Wiscon 31: Genre Tokenism Today: The New Octavia
Wed, Jun. 6th, 2007 03:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oyceterDescription: After the untimely death of the great writer Octavia E. Butler, some have asked who will take her place. A panel of African-descended women currently writing genre fiction addresses this question, talking about Octavia's oeuvre and their own: similarities, differences, market forces, and the pressures to model their contributions to the field on hers. How many ways is this question just plain wrong? Who has a vested interest in there being "an Octavia," new or old? What would "a new Octavia" look like? How does her literary legacy affect the field today, and how might it do so in the future? And how does this legacy relate to this disturbing question?
Panelists: Nora Jemison (mod), Nisi Shawl, Candra K. Gill, K. Tempest Bradford, Nnedi Nkemdili Okorafor-Mbachu
This was my favorite panel of Wiscon;![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
coffeeandink mentions the cool factor of seeing a panel entirely composed of black women at an SF con; I agree. Also, like Mely, I hope one day that I'll be so used to seeing many POC at SF cons, on panels, not talking specifically about race, that the coolness factor will wear off.
Note: it's really odd writing this up, because I'm consulting the transcripts and noticing that my memory of themes aren't the same as the actual track of the conversation. But since this is my LJ and because the transcript is available, I'll be organizing more via theme and subject than by time things were said.
Nora Jemison jokingly introduced all the panelists as the "new Octavia;" all of them refuted the notion. I think Nisi Shawl said something to the effect of: "I am the current Nisi Shawl, not the new Octavia." All of them mentioned that their styles were basically nothing like Butler's; Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu wrote fantasy YA, Shawl said her language was not as spare. K. Tempest Bradford said she was the Angry Black Woman -- I was too busy being delighted to tell for sure, but I am certain that other audience members were just as delighted as me that she was at the con.
Jemison began the panel by asking if the question (of who is the "new Octavia") was even appropriate. She mentioned that every time she introduced herself as an SF writer, she would be asked if she liked Butler. Shawl said that it was an embarrassing question, like the questioner had his/her fly accidentally open. She didn't think it was an appropriate comparison at all. Shawl also mentioned that many of her influences include Jones, Chandler and Colette, but that those are basically never brought up.
Candra Gill also said that the why behind the question was inappropriate: people seem to think that there can only be one black female SF writer, which isn't the case. She also pointed out that it was a lazy question. Jemison added to this by saying that usually comparisons are made by looking at style and content, not at race (I believe she said something about Barth Anderson not being compared to Asimov because they were both white men). Shawl added that it wasn't just race, it was race and gender -- no one compared her to Chip Delany.
Okorafor-Mbachu briefly played devil's advocate by saying that it did sort of make sense for people to use Butler as a comparison, since she's fairly widely taught, so that even non-SF-reading people know her. Even so, she made it clear she was playing devil's advocate and not agreeing that it was an appropriate question to ask or comparison to make.
One of the more interesting points was when an audience member (Rosalyn) asked if the question was always from a white person; I think several of the panelists said that they frequently got the question from black people.coffeeandink asked a little later if the panelists thought that the question was being asked out of fear. Shawl made a comparison to Martin Luther King, Jr. and how people kept asking, "Who will be the next King?" after his death. From panelist and audience responses, I got the general impression that black people were asking out of a fear of that one spot (of a black, female SF writer) being squeezed out and out of a desire to keep that spot open.
Bradford said that she knew the question about the "new Octavia" was going to be asked when Butler died, and that it really made her see that they need more black women SF writers out there, that they couldn't let Octavia be the only one.
Okorafor-Mbachu brought up Nalo Hopkinson as the person usually being touted as the "new Octavia" because (sarcastically) "they're so similar" (I suspect this would be a lot funnier to me if I'd actually read Hopkinson...). Shawl followed up a little later by saying that Hopkinson actively rejected tokenism and worked against it as an editor by trying to give attention to other writers of color.
