i keep saying i'll have more cogent things to say about this, but till then...

[fictional]

Check out deepad's post, I Didn't Dream of Dragons, a thoughtful, lucid, poignant essay on race and reading fantasy.

Excerpt from my comment:

But here is my problem, and that problem is love. Brought up on a steady diet of white fantasy and British boarding school novels, now, even when I can identify the alienation imposed by them -- these are stories by people who think of me as sub-human -- I still love them. They are still the fabric of my childhood, the patterns of my inner landscape. It's like Stockholm Syndrome.

And I still don't know what to do with that? How does one cope with the politics of desire?

Comments

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[keith418.livejournal.com]

I guess my confusion stems from the fact that each time I open the NYRoB or the New Yorker, there's a new piece about or by some amazing Third World or immigrant female novelist. If it's not a new author it's a piece about rediscovering an older one. Given that this is the case, I have a hard time understanding who is supposed to be invested in these folks if not the very people who come from these backgrounds or see the problems with just consuming colonialist culture. Who is this stuff to be for? White men in Europe and America? That makes no sense. Does Zadie Smith just suck compared to Enid Blyton? If she does, who is rhapsodizing about Zadie in literary magazines and who is all invested in Isabel Allende's books?

I don't like kale, either.

[gement.livejournal.com]

As another person who fits the demographic of "amazingly intelligent and well-educated woman," and the recent recipient of a master's degree in librarianship, I find literary fiction actively boring. It's not that I can't understand it or that I don't think it has value in helping people get inside each others' cultural skins.

It's that no one can live forever or fly, and really, I just have trouble getting into media where no one can live forever or fly. Or die nobly, sometimes that'll overcome the lack of actual superpowers.

I only have so much time to read in my lifetime. I'm not going to spend it on things I find actively boring. If I want me some queer/minority/female/subversive viewpoints, I'll go for Ursula LeGuin or Octavia Butler. They have minority viewpoints and psychics.

I've spent a lot of my life learning to own my reading desires, which is what this post was about. The impression I take from your comments is that we should start eating our literary vegetables for the good of the world.

"Who is this stuff to be for? White men in Europe and America?"

You ask this rhetorically, as if the answer is obviously going to be no, and it will be up to members of minority groups who already have a vested interest to keep these books in print. There's a subtle and insulting implication here, that these stories wouldn't be interesting enough to stand on their own merit without special interest group readers propping them up.

I know a number of white men who love reading lit fic. And women, and transgender mixed-race furries. But it's a taste for lit fic they have in common, not a background. Mostly they read it to get under the skins of people who aren't like themselves. So yes, the white men would be totally into getting under the skin of a woman from Zimbabwe.

I'll be over here, getting under the skin of Bigby Wolf, the modern private detective incarnation of the villain from the Three Little Pigs and Red Riding Hood. (Check out Fables sometime, it's awesome.)

Re: I don't like kale, either.

[kalichan.livejournal.com]

*grins* My partner would agree with you completely. When he wakes up, I am totally going to read your comment to him, and he will be thrilled! I partially agree (i.e. I *do* like kale, and sometimes lit fic, but never for the "it really happened factor," which I too find actively boring. I however can be seduced by aesthetics, style, and rollicking good yarn-ness, and people to fall in love with, even if they have no wings. Or psychic powers. although that would probably make them better.)

Also, Fables is pretty awesome. Stories about stories are pretty much my favorite kind.

Re: I don't like kale, either.

[gement.livejournal.com]

I however can be seduced by aesthetics, style, and rollicking good yarn-ness, and people to fall in love with, even if they have no wings. Or psychic powers. although that would probably make them better.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time got past my fairly stringent filters on non-supernatural fiction. As did Kavalier and Clay, though I found myself exhausted by the end of it and had that lit fic taste in my mouth. ;) Both stories about very self-conscious storytellers (that is, conscious of the fact they are telling a story.) What a coincidence.

Re: I don't like kale, either.

[thaddeusfavour.livejournal.com]

::claps:: You said what I was unable to properly verbalize. Very erudite and exactly right.

Re: I don't like kale, either.

[hofnarr.livejournal.com]

She's right, i do love it. Well put and i agree whole hearted-ly.

Re: I don't like kale, either.

[stardragonca.livejournal.com]

No entry without Homer, suckers!

Eating our literary vegetables for the good of the world.

[stardragonca.livejournal.com]

This whole attitude is the Imperial shock troops of the mercantile belief that reading(and indeed learning) for pleasure, rather than for utility, is Evil and Wrong.
It comes from the Puritan error, that holds we should only eat to live, we must not live to eat. Which is why the British overthrew the Puritan buggers, and swore to Heaven that they would never, never,never, never, never, be ruled by them again.
You can argue with me, Slick, but you can't argue with History's superior artillery...
*sticks out tongue,touches thumbs to ears and waggles fingers,while making a rude, I said while making a rude, yes while making a rude noise*