I Heart YA #2 Who's Your Freak?

 So, I'm jumping on this Blog Carnival train, since it looks like fun.  And I need something to remind me that YA is awesome, when the rest of my life is going to be Middle Welsh (*urgh*).
So, I haven't been into vampires since I was twelve.  When I was twelve, I was very into vampires, not YA vampires all that much (though I will admit to a weakness for LJ Smith) but Old Vampires.  The ones that went to a party and decapitated everyone, then cut off their lips and set the heads in a window so that the passers-by would think they were laughing.  I read Carmilla and Christobel, where vampirism was the embodiment of a possessive, homo-erotic, feminine sexuality.  Why wouldn't  have been into vampires?  *grin*But I'm not into vampires anymore.  They're so Slavic, and I'm into Celtic and Sanskrit these days (re: Middle Welsh).
One of my favorite creatures is the Yogini.  She is described as a messenger from the gods, bringing their gifts of Soma to the Siddha petitioners.  Exchanging bodily fluids for the gift of flight.  But sometimes, she's not so kind and dutiful.  Sometimes she's a goddess in her own right, accepting blood sacrifice, bringing disease and death.  Sometimes she is a bird and sometimes a snake, but always a woman, and always more dangerous than you expect.
But, of course, I am a Celticist as well.  And although I get a little ragey when people talk about Druids as some secret cult and not as a politically savvy upper-class, I still have a deep affection for the Sidhe.  Nothing, though, will ever compare with Susanna Clarke's depiction of the dance at Lost Hope, the utter strangeness of a different world, the sense of beauty, so foreign from our own, and yet not foreign, the ball gown the color of rainstorms and thunder and mist.
My own Sidhe are much more normal, I suppose.  They are interested in science, in the same way humans are interested in magic, for their own ends.  To them, humans are animals, merely meat.  Their bloodlines increase in strength and power the more singular and less diffuse they are, so marrying sisters and uncles is only to be expected.  They are transfixed by a song or a poem, but find human arts crude and primitive.  They are beautiful, like an ice sculpture, but utterly inhuman.  Don't try to reach out and touch.  They won't ever let you go.

Arthur Rackham

Diversity in YA...?

Lo and behold, the semester has started again, and I'm running hard from the things I should be studying, and looking for the things I want to know.  One of the problems with Linguistics is that in its obsession with modeling reality, it can forget that what it needs to do first is look at reality, and strip away all of the lies, and find the bones that lie underneath.  If we're talking about the whole world, language is one of these bones, language as it is used.

Sometimes, we come across something beautiful, built from language as it is used, and showing us the world in the way it is rarely seen.  One of the classes I'm taking is on Judith Butler, critical theory and all that jazz, but theory is inextricably bound up with politics, and our first reading Queer and Then? really reminded me of the reason that critical theory isn't literary theory, because its subject isn't literature, it's reality.

In the article, Michael Warner quotes a passage by Zoe Leonard.

I want a dyke for president.  I want a person with aids for president and I want a fag for vice president and I want someone with no health insurance and I want someone who grew up in a place where the earth is so saturated with toxic waste that they didn't have a choice about getting leukemia. I want a president that had an abortion at sixteen and I want a candidate who isn't the lesser of two evils and I want a president who lost their last lover to aids, who still sees that in their eyes every time they lay down to rest, who held their lover in their arms and knew they were dying. I want a president with no airconditioning, a president who has stood on line at the clinic, at the dmv, at the welfare office and has been unemployed and layed off and sexually harassed and gaybashed and deported. I want someone who has spent the night in the tombs and had a cross burned on their lawn and survived rape. I want someone who has been in love and been hurt, who respects sex, who has made mistakes and learned from them. I want a Black woman for president. I want someone with bad teeth and an attitude, someone who has eaten that nasty hospital food, someone who crossdresses and has done drugs and been in therapy. I want someone who has committed civil disobedience. And I want to know why this isn't possible. I want to know why we started learning somewhere down the line that a president is always a clown: always a john and never a hooker. Always a boss and never a worker, always a liar, always a thief and never caught.

Of course this is a powerful piece about minorities and the disenfranchised, but it got me thinking about diversity in YA, and why 'diversity' is pretty much a meaningless word to so many people.  If I were going to say what I think is our real goal with putting diversity into YA, I'd say that this is what we want.


I want a dyke in my YA novel, I want a person with aids in it too, I want the heroes for my children to be people who have known pain and suffering, people who have lost everything, and yet are looking for a way to do good in the world.  I want to not have to watch only middle class white kids fall in love and live happily ever after.  I want my fiction to be aware that the first world ends when we turn our backs.  I want to be allowed to imagine a future that is better than the past, not worse, and I want to believe that it can be real.  I want to give kids hope, but hope only shows up in the darkness.


And the truth is, it's not enough.  Hope isn't enough, showing people that there is a different way isn't enough.  But showing people the way the world works, in all its ugliness, may inspire a change in attitude that will influence those tiny every day actions that can poison the world or save it.  And maybe it can go viral, each positive act building a wave and creating a change much more vast than any one person can do alone.


