Reading, listening, etc.
Jun. 16th, 2020 11:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brainwaneListening: Ex Eye!
Playing: Animal Crossing.
Watching: We enjoyed an episode of The Repair Shop today that had really neat incidental music (the one with the portrait of the judo master). Also, we watched and enjoyed The Madness of George III from the National Theatre -- funny, moving, taught me some stuff about history, fun banter. And we watched a Muppet-related Q&A that was diverting. Ask me privately if you want to hear the ageist joke about the Hallmark Channel.
Reading: Finished Smallbone Deceased -- fun and engaging and fast-paced and witty. A few jarring sexist bits. Reminded me that historical mysteries will probably be a reliable source of immersive timepass and that I should take advantage of that.
Bought Shoreline of Infinity 18 so that I could read the new Zen Cho story "Odette" -- it does an interesting thing with horror and family that felt understated and well-done to me. Like, the narrator-voice doesn't need to tell you a particular behavior is oppressive; Cho trusts you to see the manipulation. And it made me think about something Rachel Manija Brown wrote about one of the solaces that horror presents: "if things are going sufficiently badly, hearing nothing but 'No they’re not! Stuff like that can’t happen!' is unhelpful at best, crazymaking at worst, and definitely makes you feel like people aren’t listening." Interested in talking with people in the comments about "Odette" in particular, as well as all the other things I mention in this entry!
I have now, years after I read a little chunk of it, read the entirety of Joanna Russ's How To Suppress Women's Writing which is NOW BACK IN PRINT!!! (As of 2018. But still!) What a ride. What a furious, funny, "oh crap I probably do that on some dimension" ride (Jessa Crispin's great introduction doesn't let anyone off the hook). There's a quote partway through, one you might have seen, one that kind of sums up the book: "Without models, it's hard to work; without a context, difficult to evaluate; without peers, nearly impossible to speak." And the book made me think about what I make, about how I value it and how others value it, or don't. About polycentricity instead of a central canon, about inventing new forms of expression at the margins and then seeing those formative works drowned out when the dominant voices make a new center out of what was the periphery. I wrote a giant "here's what I did and why and how I did it" explanation of The Art of Python partly to attempt to prevent this happening to a thing I did significant work on. A stake in the ground. And back in 2018, as Jason and I were writing our end-of-show thank-yous for our plays, I wrote a line for him to say, explicitly and accurately crediting me with writing 17 of the 18 plays. And when he asked about that line, I said: you're a tall white man and I'm a short brown woman. If this goes big, if we start a trend and people start doing a lot of plays at conferences, people will be biased and assume you wrote most of it. I don't want to be Rosalind Franklin. And he 100% agreed and understood, and delivered the line as I wrote it. I shall be as exacting regarding attribution and credit for my work as I think is fair and necessary; I want my legacy (even though we're all writing on sand) to be commensurate to the fulfillment of my ambition.
The more I read Russ's nonfiction the more I think I need to read more of it. Jed gave me some tips, customized beyond the ones in his blog post.
Playing: Animal Crossing.
Watching: We enjoyed an episode of The Repair Shop today that had really neat incidental music (the one with the portrait of the judo master). Also, we watched and enjoyed The Madness of George III from the National Theatre -- funny, moving, taught me some stuff about history, fun banter. And we watched a Muppet-related Q&A that was diverting. Ask me privately if you want to hear the ageist joke about the Hallmark Channel.
Reading: Finished Smallbone Deceased -- fun and engaging and fast-paced and witty. A few jarring sexist bits. Reminded me that historical mysteries will probably be a reliable source of immersive timepass and that I should take advantage of that.
Bought Shoreline of Infinity 18 so that I could read the new Zen Cho story "Odette" -- it does an interesting thing with horror and family that felt understated and well-done to me. Like, the narrator-voice doesn't need to tell you a particular behavior is oppressive; Cho trusts you to see the manipulation. And it made me think about something Rachel Manija Brown wrote about one of the solaces that horror presents: "if things are going sufficiently badly, hearing nothing but 'No they’re not! Stuff like that can’t happen!' is unhelpful at best, crazymaking at worst, and definitely makes you feel like people aren’t listening." Interested in talking with people in the comments about "Odette" in particular, as well as all the other things I mention in this entry!
I have now, years after I read a little chunk of it, read the entirety of Joanna Russ's How To Suppress Women's Writing which is NOW BACK IN PRINT!!! (As of 2018. But still!) What a ride. What a furious, funny, "oh crap I probably do that on some dimension" ride (Jessa Crispin's great introduction doesn't let anyone off the hook). There's a quote partway through, one you might have seen, one that kind of sums up the book: "Without models, it's hard to work; without a context, difficult to evaluate; without peers, nearly impossible to speak." And the book made me think about what I make, about how I value it and how others value it, or don't. About polycentricity instead of a central canon, about inventing new forms of expression at the margins and then seeing those formative works drowned out when the dominant voices make a new center out of what was the periphery. I wrote a giant "here's what I did and why and how I did it" explanation of The Art of Python partly to attempt to prevent this happening to a thing I did significant work on. A stake in the ground. And back in 2018, as Jason and I were writing our end-of-show thank-yous for our plays, I wrote a line for him to say, explicitly and accurately crediting me with writing 17 of the 18 plays. And when he asked about that line, I said: you're a tall white man and I'm a short brown woman. If this goes big, if we start a trend and people start doing a lot of plays at conferences, people will be biased and assume you wrote most of it. I don't want to be Rosalind Franklin. And he 100% agreed and understood, and delivered the line as I wrote it. I shall be as exacting regarding attribution and credit for my work as I think is fair and necessary; I want my legacy (even though we're all writing on sand) to be commensurate to the fulfillment of my ambition.
The more I read Russ's nonfiction the more I think I need to read more of it. Jed gave me some tips, customized beyond the ones in his blog post.
I also read a KJ Charles romance, Unfit to Print, which costarred an Indian!!!! And then a friend told me that another Charles romance, An Unseen Attraction, also costars a character of Indian descent (in this case, half-white, half-Indian)! I'm halfway through that and liking it even more. Am also partway through a reread of the postcolonial sf/f anthology So Long Been Dreaming.
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Date: 2020-06-17 05:09 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-06-17 05:19 pm (UTC)