as well as a book with a white face on the cover.

I'm guessing its a confluence of the fact that
(a) less time and money are spent promoting books by black writers because the publisher simply doesn't expect then to succeed anyway

(b) they get little, if any, shelf space at bookstores for the same reason

(c) Black faces/writers simply do not appeal to the majority white SF readership for reasons they aren't comfortable thinking about

For instance, I wonder what would have happened to Anansi Boys if the cover had been a picture of, say, Lenny Henry as Fat Charlie. My guess, it would still have sold well on the basis of the fact that Neil Gaiman is a celebrated white writer, but the picture would have found its way into conversations somehow.

No offence intended to Neil Gaiman at all, but the fact still remains that non-white characters created by white writers find acceptance to a greater degree than they do when written by non-white writers (also known in certain circles as the 'Spawn' effect)

I might end up talking about race and comic books (very similar dynamic and audience) since SB brought up the Tintin and Asterix comics

commentary on Jewel Gomez's The Gilda stories

Jewelle Gomez describes herself as an activist for gay rights, womans rights, race and environmental issues.“The Gilda Stories”1 is the first full length novel that she has written. This book is a very difficult one to characterize. It follows the life of Gilda, A black, bisexual female vampire through two centuries of living from slavery in 1850 to environmental devastation in 2050. In the course of Gilda's life, Gomez uses the settings she is placed in and the people she deals with to explore a variety of themes including race, sexuality, environmental destruction, power and its corrupting ability. What makes this book interesting is that, while the overall structure is definitely that of a novel, a majority of the chapters could conceivably be pulled out of the book and read as short stories by someone with no knowledge of the book. Each chapter is basically a snapshot of her life at a point the author thinks we will find interesting.

As usual with my analysis of these books, I start by taking a look at the way race is portrayed in this book. First of all, the only two people Gilda ever kills are both white men attempting to molest and kill her. The first is when she is a young girl on a plantation in 1850 when a man attempts to rape her and she stabs him, which is why she ends up leaving the plantation and becoming a vampire. The second is when she is attacked by two white men looking for a black person to beat up and, in her case, rape. Gilds deals with overt racism in the days when it is overt and less overt racism in the days when its covert. In addition, Gilda's stories mostly happen in predominantly black communities because that is the only place she will not be conspicuous. She works as a hairdresser, poet, and writer in black communities as one of the people. What this does is allow us to use her insights into her life and the people she lives with to gain a better understanding of the people in those communities and the lives they lead. Her black characters are people. Dancers, writers, poets, prostitutes, pimps, slaves etc. They are portrayed in a manner fitting the time period about which she is writing. However, she spends as much time examining issues within the black community as she does examining external racism. One of the biggest issues she mentions is what she considers to be the short-sightedness of a large part of the black liberation movement. Namely the fact that it failed to include the issues of other minority groups like women and homosexuals in the struggle for equality and, in doing so, hamstrung itself. This critique is made

Sexuality is another theme that receives a lot of attention in the book. This is not that surprising considering the fact that Gilda is bisexual. Throughout the book I never got the impression that Gilda was fully comfortable with her sexuality. There is one scene where she has sex with a woman and another one in which she is intimate with a man. For me, however, both of those scenes seemed very awkward as though Gilda could never fully accept herself sexually. In the one scene of lesbian sex in the book, Gilda is almost seduced. When she turns another woman into a vampire she is said to be feeling shame as well as desire. Its especially interesting because the book has a lot of prostitutes in it, from the whorehouse where Gilda lives for a while before her conversion to the prostitutes she services as a hairdresser. With few exceptions, the prostitutes are portrayed as sexually mature and confident women. They are shown as victims of manipulative people as well so its not as though she glamorizes them but they are definitely not written as helpless women but instead as mature women in control of their sexuality making the choices they need to in order to survive.

Another important topic that gets a lot of attention, especially at the end of the book, is the issue of the environment. It is also linked with a larger issue of power and its possibility for misuse. We become aware, the further we get into the future, that the world is slowly being destroyed by man to the point that it is almost unable to maintain human life. The reason this is happening, we re told, is human greed. Basically, the world's issues have been ignored in favor of profit to the point that the human race can't safely live on the planet. The poor must struggle to somehow afford passage to another planet where it is cleaner. The rich, on the other hand, employ Hunters, people trained and chemically enhanced to fight and kill vampires so their blood can be used to give immortality to the same rich, selfish people responsible for the state of the world in the first place. We already know Gilda is environmentally conscious because she leaves at the end of one of her stories to go work for a group of environmentalists but obviously they are unable to bring about the kind of change they are trying for. There are several other points in the book when the theme of the corrupting influence of power is fairly obvious. The book even makes us aware of the fact that there are vampires who, unlike Gilda, enjoy their power over people and use it to manipulate them and then shows us a couple of examples of power- mad vampires. One of whom , Eleanor, enjoys manipulating people and another, Fox, who enjoys inflicting pain because he can.

