Sakura of DOOM

This is John Lewis' memoir of his time in SNCC during the Civil Rights Movement, co-written with Andrew Aydin and illustrated by Nate Powell.

It begins with Lewis preparing for the 2009 inauguration, and the contrast between that and the 1960s Jim Crow era was probably much more uplifting just a few months ago. As things are today, the book feels more necessary than ever. It's not as though the work stopped after the Voting Rights Act, after Obama's election, after anything, but there is so much more of it now.

Part of me wishes I had at least one experience of reading this before the election, with Obama still president, because those flashes to his inauguration in the comic, the hope that is so tangible, all of it is painful to read now.

I've known the general story of the Civil Rights Movement for almost as long as I can remember, having grown up reading those Scholastic biographies of Martin Luther King, Jr. And I've learned much more about it later on, from how much community organization was going on to the many different groups and philosophies involved. That said, I found this comic to be a valuable addition, particularly the first-person narrative and the way the black-and-white illustrations grab you.

The three volumes cover all the big points up through the signing of the Voting Rights Act, from the lunch counter sit-ins to the bus boycotts to Freedom Summer and Selma and the March on Washington, but it's the little details within the big moments that make the comic so good. Ones that particularly struck me were the students who couldn't make it through the nonviolence training or the fear of being killed—I feel it's always so easy for people to say, "If I were there, I would have marched or protested or volunteered," but to be honest, I'm not sure I would have been brave enough, particularly as a college student. The stories of all the people who were killed while helping are pretty chilling, and I'm glad that the authors and artist make it very clear how dangerous it was and how the activists there didn't know if they would make it through or not.

Other moments: one of the people running the lunch counters shutting it down and fumigating it with the protesters still inside; the ways people still resisted even while they were in jail; how the activists set up check ins; and through it all, just how violent the pushback was to every single tiny step. I keep returning to that after reading all the justifications for police violence on the protesters today and how quickly just saying "no" becomes a reason to beat you down. It's not that I didn't know, but seeing it illustrated brings it home in a very particular way.

My one complaint is that I wish Lewis had gone more into how the movement started to splinter, how some people began to advocate for physically fighting back, or the increasing divide between SNCC and the SCLC and other organizations. Lewis hews to his nonviolent philosophy here while also trying to portray other people's points of view without demonizing them. I think his attempt to walk the line of upholding nonviolent resistance without condemning those who thought he sold out makes those parts a little too abstract; without the dialogue and arguments and examples of what happened in those clashes of philosophy, much of the power of the comic is lost.

I also wish he had gone into more detail because I would have found it extremely helpful for right now, when it feels like there's a different answer or strategy every day, and as a roadmap for making change with a large coalition of groups who frequently don't see eye to eye.

All in all, very worth reading, and I only wish it were longer and had more details about how to deal with splintering coalitions.

Hrm, did not realize so many episodes had passed since the last time I wrote things up. Overall, I continue to enjoy the show for the multitude of female characters as regulars, guests, and one-offs. On the minus side, the show continues to succumb to its Magical Negro thing.

( Spoilers )

For chomiji, who asked for "stories about your personal history and encountering and/or embracing a situation that occurred because of a point of difference" for her con_or_bust post.

( 1988-2010 )

(Asian American Theater Company and Crowded Fire Theater, directed by Marissa Wolf)

Saw a production of Young Jean Lee's Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven with Tari, S., C., via_ostiense, starlady, bluerabbit, and CB. I recycled the playbill, so I can't quote, but the introduction to the play said that Lee wrote it as a response to the "minority literature" pieces out there that talk about the minority experience in the US and Racism and Oppression and etc.

The play is staged in a bit of a black box theater, the entire space covered with plywood with a stylized flower in the center of the floor. It opens in the dark, with the sound of a man's voice instructing a woman who is being slapped. After a while, a video screens: a close-up of the playwright's face. She is sniffling, holding back tears, and every so often, an invisible hand loudly slaps her. We hear a pansori singer. (Later id'ed by Tari as doing a piece from Song of Chunhyang.)

Korean American comes out to introduce the play, followed by Koreans 1, 2, and 3, each in color-coded hanbok. Korean American speaks English with no [eta: a USian accent] and is dressed in a t-shirt, jeans, and sneakers. Koreans 1, 2, and 3 spend one segment of the play speaking the respective languages of the actresses (Japanese, Mandarin, and Cantonese). The play continues with assorted vignettes, some of which are just odd, some of which are hilarious (Korean American with her grandmother omg).

