May 11th, 2009
by
Liz Henry
This is just a quick pointer to RaceFail or MammothFail ’09, which is a discussion of Patricia Wrede’s recent alternate history of North America in which there were no Native Americans, that I think started with Lois McMaster Bujold’s comments to Jo Walton’s review of Thirteenth Child on tor.com.
Epic thread on fiction-theory in which Bujold doesn’t actually apologize and is at first piling fail upon fail, but then thanks everyone for their comments and explanations , says she is horrified at having offended so many people, was ignorant, and must go off to think:
I am horrified that so many very good readers’ feelings are hurt, and deeply sorry for it, but since I haven’t yet figured out how to open my mouth without doing yet more damage, I think it much better that I just shut up and listen for a good long time.
The Racefail Bingo card — which is brilliant — was just brought to my attention last night. I have far too many counters down on the squares already, and it’s not a game I wish to win. I do not think I would enjoy the prize.
bests, Lois.
I thought unusualmusic summed up a lot of people’s reactions very well in hers: (first quoting Bujold’s comment in italics, then answering)
The other and more hopeful point is that never before have so many Readers of Color existed to *have* the conversation, or been able to communicate with each other to do so. When I went to my first midwestern convention in 1968, there was exactly one black fan, male; it’s only in late years that I’ve had cause to wonder how brave he must have been to venture in.
Lady, I’ll thank you to refrain from making such damn fool assumptions on the basis of your very limited experience. My father was reading scifi in the 1940s and I grew up devouring his collection of scifi from the 50s, 60s, 70, and 80s. And those books he did have were only a fraction of the tons he once had and gave away during a move.I read books that were so goddamn old that they were brown and some of their pages were flaking. The books were goddamned coming apart, he’s had them so long and he only stopped reading them in the 90′s when he said that the new crop of books were boring. And he’s from the goddamn Third World. Yes, I know its astonishing, but they actually sell books there. Different genres of books, even! As for the rest of your reply, all I’ll say is that I read many of the results of white people explicitly or implicitly clearing the earth/universe of non-whites so that they could have their fun. I didn’t like it then, and I sure as hell am not going to accept that fuckitude now.
I have certainly noticed many works of SF in which futures or alternate histories just kind of kill off all of Africa presumably because it was just too inconvenient to have to learn anything about it in order to write something interesting. I stay on the watch for it… Oh what a coincidence, another future where Africa just happens to be totally gone… *eyeroll*
naraht has a very good link list if you want to look at what’s been said so far in the extended discussions.
I haven’t been able to keep up with it, or comment much, being very swamped with work and Life at the moment, but I wanted to make sure FSF readers know about all the posts that continue to critique fandom, sf publishing, cons, and the culture in general for disappearing people of color in its stories, and disappearing fans of color as Bujold did in her commentary on Wrede’s book.
Meanwhile, in the RaceWin09 category, delux_vivens asks for a PoC fandom roll call on LJ’s deadbrowalking community, and is answered in over 6 pages of responses from fans of color.
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Liz Henry at
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Filed under Books & Literature, Criticism & Scholarship, Publishing, Race & Racism | Comments (6)
This is the response I put up, both at my LJ and at the Tor website to this ridiculous thought.
Love, C.
Thank you so much for posting this. I’m still going through the discussion, and the links, but I am so glad that this post brought the conversation to my attention.
[...] Source:MammothFail ‘09 [...]
I could be missing something here, but what’s wrong with the concept of an alternate history where the Americas weren’t colonized until very recently? It’s certainly an interesting idea (although Australia would have been more so, given its awesome extinct fauna. Megalania ftw!)…
I could be missing something here, but what’s wrong with the concept of an alternate history where [all the original colonisers from Asia were eaten on arrival]?
Goodness, I don’t know: what is wrong with killing off the Indians en masse because you want to write a story in which the US history of genoicide did not exist – by eliminating the victims of the genocide before the white settlers arrived?
[...] Two succinct summaries: The Angry Black Woman has A (Slightly Different) Call for Creativity. Liz Henry of Feminist SF – The Blog! has MammothFail ‘09 [...]