The point was also made that there were black female SF writers out there, but that they weren't very visible. Somewhere in the midde, I asked about non-black women of color and how they fit in; Shawl talked about how Butler's name was also used to represent all women of color and about the black-white race dichotomy in SF/F.
The conversation about that went in two directions: one on how black people are generally excluded from SF/F, one on how the black community rejects the white SF/F community (which is often believed to be THE SF/F community).
For the first, Bradford said that any time people tried to mention diversity (or, mostly, the lack thereof) in SF/F, there was always a chant of "Delany, Butler, Hopkinson, Barnes," as though those four names somehow proved that there was diversity in the market. (Jemison, sarcastically, "We're not racist! We have four! FOUR!")
Someone in the audience asked how you could tell from just the author's name -- I remember the implication (or actual question) being that magazine editors and etc. couldn't tell race from names, and therefore couldn't be racist by picking mostly white stories (and I suspect, readers choosing only to read white authors as wel). Jemison said that that argument of no discrimination came up a lot, but also that she thought there were some common themes for black authors -- alienation, slavery, otherness -- that wasn't intrinsic to being black, but was often in the black experience. I thought this part was very interesting. I don't think any of the panelists were arguing that there was such thing as an intrinsic black experience, so I hope no one takes that as a point. And I think it's a very nuanced thing, to look at how racism affects a group of people and how that affects their writing (obviously, different people to different degrees), and I do think it sort of applies to Asian authors as well (common themes of immigration, of language difficulties, of being caught in the middle, of family that is spread out over continents). But again, not in a "there is an intrinsic Asian experience" way.
Bradford agreed to this and said she could often tell if the author was white or not, and Jemison added that when she read Butler's Dawn (I think?), even though the cover showed Lilith as white, five pages in, she knew Lilith and Butler were both black.
Shawl brought up another way that black writers were often pigeonholed; she said that she couldn't sell a non-black story. She talked about the expectation from editors that she (and other black writers) would write "black content" and that those editors would determine exactly what that content was. As a side note, this reminds me of the discussion in the Cultural Appropriation panel re: minstrel shows and how the dominant group "granting" authenticity often ended up as broad caricatures of race. Jemison added that it wasn't just SF/F that did this; Zora Neal Hurston's race-neutral work was nowhere near as well-known as her "black" work.
Later on, Gill brought up the fact that what counts as SF for POC often doesn't get counted as SF by the (white) SF/F community. I think she brought up Hopkinson's new book with mention of First Nations people being categorized as "magical realism" as opposed to urban fantasy. Shawl noted that "not all science deals with metal" andconiraya from the audience talked about how black SF writers, particularly ones from Africa, were pushed to write "magical realism" instead. Jemison labeled this as snobbery; Okorafor-Mbachu labeled it as marketing.
Someone in the audience said that her (black) friend couldn't sell a fantasy novel because of the stereotype that black people didn't read fantasy.
All the panelists rejected that stereotype. Bradford said that the cause-effect was backwards: black people often didn't read SF/F because they weren't represented in SF/F. She said that the only way to counter that was to burst out into the field and to show black people that they were there, that they were being represented, and then they might buy more.
Jemison talked about SF/F supposedly being subversive, being about the future, that black people had futures too, and that they should be there in the future.
Okorafor-Mbachu said that she previously might have agreed about the stigma in the black community about SF/F, except she had gone to the Gwendolyn Brooks conference and saw tons of black people there, all worshipping Butler's feet. Jemison also mentioned her experience at a black literature conference, full of black people who loved speculative fiction. She also mentioned that these people probably only came out at the conference because it was coded as a safe space for black people. Shawl talked about being at a talk at Smith College and walking around with four other black women SF writers ("I felt like the Monkees").