The play itself was interesting, particularly how White People 1 and 2, a young cis het couple, had emo scenes arguing about their relationship, completely unconnected with the rest of the play. In the end, their narrative, boring and narcissistic as it is, takes over the entire play, which had me laughing hysterically.

The oddest bit, though, was going to the fireside chat afterward. I didn't connect to the play completely, but I didn't find it as uncomfortable as reviews said, and afterward, I felt even more alienated, like I was the intruder despite the play being produced by the Asian American Theater Company. All the things I had thought were obvious, such as how the White People scenes had nothing to do with anything and was narrowly, obsessively focused on itself and the occasional desire to improve the world and "I want to go to Africa," had not been that obvious to some of the audience.

Some audience members wanted to know what the point of the White couple was, especially since they seemed so mundane compared to the Asian people. I hadn't even realized that quite a few of the audience didn't even know that Koreans 1, 2, and 3 weren't even speaking Korean, and after me and the director pointed it out, another audience member commented on how Korean sounded like "angry Japanese."

But yes, this is why I mention having gone with so many people above; I think it would have been an entirely different experience if I'd only gone with a handful of friends or such. As it were, I am pretty sure me and CB were incredibly loud and nearly dying with laughter at several points when the people around us were not, and since all of us sat together for the fireside chat, I am fairly certain I was much louder and more obvious in my eye-rolling than I normally would have been. But honestly. Just the fact that the first few questions were all about the white people and what the play meant for them and OMG please explain what it is is saying about Asian culture to us?!

I am glad that later on, more Asian-Am people (some of the group I went with included) commented on their own experiences of the play, and I was particularly interested in the notes of how the multilingualness was done. (Lee wrote the entire play in English and wanted Koreans 1, 2, and 3 to be cast from any combination of East Asian actresses who spoke (an) East Asian language(s); part of Wolf's audition process was to see how each actress translated her own scene.) Tari also started getting into a bit of audience knowledge wrt the inclusion of the pansori snippet in the earliest sequence, which was a comedic contrast to the emotionally fraught scene, as opposed to an audience member wondering "what that music was." via_ostiense also mentioned how the play didn't feel like it was speaking to her own experience in particular. [eta: more accurate comment]

Overall, I felt that the play wasn't radical enough for me—I particularly wanted to see more being done with the multilingualness, particularly so that audience members who understood non-English languages were seeing a different play of sorts. Unfortunately, it also seemed to be too radical for many of the other people there. I realize this sounds snotty, but the points that I thought were extremely obvious to the point of being anvils had been not grasped at all by some audience members. There were some points in there about Korean-ness and general Asian stereotypes in the media, along with Korean Catholic [eta: (Protestant?) Christian] culture that felt spot on (CB nearly fell off his chair in the scene with the grandmother talking about Jesus; I nearly fell off my chair at the miming of various ways to commit suicide), but I didn't feel like I (non-white Asian-American me) was the play's core audience, which made me a bit sad.

I also looked up some reviews for this play later, and I feel that what I saw was not necessarily what the reviewers saw.

Links:
- Official page including a YouTube snippet of one of the first portions of the performance.

- SFGate review: "Besides Lee's forays into Korean American identity, she raises the daring notion that white people may be as human as anybody else."

- SF Examiner review: "One scene within the 70-minute piece, about a daughter in conflict with her tyrannical parents, is performed entirely in an Asian language (maybe more than one, as the actresses themselves come from various Asian backgrounds). Decipher it if you can.

"In another, more accessible scene, the Korean-American is persuaded by her overbearing, dying old-world grandmother to 'be humble' and pray to Jesus."


To all these reviews, I want to say: accessible to whom? Why? Deciphered by WHOM? Who are you presuming is the audience, and why in the world are you presuming that?

I do think Lee's play is directed more toward white people than I would have liked, or held back somewhat because she wanted it to be more "universal," but I also think she is reacting to the Amy Tan version of explaining it all to the white people by not explaining, or by using in jokes and making some people uncomfortable with the realization that they are in jokes. And some of them are jokes I am not in on, but you know what, that's okay. Because it's not about me (Chinese-American me who partially grew up in Taiwan), which some of the reviews and some of the audience members really did not seem to understand.