In the end, this book is really hard to characterize. Gilda is a very interesting, if greatly conflicted, character who serves to examine a wide range of social and personal issues for the character. In that sense it more than achieves its aim. However, it would have been nicer if Gilda hadn't been written as being so unsure of her own nature. Taking the time to create a character like Gilda and then saddling her with guilt both over the fact that she is a vampire and the fact that she is bisexual seems counterproductive to me. Despite that, it is still a great story.

Kwasi's thoughts on race and the genre of Science Fiction (part 1 of ?)

This post has been rattling around in the back of my head in a thousand different incarnations since pretty much when I started writing this blog, and yet it remains a difficult topic for me to speak on.

There are lots of reasons for this. Among them the simple fact of admitting to being a fan of a genre that, for the most part, either likes to pretend I don't exist or, on recognize that existence as something not worthy of even a minimal amount of respect (for an example of this, see 'Farnham's Freehold')

In my case, the issue takes on a certain amount of extra complexity when you consider that I'm from a place that simply doesn't exist to most SF writers. I can almost count the number of times I've ever seen an SF book reference Africa in any way. The only explicit reference to Ghana I can remember was in John Brunner's 'The Shockwave Rider' and that was as an example in a conversation. There are actually a couple of fairly popular military SF writers who I cannot read anymore because of how they handled Africa in an alien invasion series they co-wrote

So, by virtue of both the shade of my skin and where I was born I am virtually invisible to the perceived SF mainstream, which is overwhelmingly white, hetero, male and only interested in stories by and about other white hetero males. I suppose two out of three isn't bad. I say perceived because I suspect that the reality is that the demographics of the readership are significantly more diverse then the demographics of the people who get to decide what is published. Of course, I could be wrong here, but I doubt it.

Plus, on the occasions when I see something that does resemble me in an SF work, a decent majority of the time its done in such a way that it prevents me from enjoying the rest of the book.

Is it any wonder that this topic tends to be somewhat upsetting to most black SF fans? We literally have had to put aside parts of ourselves on occasion to still be here. That kind of thing takes its toll. And it makes writing even this much a chore. Hopefully with this out of the way, I'll be able to put together the next couple of pieces quickly.

commentary on Colson Whitehead's "The Intuitionist"

"The Intuitionist", Colson Whitehead's first published book, is a very interesting blend of genres from 'noir' detective stories to science fiction. It has been compared by several reviewers to Ralph Ellison's "The Invisible Man" and Toni Morrison's "The Bluest Eye" for the way he looks at and writes about race, one of the main themes of this book. The others include gender, man's reliance on machines and the battle of reason over instinct. While the book seems to be easily read, it contains layers and layers of subtext that address many different issues.

Set in an alternate New York City, the story follows a young black woman, Lila May Watson, the first black woman in the prestigious elevator inspectors guild, as she investigates what she believes to be the sabotage of her most prestigious elevator assignment. This case is made more interesting by the fact that she is an Intuitionist, a member of a controversial faction of the guild who intuitively detect the faults with an elevator instead of manually examining the equipment. The Intuitionists have a higher success rate than the Empiricists, who do things the old way. In the guild, Empiricists are the conservative old guard while Intuitionists are the liberals. Therefore, the fact that the only black female guild member is an Intuitionist with a perfect record works in their favor. Since this is an election year in the guild, with Chancre, the current president and an Empiricist, in serious danger of losing, the Empiricists aren't too sad about the failure of the elevator she inspected. In the process of her investigation, however she becomes aware of the existence of the 'black box', the perfect elevator designed by the founder of empiricism before his death and she becomes determined to find the plans for the black box before anyone else does.