Diversity in YA is about reality.  And reality is a punch in the gut.

Road Trip Wednesday #113 "Pseudonyms"

Pseudonyms have always been something I worried about, since I have one of those unfortunately impossible to pronounce names.  I'll always remember the first day of senior year in High School, where I was taking 9 classes, and in every single one, the teacher started out by reading role, and would always get about 1/4 of the way down the list and start something like "kei-ruh dee..." and then give up, and I would raise my hand.  "That's me."  They'd ask me how to say it.  "Car-a (the low back 'a,' like in "Car") Dee-juh-ral-uh-moe."  Then they would blink at me in astonishment.  By the time the ninth class rolled around I as so exhausted and tired of this farce that when my last teacher looked at my name and looked pale, I started in on giving the pronunciation, and messed it up.  I had forgotten how to pronounce my own name, after so many people butchered it.

(Why don't we effing teach IPA in school?  We are a mixed society!  We have names from all over the place!  Make everyone learn IPA and this won't HAPPEN.)

So the problem with taking a pseudonym is two-fold.  1) it seems like it's capitulating to the lack of education in this country, and 2) it's an identity thing.  It's like when I went vegetarian and still ate fish, because I come from a family of fishermen, and not eating their catch would be violating my own family's identity.

I mean, I'm probably going to be publishing academic papers and such under my real name, (since it doesn't matter if you can pronounce an academic's name, and my entire field knows IPA), so if I'm writing books about princesses and such as well, (well, actually I'd really enjoy it if they were connected, since I'm not ashamed of either thing), it might be better for my professional standing if I had a pseudonym.  I could use my mother's maiden name, my middle name, (where the M. comes from), but it's a very... Anglo-Dutch name, and the fact is, Mediterranean genes are stronger than Northern European ones, and Mediterranean culture is too.  So the truth is, I don't want a pseudonym.

But the question wasn't whether you wanted one or not.  It was what would it be.  So, my choice?

C. Digger (suggested by cousin)

It sucks pants, but it's still my name, sort of.  And that's important to me, because I want to be able to eventually give some people in my family a book with my name on it, not anyone else's.  After that, changing genres, or other issues, sure, I'll think about it again.  But I want that first one to be mine.

EDIT:  Okay, everyone else is having a lot more fun with this!  Colin Smith used an anagram, which is really awesome.  I've decided that if I need one, I should have the pseudonym

Marid Alicoroga - "the jinni who asks for garlic"

This does not improve pronounceability though.

Review: A Love Story Starring My Dead Best Friend

A Love Story Starring My Dead Best Friend by Emily Horner

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


You know, one of the reasons I have a hard time with YA contemporary novels, (and paranormal romance), is that I can't find anything in the characters to relate to. The first one I read where I didn't entirely feel that way was Dairy Queen, since I got the sports, I got the working hard. But this book is the first one where it was like, "oh, you got it right. You got me right." And maybe none of the 'events' ever happened to me, In HS i never had a friend die, never got a girlfriend, never went on a cross-country bike trip. But the little things did. Spend too long in the basement working on sets? Check. Never quite got how gender identity was supposed to work? Check. Produced horrific productions with friends? Check. Mathletics? Plead the 5th. Spent so much time doubting that I actually had real friends that by the time I worked it out I had already left?



So in the much maligned (by me) genre of YA contemps, this book finally did all the things it was supposed to do. I'm never going to love the genre. HS and MS are not really times I'm desperate to revisit. But thank god there's finally a book that REPRESENTS! Thanks Emily Horner. I owe you one.



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Doomsday Book by Connie Willis

Doomsday Book by Connie Willis

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I read this book with the worst cover in the world.   I had the choice, at my used bookstore, to pick between the plain white with medieval style lettering cover and a cover that looked like a fantasy romance. A beautiful blonde girl with a gold fillet and starry eyes adorned the cover, and below her a handsome dark haired man on a powerful steed smiled at the audience. In the corner a guy sat at the computer and two people in white lab coats pointed at a helix of DNA. Essentially, it shouted BODICE RIPPER, with maybe some swordfights and some sci fi, possibly?



Ha ha ha. Nope.



Even though I had read Connie Willis before, that cover still shook my expectations, and when the breaks came off, I was unprepared, and the revelations hit like a punch in the stomach.



Doomsday Book is vicious and beautiful and hilarious. And Connie Willis is an incredible writer. But be prepared:



1) Yes, there's time travel, it's not flashy. Yes, the book is sort of set in the future, but it is not our future (we would be lucky if it were). There are no cell phones and no internet. And it's so much more interesting because of that. It's a world where cutting edge historical research is going on at Oxford. It is a world that values the past.