(People who went, please feel free to chime in more/correct me/whatnot in comments! I waited too long to write this up, and as usual, I have forgotten more than I wrote down.)

I came up with this theory after reading Cherie Priest's Not Flesh Nor Feathers, a mystery set in the South about a flood rising and the evils it uncovers. I've seen/read several examples of stories where an angry person of color (frequently a Black man) goes off on a criminal or killing spree, and it is later revealed that the angsty backstory is.... racism!

In Not Flesh Nor Feathers (spoilers), the eventual evil is... evil Black zombies! Controlled by a dead Black girl who was wronged by her White friend! I have also seen this in Ragtime (the musical), where Coalhouse Walker's car is torched, and he eventually retaliates by holding people hostage and threatening to bomb the city. There is also Orson Scott Card's Heartfire (spoilers), where it is finally revealed that the slaves in his alternate American South do not rebel because another Black man is using voodoo (I think?) to take his fellow Black people's will. Once their heartfires or something are restored, all the resentment bubbles up and they riot and torch the city. There are also multiple instances of Muslim characters of color who are either unfairly treated and end up getting recruited by terrorist organizations in crime dramas (Spooks/MI-5 has several episodes like this), or Muslim terrorists using injustice against Muslim people (usually POC) as an excuse for their attacks.

And of course there are non-fictional equivalents such as the way the Rodney King trial and resulting riots are framed. In Bay Area news, there have been protests gathering over the trial of the police officer who shot (and subsequently killed) a young Black man in the back, and the news reports I saw framed the protesters as almost threatening to riot if justice was not served.

Please feel free to list out more instances of this trope! I am particularly interested if this holds for non-USian countries/narratives.

My off-the-cuff theory is that there is a subconscious knowledge that POC are angry about racism and a subconscious fear that this anger will eventually result in the murder of White people, particularly White people who are not responsible for aforementioned racism. And thus, when POC are angry, it triggers this fear, which also leads to the unjustified thought that White people are unsafe from the Revenge of the Colored People. But the basis of the trope is "OMG these people were oppressed in the past, but not by me, and they are so angry that they turn their rage on undeserving targets, and look, we feel bad they were oppressed, but must they be so scary and angry and mean? See, they turn to violence, which clearly indicates that although they might have sympathetic motives, they go too far!" It is an extreme example of the tone argument or concern trolls, in which White people might actually feel for the injustice of racism if only those annoying brown people weren't so mean about it.

This is, of course, bunk, as a) it plays into the stereotype of angry and violent POC, particularly Black and Muslim POC, b) there is no such thing as being innocent of institutional racism when White privilege is so ingrained in the world, c) the notion that anger inevitably turns to violence and mass murder, and d) the idea that individual acts of violence have the same weight and effect as institutional oppression (I do not condone violence or think it is good, btw, but it is also not the same).

I suspect there are instances of the trope which end up being revenge fantasy, and I also suspect this holds true for other oppressed groups as well. I am also wondering if the flip side of this trope is the Tragic Mulatto narrative or narratives like it, in which POC are tragic and oppressed and conveniently off themselves at the end so White people can feel some guilt and sympathy to assuage their consciences, but not so much that they are actually inconvenienced by it or driven by it to do something about injustice.

(thanks to coffeeandink for the post title and deepad and kate_nepveu and Mely for listening to me spout off on this yesterday)

These are books 3 and 4 of Hoyt's Legend of the Four Soldiers quartet, which is about four survivors of a British regiment ambushed by Indians in the not-yet-United-States. (I will get to this rant in a moment.)

To Beguile a Beast - Mrs. Helen Fitzwilliam has finally decided to leave her keeper, the Duke of Lister, but she knows he'll go after her just to get her and his two bastard children back. She ends up trying to persuade naturalist Sir Alistair Munroe to let her stay as his housekeeper, since he desperately needs one. Alistair is the titular beast, as he was scarred and had two fingers cut off during aforementioned ambush. Thankfully, this book has relatively little about the ambush, which meant I could pretend to ignore it so as to not throw the book against a wall. Most of the plot revolves around Helen escaping the Duke of Lister, and amazingly, her two children are not nauseatingly cute. In fact, I actually really liked the very solemn and not at all cute Abigail. I like that the hero is actually scarred, as opposed to the usual "Oh WOES I am UGLY wait no it's only a mild scratch" thing, but I was rather unconvinced by how long the "I am not worthy of your love" thing was dragged out on Alistair's part. Overall, not bad, though I like her Princes trilogy better.