The main characters in this world are all very complex and have several layers to their character and their actions. A good example of this is Pompey, the only other black person in the department and the first black elevator repairman ever. From the beginning we are made aware both of Pompey's hostility towards Lila May and his subservience to his white coworkers and superiors. This makes it easy to simply see him as an 'uncle tom' and move on and this is what Lila May originally does, going as far as to make him the prime suspect in the sabotage of her elevator, thinking that the Empiricists would find it funny to have one of the only two black people in the guild sabotage the other. However, she realizes that in resenting him back, she just furthers the status quo. We also find out what his true motivation is for laughing at racist jokes and sitting through minstrel shows pretending to be amused. He considers it a worthwhile sacrifice to move his family into a better neighborhood away from the crime in his. His frustration with her is partially directed at himself. He feels she should be grateful to him for the sacrifices he made to allow more black people in and at the same time he hates her for not serving them the way he does and thus calling into question his life choices.

Lila May is herself a very complex character. Unlike Pompey, she does not become a 'pet' black person in order to advance. What she does instead is to make herself into an almost emotionless machine. Her work record is spotless, she is always immaculately dressed and she is polite to a fault but she does only what is required of her, socializing with only one other inspector and living in a spartan apartment with no luxuries. She suffers from the double disadvantage of being black and a woman in a highly conservative world. Most of the black people we are shown are menial labourers while most of the women are either working or entertaining men. In order to be neither of these, she is willing to settle for being an invisible, highly efficient worker.

Another character I enjoyed exploring was James Fulton, the deceased inventor of Intuitionism and the 'black box' which everyone seems to me looking for. Among Intuitionists and elevator inspectors in general, he is revered as a visionary however they remain unaware of the fact that Fulton was in fact a black man. Fulton's mother was raped by a member of the white family whose house she cleaned and he grew up around black people before 'passing' in order to become an elevator inspector. His original idea in creating Intuitionism was as a joke that liberal members of the guild picked up as a truth. Later, it became a way to get people to think about looking beyond appearances at the soul of a person instead of at their skin. Unsurprisingly the first person to realize this is Lila May when she reads his books on Intuitionism after discovering that he was writing as a black person. What makes Fulton interesting is his way of fighting the system. Unlike Pompey who simply gives in or Lila May who accepts her role as an outsider, he chooses to poke fun at the system from within it and slowly change its ideology to one that is more racially tolerant.

Another interesting thing Whitehead does is contrast white liberal and conservative groups, as represented by the Intuitionists and Empiricists, in their treatment of black people. In his eyes, they all appear lacking. The Empiricists are generally more open in their dislike of black people. At several points in the book, they are open in their dislike of Lila May and call her and other black workers niggers to their faces. In a Party for Elevator inspectors organized by Chancre, a minstrel show receives the most enthusiastic response from the audience. The Intuitionists, on the other hand, seem more friendly to black people. They give Lila May an inspecting position in the most prominent new building in the city, which just happened to be named after a black actress and they appear to be very helpful in her search for the 'black box'. However, they also use her shamelessly as part of their election campaign to show how liberal they are, as if the fact that the only black female elevator inspector is also an Intuitionist makes them better than the Empiricists. Their 'help' also turns out to be little more than manipulation because Fulton's memoirs mention her name. In reality, they care about her about as much as the Empiricists but are more subtle about their prejudices. Ultimately, she has no one to depend on but herself.

Colson Whitehead's book, is an incredible achievement, especially since it is one of his first written works. It it is easy to see how comparisons were made to Ralph Ellison and Tini Morrison's masterpieces. It presents a series of incredibly interesting yet human characters with believable flaws and uses them to examine a whole myriad of issues in a very intelligent way. I will be very interested to see what he comes out with next.

Commentary on Walter Mosely's 'Futureland'

"Futureland: Nine Stories of an Imminent World" is Walter Mosley's second science fiction book. Unike the title suggests, it is not a series of unrelated short stories. Instead, all the stories share the same world and have common characters and locations. This makes the book more like a novel which looks at the lives of several different people in order to fully examine the world in which they live, a generation after this one. In doing so, Mosley covers a very wide range of issues and makes some scarily plausible predictions about the direction in which we are headed. In a little over three hundred and fifty pages, he looks at the future of race, gender, global capitalism, the media, civil liberties, the American obsession with beauty and a host of other topics. What really makes it disturbing to read is the fact that, especially after the September eleventh attacks, it is already possible to see some of his predictions beginning to happen.

Mosley's characters are also an incredibly diverse and unusual cast, especially for a science fiction novel. They include factory workers, criminals, the smartest person on the planet, the first female heavyweight boxing champion and a futuristic replacement for Easy Rawlins. Also, they are are representative of the underclass in the society. They usually represent the common, even more repressed, people who live in that world and it is through them that he makes us aware of the injustices of his brave new world.