Gill said that there was also a difference between engaging with SF/F at home and engaging with it in public: "We are engaged with the material but we don't necessarily, I'm sorry, want to go hang around with a bunch of white folks." I can't remember if she elaborated about how the treatment differed, but I personally remember sticking out like a sore thumb at Norwescon for being Asian and still feeling out of place at Wiscon every so often.
The panel ended with the audience and the panelists all giving out suggestions for how to improve the situation: Join the Carl Brandon Society, support the CB society (Shawl mentioned a challenge grant running through 6/22 that would effectively double your contribution for no extra cost to you), read the shortlist for the CB awards, write to your magazine editors, buy SF/F from black bookstores, create more art that includes POC, suggest books for your reading group or to your library, add books by WOC to courses you teach, use the marketing name if it works (Okorafor-Mbachu: "I hid stuff as 'magical realism' for years!"), donate books to prisons.
Cultural appropriation and the panel
One of the things that's particularly interesting to me now is looking at this panel and looking at some discussions on cultural appropriation popping back up again this year. I got this sense from both of the posts and the comments to the post that there is a feeling among white writers of "damned if you do, damned if you don't" (though I could also be completely misreading) with regard to being white and writing a non-white culture. And I know I saw that a lot in the cultural appropriation discussions last year.
So I thought it was very interesting to write up this panel on black women writers and all the things they deal with, from tokenism to being pigeon-holed to being not read to being not seen, and that they are dealing with this no matter what they choose to write.
And I do hope that some of the cultural appropriation discussions have problematized issues for white writers as well (Hi! Join the club! I think we're all damned if you do, damned if you don't, though POC writers are often dealing with some different issues from white writers). This includes white writers choosing to write all-white universes AND white writers choosing to write minority cultures, because, as noted above, I think no matter what POC authors write, they end up in a quandry as well. I note here that when I say "problematize" or "problematic," I do not mean "morally wrong" or "bad" or "evil" or "racist." I mean "has a host of complicated issues and questions and potential problems involved."
Also, I would greatly appreciate it if all the discussion to this post didn't end up being all about white writers, because that would just be really ironic for a panel that focuses on black women SF writers.
As a comment-starter: I haven't read Nalo Hopkinson! Horror! I must remedy this at once, so tell me where to start!
Links:
- FSFWiki's page (includes transcript and links to other write ups)
Panelists: Nora Jemison (mod), Nisi Shawl, Candra K. Gill, K. Tempest Bradford, Nnedi Nkemdili Okorafor-Mbachu
This was my favorite panel of Wiscon;
coffeeandink mentions the cool factor of seeing a panel entirely composed of black women at an SF con; I agree. Also, like Mely, I hope one day that I'll be so used to seeing many POC at SF cons, on panels, not talking specifically about race, that the coolness factor will wear off.Note: it's really odd writing this up, because I'm consulting the transcripts and noticing that my memory of themes aren't the same as the actual track of the conversation. But since this is my LJ and because the transcript is available, I'll be organizing more via theme and subject than by time things were said.
Nora Jemison jokingly introduced all the panelists as the "new Octavia;" all of them refuted the notion. I think Nisi Shawl said something to the effect of: "I am the current Nisi Shawl, not the new Octavia." All of them mentioned that their styles were basically nothing like Butler's; Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu wrote fantasy YA, Shawl said her language was not as spare. K. Tempest Bradford said she was the Angry Black Woman -- I was too busy being delighted to tell for sure, but I am certain that other audience members were just as delighted as me that she was at the con.
Jemison began the panel by asking if the question (of who is the "new Octavia") was even appropriate. She mentioned that every time she introduced herself as an SF writer, she would be asked if she liked Butler. Shawl said that it was an embarrassing question, like the questioner had his/her fly accidentally open. She didn't think it was an appropriate comparison at all. Shawl also mentioned that many of her influences include Jones, Chandler and Colette, but that those are basically never brought up.