To Desire a Devil - ( Spoilers and rantiness )

This related to Bound by Your Touch in that the heroes know each other, but they barely show up in each other's stories (I like that, although YMMV).

British spy Phineas Granville meets American flibbertidget Mina Masters in Hong Kong (why all the "exotic" settings WHY?), where she saves his life at some cost to her own. Four years later, Phin wants out of the spy game, but Mina is in trouble, and he's the only person she can think of to go to for help.

Thankfully for my blood pressure, the book gets out of Hong Kong fairly quickly, so I can not have British colonialism shoved in my face again. That said, there are still mentions of Phin's older spy missions, all of which are exactly as imperialist as you might think and focus on his white man angst instead of the brown people being screwed over, but at least it's not the main plot. It's so sad that nowadays, I almost prefer that romances stay all white and all in America or Western Europe and ignore the POC there, because when they don't, there's so much fail. I managed to not think about it so I could enjoy the book, but it's still there.

Anyway! With all that in mind, I actually loved this. Mina is an excellent heroine: she is stunningly gorgeous and knows it and uses it to her advantage, she detests being caged, and she is incredibly smart. One of the most frustrating yet most rewarding parts of the book is watching Phin find this out. At first, he suspects her of pretty much everything, leading to some standard "I loom over you to threaten you and make you talk" scenes, but Mina won't have any of it. I loved her description of one of their kisses, in which she mentally notes that it's very skilled, but forced seduction is both boring and predictable.

She has constructed an entire facade that almost everyone buys into because no one, not even Phin at first, believes she could be as intelligent as the evidence shows. I was so happy when she calls Phin out on how he assumed someone had to be behind her because of course she couldn't possibly have done it herself.

I also love her entire brainless bombshell routine, as it feeds into my love of the Scarlet Pimpernel fop-hiding-something trope. Here's Mina telling Phin of when a priest ran over her dog Mongol and she used it to blackmail the priest for chocolate:

"Blackmail? We called it a friendly agreement. By the end of the year, I wished I had another terrier for him to kill. But not really," she added quickly. "Wouldn't that be too bad of me! I much preferred Mongol to chocolate. Dogs are always much better than chocolate, of course, because they're alive." She paused to frown. "Then again, if one counts mold, I suppose some of the chocolate was also alive in the end... the cherry-filled ones, you understand; I never liked cherries. Well, it's all rather confusing."

After Phin gets over his misunderstanding, he turns out to be a rather nice hero, even though I still wanted to bash him over the head in the final conflict. I liked how he actually bothers to listen to Mina, that he understands her jokes and what it means for her to call his body "beautiful" and to comment "Why you're a pocket Venus write large, Ashmore."

Sex-wise, I wish Duran had gone farther. I feel bad for pushing for dominant heroines in every single romance review I do ever, given that it's not for everyone, but there's just such a lack of them! I can still count the number of dominant heroines on one hand. It was especially frustrating because Mina clearly gets off on it in an earlier scene: she's bored until she makes Phin lose control, backs him up against a wall, and marks him. She also makes a move to blindfold him and possibly tie him up later, but then Duran turns the tables on her. I did appreciate Mina thinking that even blindfolded and tied up, she was still choosing what to give and what not to, but it was so close! I'm so frustrated by how almost all the romances I read never have the hero tied up, or even if they do, they still manage to give him control. Even with these complaints, Duran still manages to pack character and relationship development into the sex scenes, which impressed me given how hard it is to do.

And as mentioned previously, the issue of control isn't a passing one for the book. Mina has fought tooth and nail to control her own life, which is one reason why I would have liked to see more of that in the sex, as well as why I was so annoyed by the final conflict and how it's all about Phin's issues and resolving them instead of Mina's.