The nine stories that make up "Futureland" are entitled "Whispers in the Dark", "The Greatest", "Doctor Kismet", "Angel's Island", "The Electric Eye", "Voices", "Little Brother", "En Masse" and "The Nig in Me". I am not going to deal with each story separately because they share similar themes, the same environment and sometimes the same characters. Because of this, it makes more sense to consider all of the stories as one large novel and deal with it in terms of characters and themes rather than revisit the same themes over and over again in a variety of different scenarios. Obviously, I cannot cover all the themes that show up in this book since it is incredibly dense in the issues it covers. However, some of these themes receive far more attention than others so the focus of this paper shall be narrowed somewhat to look mainly at what I consider to be the most important themes in the book. These will be race, global capitalism and civil liberties. All of these themes show up in almost every story and so it makes sense to spend the most amount of time dealing with them.

Obviously, I am going to start off taking a look at the way race is presented in "Futureland". The very first story in the book, "Whispers in the Dark", gives us a very apt idea of what Mosley considers the fate of black people to be a generation from now. Namely, still an underclass. In the story, the smartest human being alive, Ptolemy Bent is born to a family too poor to afford the kind of education required by the state for someone of his intelligence. In order to keep him from being taken away, his uncle,Chill, a convict with no job prospects, is forced to sell several of his body parts ,including his eyes, spine, and penis, in order to keep the family together. According to Mosley, in their community this has become the norm for people desperate for money. In "Angel's Island", we see the inside of private-owned maximum security prison where, as usual, a majority of the inmates are people of color. In "The Electric Eye", we are introducet to Folio Johnson, the futuristic replacement for Easy Rawlins. We are also introduced to the International Socialists, a modern day version of the Nazi party who do not allow Jews in their party because "Zionism is incompatible with social evolution" . Later on in that story and in "En Masse" and "The Nig in Me", we are made aware of their plot to crate a race specific virus targetting black people. However, the virus mutates and instead kills everyone who is not at least 12.5 precent black. This solves nothing, however, as groups of 'white' looking survivors, hispanics and black survivors begin to fight each other showing that there is no easy answer to the question of race. As you can see from the title of his last story, the word 'nigger' has been shortened to 'nig' but still maintains all of the controversy about its use that it has now.

Capitalism and Globalization are two other concepts that show up in virtually every story. Curiously, Mosley chooses to call his Nazis socialists which indicates to me that he is not advocating any kind of socialist revolution. Instead he is just pointing out issues with the current system of capitalism in use pretty much everywhere and the direction in which it is going. One of the new concepts he introduces is the concept of companies having achieved sovereign status. The company he uses to illustrate this concept is Macrocode International,the largest company on the planet, which turns up in almost every one if his stories. In "Doctor Kismet", we are shown the sovereign island state that doubles as Macrocode's headquarters and we are introduced to its leader, Dr. Kismet. We also learn that the fastest growing religion on the planet is actually a Macrocode company. In "The Electric Eye", we find out that a branch of Macrocode is helping develop a virus targeted at black people. We also find out that there are only five independent restaurants in the whole of New York. All the others are members of one franchise or the other. Therefore, corporations have virtually wiped out independent traders. In "Little Brother" a follower of Infochurch, the Macrocode religion, is unwittingly used as a guinea pig to to test a Macrocode designed automated justice system for poor people. In "En Masse", we are given a very grim view of the life of the future worker. People are treated like machines and their every action monitored. Any kind of individuality or human contact is punished. Even hugging your spouse could violate sexual harassment policies. A lack of a job means a person goes into government sponsored housing and becomes a 'backgrounder', eating and sleeping in shifts to conserve space while having almost no hope of getting a job and returning to a normal life. In his world, the corporations legally control the people who work for them. Considering what I know of modern corporate America, it is not hard to see where these predictions come from nor is it hard to believe in their plausibility.

The final theme I choose to examine is that of civil liberties. Already, since September, there have been several attempts by the government to gain more control of its citizens at the expense of their constitutional rights. In "Futureland", this has been taken several very frightening steps further. The convicts in "Angel's Island"have had their constitutional rights legally revoked for the period of time that they are prisoners meaning that the prisons are the final judges of their fate. In this case they are all used as slave labor on a plantation. All citizens are implanted with tracking chips to make it easier for the police to keep track of their activities and the cities are patrolled by little spy cameras called 'nosers' which, like the video cameras going up everywhere today, keep tabs on people. It is also required that newspapers publish the names of anyone with a criminal conviction so employers can be sure the people they are hiring are not criminals. Again, these scenarios are a little too frighteningly possible, especially seeing how everyone is trying to cash in on the increased sense of vulnerability in this country following 9-11.