2) This is not an adventure story. No one saves the world. No one falls madly in love. People do their jobs, and get into snits, and argue, and protest, and get sick, and ring bells. This is a good thing! Every single character is unfailingly, unflaggingly real. And Kivrin, with her innocent and selfish confidence, grows up, even if she wishes she didn't.



3) This is a book about disease. If the madness of horror of quarantine and epidemic, the search for the source of a mutating virus, and intradepartmental politics don't interest you, go away. Also, it's about the stupid things that people worry about when they have no power. Sometimes, that's lavatory paper.



Being an academic brat, and someone who has a fierce faith in the importance of history, this book hit all the right buttons. This isn't an adventure story, or a romantic story. It is, in fact, the least romantic story I've ever read. But above all it is a story about people, and how they keep on living their lives, doing their work, playing their roles, doing the right thing or the wrong thing, sticking to their bells, or turning on others, even under dire circumstances. If you're not interested in people, don't read it. But if you are, go ahead, you're in for a wild ride. :D



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RTW #111 - Top Five Favorites of 2011

This Week's Topic

We're combining today's RTW with Highwayer Sarah Enni's End-of-the-Year blog carnival, and asking:
What were your top five favorite books of 2011? 

Man, these questions are always really difficult, because my years are still school-years, and the actual year-end comes smack in the middle of things.  It's really hard to remember back and try to figure out when I read what.  I was hoping Goodreads would help with this, but apparently I'm not good at remembering to mark down when I read a book.  I will do my best.

Thrones, Dominations

First year of grad school, I was desperately stressed.  I hated a large portion of my classes, I was bored, annoyed, too busy to do anything interesting, feeling like I wasn't going anywhere at all.  And that was when I discovered Dorothy Sayers.  I don't even quite remember how, except that I was so bored of podfics, and I needed an audiobook to listen to while I was cooking, and I needed it right then.  And lo, and behold, Whose Body? was up on LibriVox.

I read them all.  By the time I got on the bus to head back home for break, Clouds of Witness was loaded up on my iPod, and I listened to it for eight hours straight.  When I was completely a mess because one of my fellow grad-students was being crazy and terrifying and stalky, I was reading Gaudy Night (also about crazy stalky academics, but these ones at Oxford).  And after Christmas, when I read Busman's Honeymoon, I was so sad, because that was all there was.

I always approach postmortem books with trepidation, and it was a while before I dared to read Jill Patton Walsh's execution of Dorothy Sayers' notes, but when I did I was so glad I had.  She pulls it off, with all the charm and the horror required. 

To Say Nothing of the Dog

I had just started reading the Book View Cafe when this book started popping up on my radar, over and over again, with people praising its humor, its smarts.  I can't really count it, since I read it in October, but I can count Blackout, by the same author, which was just as excellent, though much darker.  I'm leaving this cover up though, because this is where you should start.

If you're looking for a funny, tongue-in-cheek, time-travel tale, full of cats and dogs and Victorian furniture (with plenty of intertextuality, especially to Dorothy Sayers) read it!

Medicus

Finally!  One that was solidly in 2011!  But, of course, I already talked a bit about this earlier on the blog, so I won't repeat myself.  But it's so incredibly awesome.  Read it!

The Warrior's Apprentice

Another borderline book.  What can I say, I read a ton of books last Christmas that were awesome.  I have distinct memories of reading it while I was home, so I might not have finished it until after New Years, maybe.  But again, this is a series of awesome!  And I think this book is a great place to start.  In fact, for your YA readers who are bored of romance and high school and really want to have an adventure, with space ships and mercenaries and strange planets with incredible cultures, give them this!  Fast and funny, with one of the best main characters ever, there's nothing better, except the sequels!

French Fried

And for something a little different - wait, just because it's a memoir doesn't mean it's any different.  This is just as fast and funny, a crazy tale of improbably true occurrences.  It's a quick, laugh out loud read.  If you're lonely and longing for just a little more James Herriot or Bill Bryson, this book is in that hilarious vein.

I recommend all of these books unreservedly!  Happy Reading!

RTW #110: Where Do You Buy Books?

This Week's Topic:
Where do you buy most of your books? No one is judging!


Well, actually, I'm judging, judging myself, that is.  After hearing about Amazon's new App (Ursula K. Le Guin has a cutting comment on the topic.)  I've boycotted Amazon for the Christmas Season.  And I've bought 10 books in the last two weeks.


3 from the Local Bookseller (A co-op, that's charming, and can order anything super fast)[ Medicus, The Name of the Wind, Beta Test]


2 from the campus bookstore, [The Dangerous Book for Boys (Audio), Small Memories (Jose Saramago)]


3 from my favorite used bookstore [The Measure of her Powers: MFK Fisher, The Lives of Christopher Chant, Inda]


1 from the newsstand next door to where my critique group meets (all the new mass markets) [The Spirit Thief]


1 from the amazing toy store on the commons that has a perfect selection of all the best kids books. [The Clockwork Three]


Honestly, I'm blessed to live in a town with so many booksellers.  I didn't even have to trek out to Barnes & Nobel!