Candra Gill also said that the why behind the question was inappropriate: people seem to think that there can only be one black female SF writer, which isn't the case. She also pointed out that it was a lazy question. Jemison added to this by saying that usually comparisons are made by looking at style and content, not at race (I believe she said something about Barth Anderson not being compared to Asimov because they were both white men). Shawl added that it wasn't just race, it was race and gender -- no one compared her to Chip Delany.
Okorafor-Mbachu briefly played devil's advocate by saying that it did sort of make sense for people to use Butler as a comparison, since she's fairly widely taught, so that even non-SF-reading people know her. Even so, she made it clear she was playing devil's advocate and not agreeing that it was an appropriate question to ask or comparison to make.
One of the more interesting points was when an audience member (Rosalyn) asked if the question was always from a white person; I think several of the panelists said that they frequently got the question from black people.
coffeeandink asked a little later if the panelists thought that the question was being asked out of fear. Shawl made a comparison to Martin Luther King, Jr. and how people kept asking, "Who will be the next King?" after his death. From panelist and audience responses, I got the general impression that black people were asking out of a fear of that one spot (of a black, female SF writer) being squeezed out and out of a desire to keep that spot open. Bradford said that she knew the question about the "new Octavia" was going to be asked when Butler died, and that it really made her see that they need more black women SF writers out there, that they couldn't let Octavia be the only one.
Okorafor-Mbachu brought up Nalo Hopkinson as the person usually being touted as the "new Octavia" because (sarcastically) "they're so similar" (I suspect this would be a lot funnier to me if I'd actually read Hopkinson...). Shawl followed up a little later by saying that Hopkinson actively rejected tokenism and worked against it as an editor by trying to give attention to other writers of color.
The point was also made that there were black female SF writers out there, but that they weren't very visible. Somewhere in the midde, I asked about non-black women of color and how they fit in; Shawl talked about how Butler's name was also used to represent all women of color and about the black-white race dichotomy in SF/F.
The conversation about that went in two directions: one on how black people are generally excluded from SF/F, one on how the black community rejects the white SF/F community (which is often believed to be THE SF/F community).
For the first, Bradford said that any time people tried to mention diversity (or, mostly, the lack thereof) in SF/F, there was always a chant of "Delany, Butler, Hopkinson, Barnes," as though those four names somehow proved that there was diversity in the market. (Jemison, sarcastically, "We're not racist! We have four! FOUR!")
Someone in the audience asked how you could tell from just the author's name -- I remember the implication (or actual question) being that magazine editors and etc. couldn't tell race from names, and therefore couldn't be racist by picking mostly white stories (and I suspect, readers choosing only to read white authors as wel). Jemison said that that argument of no discrimination came up a lot, but also that she thought there were some common themes for black authors -- alienation, slavery, otherness -- that wasn't intrinsic to being black, but was often in the black experience. I thought this part was very interesting. I don't think any of the panelists were arguing that there was such thing as an intrinsic black experience, so I hope no one takes that as a point. And I think it's a very nuanced thing, to look at how racism affects a group of people and how that affects their writing (obviously, different people to different degrees), and I do think it sort of applies to Asian authors as well (common themes of immigration, of language difficulties, of being caught in the middle, of family that is spread out over continents). But again, not in a "there is an intrinsic Asian experience" way.
Bradford agreed to this and said she could often tell if the author was white or not, and Jemison added that when she read Butler's Dawn (I think?), even though the cover showed Lilith as white, five pages in, she knew Lilith and Butler were both black.
Shawl brought up another way that black writers were often pigeonholed; she said that she couldn't sell a non-black story. She talked about the expectation from editors that she (and other black writers) would write "black content" and that those editors would determine exactly what that content was. As a side note, this reminds me of the discussion in the Cultural Appropriation panel re: minstrel shows and how the dominant group "granting" authenticity often ended up as broad caricatures of race. Jemison added that it wasn't just SF/F that did this; Zora Neal Hurston's race-neutral work was nowhere near as well-known as her "black" work.