What makes this book so unsettling is how immediately possible it is. Mosley proposes very little that is truly revolutionary. Most of what he does propose is easily a very short step away from the world we live in now, which is incredibly scary. With luck this book will never come any closer to reality than it is now but I'm generally cynical when it comes to human nature so I'm not holding my breath.

commentary on Octavia Butler's 'Bloodchild'

"Bloodchild and Other Stories" is a collection of five short stories and two essays. The title story "Bloodchild" has won her several awards since it was first published including the Hugo and Nebula awards, which are the equivalent of Pulitzers to Science Fiction writers. It is a heavily reviewed and analyzed work. The other four works are titled "The Evening, The Morning and The Night", "Near of Kin" "Speech Sounds" and "Crossover". All of these stories in one way or another deal with the dynamics of human interaction. "Crossover" and "Near of Kin" may not necessarily be considered Science Fiction stories. They fall more into the category of dramatic writing and have little in the way of Science Fiction elements in the way they are written. They are still incredibly good stories. Overall, there seems to be an air of pessimism that clings to her writing as though she expects very little of people especially in the way we interact with each other. This holds especially true for her depiction of relationships between men and women where the relationships invariably involve the woman being powerless and making the sacrifices in the relationship.

Octavia Butler is considered by many to be, along with Samuel R. Delany, the first generation of black science fiction writers. She is also considered a very important back feminist writer in some circles. Generally, all of her works that I have come across tend to contain elements that examine the power dynamics resulting involved in race and gender. Her best known works are "Kindred" and the "Parable" series of books comprising "Parable of the Sower" and "Parable of the Talents". These works deal a lot with themes of race and its scars on American society, gender roles and their associated power dynamics as well as numerous issues of social exploitation and the way human beings tend to relate to each other. I chose not to read any of those for several reasons. Firstly, I had already read them and didn't see the point in rereading works I already knew. Secondly, everyone reads those books. It made more sense for me to look to one of her less known but still respected works and maybe contribute, probably in a very minimal way, to the body of knowledge surrounding her works. There was also the fact that "Bloodchild" is her only collection of short stories and as such it would cover a wider range of topics than any one of her novels. Finally, I just like reading short stories so that book was more appealing to me.

The first story in this compilation is "Bloodchild", probably her most famous short story. The story takes a look at a group of humans forced to leave Earth for reasons that are never made clear. They are taken in by an alien race that keeps them in a 'Preserve' then uses them, primarily the males, to incubate their young in a process very similar to pregnancy and childbirth. The central character in this story is Gan, a young man coming of age who has been promised to the alien 'protector' of his family. The story focuses on several things simultaneously. On one hand, it is Butler's pregnant man' story about a man choosing to carry children out of love in a unequal relationship. Gan chooses, in the end, to not kill himself or his protector but instead to allow her to, in an almost sexual scene, implant her eggs in him. He does partly to protect his family and partly because he cant stand the thought of her being that intimate with someone else. On the other hand, it is a story about power dynamics between two different races where one has the power to dictate the terms under which the other shall live. The humans live a life slightly better than that of livestock where they are denied access to weapons and anything else the aliens feel they shouldn't have, can't leave their 'Preserve' and have to give up their children to act as incubators for alien children. In the end it is a truly disturbing story.

The next story in the collection is " The Evening, The Morning and The Night". This story deals with the experiences of a girl, who remains unnamed, born with Duryea-Gode disease. This is a fictional disease that causes a person to go crazy and attempt to dig their way out of their own skins, usually injuring themselves and people around them. As a result of how dangerous they are, they are forced to wear tags declaring they have the disease and are discriminated against and avoided by general society. She finds out in college that because both of her parents had the disease, she has pheromones which allow her to influence people afflicted with her condition. Butler's description of what her character goes through seems like it was taken from her experiences in college. All the college students with the disease are ignored and harassed by their fellow 'normal' students. A brilliant student talks about the fact that his genes will probably keep him from being accepted to medical school. They live as pariahs in a society that fears them. This kind of reaction plus their knowledge of impending death turns them into a group of very focused students and very productive citizens. The point of this , says Butler herself, is to examine how a person's genes can affect the path they choose to take in life. The other interesting point about this story is Butler's creation of a special group of women, a matriarchy of her own design, who tend to the sick in their community and who, ultimately, everyone in the community comes to rely on.