In conclusion: I loved this, even though I wanted it to go farther and wished it hadn't had scenes in Hong Kong. I'm also extremely frustrated, because Duran is clearly a good writer doing interesting things, but she also seems to be very into the whole "exotic" setting with white people frolicking about, which means I will probably avoid many of her books. (I couldn't even get past the first chapter of Duke of Shadows because it pissed me off so much.) These settings are not exotic, they are not backdrop, they have people who live there and speak the language and grew up there and have relatives there. And the time period these books take place in is one that devastated the places being used as mere stage settings, these places that are people's homes.

At Wiscon this year, Victor Raymond passed around copies of a letter the nascent Carl Brandon Society wrote to the Wiscon ConCom... on May 27, 1999.

http://carlbrandon.org/wiki/index.php/Founding_Letter

I meant to type this up for the letter's ten-year anniversary, but haven't until now. I'll also upload a PDF version of the letter sometime during the week.

Ten years, people. TEN YEARS.

And POC are still being ogled at and made to feel unwelcome.

Yes, there's been progress, but there still needs to be much more.

Yay IBARW for making me post, despite it being months late?

Although I had a very positive Wiscon experience this year, it was amidst a lot of fail. I heard and saw Black and South Asian women being mistaken for other Black and South Asian women, fish bowl ogling, and a lot of reports of people asking POC to be their special POC friends ("I have had no prior interaction with you before, but let me waylay you for half an hour to pepper you with questions about proper ally behavior or ask for your permission to do X!"). I personally managed to avoid a lot of fail, I think because a) I limit my panel appearances, b) I only go to panels in which I know and like the panelists, and c) I am antisocial, do not really go to parties, and only talk to people I know and like. Given the shenanigans, I do not think I will be changing my interaction habits in the future.

This works fine for me since I am, as mentioned, antisocial, but seriously. POC should not have to limit all their social interactions at a con just so they can be treated like a normal human being.

With all those caveats in mind, I was so happy to see so many brown faces this year, to make connections with people I've only seen online, to get the chance to talk in person instead of via comments.

One of the highlights of the con for me was being on a panel about Andrea Smith's Conquest with Andrea Hairston and Diantha Day Sprouse and talking with them afterward. First, I'm thankful I got the chance to apologize to Diantha for calling her too angry years ago; I read that now and think "She is so right! Make people with their horrible grabby hands GO AWAY!" But mostly, I cannot emphasize how good it was to talk to women of color from different generations than me about their journeys and their experiences.

The women I grew up with—my mother, my grandmothers, my aunties—gave me many things, but they did not give me the tools to deal with issues of social justice. And although I love them dearly, the models they have to offer aren't very radical. I think it's pretty sad that it took me going to Wiscon, which is mostly white, to find other women of color whom I looked up to as role models, but that's what happened. And I'm grateful that even though the initial connections I made with people were online or at Wiscon, they have been moving offline and outside the con. I'm glad I've been able to talk with more people locally, to have discussions in email and on the phone and in person so I can work through things without having random white passerbys ogling at my mental processes.

I can't even say how much it means for me to finally find these communities of women of color who are committed to social justice, especially in SF/F, which is what I grew up on. So thank you to the women I've gotten to know, the women I sometimes disagree with, the women I don't know, the women who have passed on, to all of you out there creating and critiquing and blogging and talking and being fannish and just being yourselves.

Having your multitude of voices means so much to me, especially as I continue to work on who I want to be and what I want to do.

Justine Larbalestier, whose books all feature protagonists of color, posts about the white washing of her latest book:

The notion that “black books” don’t sell is pervasive at every level of publishing. Yet I have found few examples of books with a person of colour on the cover that have had the full weight of a publishing house behind them Until that happens more often we can’t know if it’s true that white people won’t buy books about people of colour. All we can say is that poorly publicised books with “black covers” don’t sell. The same is usually true of poorly publicised books with “white covers.”

Susan from Color Online (good blog on YA books by and about POC) also adds:

Very few have responded to my comment about the absence of color among book bloggers. Those marketing folks didn't come to that conclusion without some basis in what they see. Something shaped their perception.

What is important has already been said: this is not a new issue; it is a self-perpetuating cycle contributed by bookstore shelving, marketing expectations, and aversive racism from readers and reviewers; it is symptomatic of the larger issues of racism; and it hurts readers of color.

( Book list )


Color Online is also running a book giveaway to promote YA authors of color.