Later on, Gill brought up the fact that what counts as SF for POC often doesn't get counted as SF by the (white) SF/F community. I think she brought up Hopkinson's new book with mention of First Nations people being categorized as "magical realism" as opposed to urban fantasy. Shawl noted that "not all science deals with metal" and
coniraya from the audience talked about how black SF writers, particularly ones from Africa, were pushed to write "magical realism" instead. Jemison labeled this as snobbery; Okorafor-Mbachu labeled it as marketing. Someone in the audience said that her (black) friend couldn't sell a fantasy novel because of the stereotype that black people didn't read fantasy.
All the panelists rejected that stereotype. Bradford said that the cause-effect was backwards: black people often didn't read SF/F because they weren't represented in SF/F. She said that the only way to counter that was to burst out into the field and to show black people that they were there, that they were being represented, and then they might buy more.
Jemison talked about SF/F supposedly being subversive, being about the future, that black people had futures too, and that they should be there in the future.
Okorafor-Mbachu said that she previously might have agreed about the stigma in the black community about SF/F, except she had gone to the Gwendolyn Brooks conference and saw tons of black people there, all worshipping Butler's feet. Jemison also mentioned her experience at a black literature conference, full of black people who loved speculative fiction. She also mentioned that these people probably only came out at the conference because it was coded as a safe space for black people. Shawl talked about being at a talk at Smith College and walking around with four other black women SF writers ("I felt like the Monkees").
Gill said that there was also a difference between engaging with SF/F at home and engaging with it in public: "We are engaged with the material but we don't necessarily, I'm sorry, want to go hang around with a bunch of white folks." I can't remember if she elaborated about how the treatment differed, but I personally remember sticking out like a sore thumb at Norwescon for being Asian and still feeling out of place at Wiscon every so often.
The panel ended with the audience and the panelists all giving out suggestions for how to improve the situation: Join the Carl Brandon Society, support the CB society (Shawl mentioned a challenge grant running through 6/22 that would effectively double your contribution for no extra cost to you), read the shortlist for the CB awards, write to your magazine editors, buy SF/F from black bookstores, create more art that includes POC, suggest books for your reading group or to your library, add books by WOC to courses you teach, use the marketing name if it works (Okorafor-Mbachu: "I hid stuff as 'magical realism' for years!"), donate books to prisons.
Cultural appropriation and the panel
One of the things that's particularly interesting to me now is looking at this panel and looking at some discussions on cultural appropriation popping back up again this year. I got this sense from both of the posts and the comments to the post that there is a feeling among white writers of "damned if you do, damned if you don't" (though I could also be completely misreading) with regard to being white and writing a non-white culture. And I know I saw that a lot in the cultural appropriation discussions last year.
So I thought it was very interesting to write up this panel on black women writers and all the things they deal with, from tokenism to being pigeon-holed to being not read to being not seen, and that they are dealing with this no matter what they choose to write.
And I do hope that some of the cultural appropriation discussions have problematized issues for white writers as well (Hi! Join the club! I think we're all damned if you do, damned if you don't, though POC writers are often dealing with some different issues from white writers). This includes white writers choosing to write all-white universes AND white writers choosing to write minority cultures, because, as noted above, I think no matter what POC authors write, they end up in a quandry as well. I note here that when I say "problematize" or "problematic," I do not mean "morally wrong" or "bad" or "evil" or "racist." I mean "has a host of complicated issues and questions and potential problems involved."
Also, I would greatly appreciate it if all the discussion to this post didn't end up being all about white writers, because that would just be really ironic for a panel that focuses on black women SF writers.
As a comment-starter: I haven't read Nalo Hopkinson! Horror! I must remedy this at once, so tell me where to start!
Links:
- FSFWiki's page (includes transcript and links to other write ups)
(no subject)
Wed, Jun. 6th, 2007 11:05 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Thu, Jun. 7th, 2007 04:41 am (UTC)