The third story in this volume is entitled "Near of Kin" I can't really characterize it as a science fiction story. It is more of a contemporary fiction story which focuses heavily on human relationships. As usual, Butler take on human relationships is more than a little cynical. The entire story revolves around a discussion between a young woman, also unnamed, and her uncle when she comes back home to bury her estranged mother. The conversation for the most part deals with her relationship with her mother. For the most part, she feels that the only reason her mother had her was to prove that she was fertile after she had miscarried four times. Later in the story it is revealed that she is actually the product of an incestuous relationship between her mother and her uncle and that the reason her mother avoided her may have been guilt over her conception. Since he mother is dead, all we have are two differing opinions on a very dysfunctional relationship. The daughter, who is hurt and bitter at being cast away, and the uncle, who still loves his sister and insists on her goodness. The relationship between the daughter/niece and the father/uncle is probably the most stable of those portrayed in the book all which isn't saying that much. They are both unsure of how to behave around each other because of the fact that their relationship is so unclear. Butler calls this her sympathetic incest story I find it sad that there is very little in the way of redeeming human relationships in the story.

"Speech Sounds" is the title of the next story. It is a grim story of a world where a strange new disease has either killed people or taken away their language ability to some degree. Some people are more affected than others but the disease hits men the hardest. The protagonist of this story, a woman named Valerie Rye, retains her ability to speak and understand spoken language, a fact she hides from the rest of the world for her own safety. In the course of the story she meets a man she calls 'Obsidian' who retains his ability read and write and continues to lead a life as an LAPD officer despite the fact that all law and order has vanished. This story is used to examine a number of themes. Among them is the idea of how little removed human society is from savagery and lawlessness and how much violence is caused by people's envy of each other's position. Rye is forced to conceal her ability to speak since it will probably get her killed. When she first finds out about Obsidian's ability to read, she initially feels jealousy and hatred. He is also initially envious after he finds out that she can speak and these are the two most sane people we are shown in the story. All the other men in the story are, for the most part, violent and irrational. All the other women in the story are basically trying to survive and willing to take any man who will have them because of the shortage of men. We see Rye court Obsidian in order to get him to stay with her. She knows he probably wont stay for long but she is willing to have him for as long as he wants because he is better than most of the men she's met. In the end, the story is another incredibly well written but pessimistic look at human relations.

The final story in this compilation is entitled "Crossover" which, incidentally, is one of the first short stories she ever sold. It is another that doesn't really qualify as a science fiction story. Its more of a story of the person she was afraid she would become if she didn't become a writer. In that way, I suppose it could qualify as an alternate history. The main character is another unnamed woman. She has a dead end job in a factory which she hates and lives in constant fear of loneliness and death. She plans to kill herself but is too scared of dying to do it. As a result of a disfigurement, she suffers from serious self esteem problems and does not consider herself to be worth the man she has so she drives him away. In the end of this story we see her behavior getting even more self destructive. Butler says in her commentary on this story that the fear of becoming someone like this is what kept her writing when she worked under similar circumstance. It makes it easier for you to understand the focus that turned her into one of the best science fiction writers of our time.

One could get the idea from my opinions of the stories that I don't like them. On the contrary, I think they are incredible, if cynical, examinations of human power dynamics. While they are kind of depressing in their conclusions on the fate of humanity in general, they are also hopeful that there might be a change in the way we treat each other.

Slight shift in schedule

I started writing the Race and SF post, but found myself overwhelmed by all I wanted to talk about and caught up in the wide range of possible directions I could take the post in.

There was also a little more anger than I expected. I'm going to attempt to refine what I have and give it focus in my free time tomorrow.

In the meantime, I Figured I'd keep my word to a couple of people, including Pam, and put up something from a series of papers I wrote in my senior year of college as part of a privatereading I took examining black science fiction. Basically I reviewed a series of books and discussed the issues they adressed, then used them all together to write a paper on the varied ways they all tended to deal with the issue of race and other important themes.

The books were(in no real order)

'Bloodchild and other stories' - Octavia Butler
'The Intuitionist' - Colson Whitehead
'Lion's Blood' - Steven Barnes
'Skin Folk' - Nalo Hopkinson
'The Gilda Stories' - Jewelle Gomez
'Futureland: Nine Stories of an Imminent Future' - Walter Mosely

I'll probably put up a new essay every couple of days until they are all up. I hope you find them interesting