April 16th, 2007
by
the angry black woman
A few weeks ago I finished reading China Mieville’s Un Lun Dun and I’ve been struggling to articulate why I like it so much. It’s partly because I’m so sick of the clichéd elements I find in much of the YA I read that it’s refreshing to read a book that doesn’t contain any of them. A major part of that was the characterization of two of the book’s main characters, Zanna and Deeba.
One of the things I really like about Zanna and Deeba is that they are normal girls. They have a clique of friends, but that clique doesn’t appear to involve a lot of cattyness toward each other or toward other kids in school. They aren’t bonded together by the fact that they’re outcasts or nerds or popular or upper class. They’re just a group of girls who like each other (mostly).
Zanna is described thusly:
There was something about Zanna that drew attention. She was decent-to-good at things like sports, schoolwork, dancing, whatever, but that wasn’t it: she did well enough to do well, but never enough to stand out. She was tall and striking, but never played that up, either: if anything, she seemed to try to stay in the background. But she never quite could. If she hadn’t been easy to get on with, that could have caused trouble.
For me, this is an extremely welcome relief from YA characters that are painfully (and boringly) super outcasts or omni-competent. And it’s particularly nice to see a view of interactions between young girls that does not promote the false notion that all girls are universally mean to each other, shallow, and self-centered.
There are other aspects of the book to love, of course. I just have a serious pet peeve when it comes to this particular cliché. Whenever I find an author who bucks the trend, I celebrate. (And curse those who perpetuate it even more!)
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Filed under Books & Literature, Criticism & Scholarship, female characters | Comment (1)
[...] The Prophet of Yonwood at Active Voice, and the angry black woman writes about the importance of “Normal Girls Who Do Extraordinary Things” at Feminist SF – The [...]