My life in books

In her Introduction to Angela Ritchie’s Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color, Angela Y. Davis writes:

“Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color is a very important twenty-first-century document. It reminds us how little in the way of material progress has been made during the last century in purging our societies of officially condoned racist violence. At the same time, Andrea Ritchie’s multifaceted and unrelenting antiviolence practice over the last decade, to which her book bears witness, reveals extraordinary progress in the way we conceptualize state violence and antiviolence strategies. She does not urge us simply to add women of color to the list of targets of police violence—a list that is already longer than anyone would wish. She asks us to consider what the vast problem of state violence looks like if we acknowledge how gender and sexuality, disability, and nation are intermeshed with race and class. In other words, Ritchie’s feminist approach reminds us that the job of purging our worlds of racist violence is far more complicated than advocates of simple police reform would have us believe. It is not only Black women and women of color who are “invisible no more” but also the immensity and complexity of the problem of rooting out the nexus of racist violence.”

It is this intersectional approach to the documenting of state violence against women of colour that makes this book so important. The issue is far more deeply embedded in white society than any approach that focuses primarily on police and prison reform can affect. It is part and parcel of whiteness itself, and must be addressed by radical change, not liberal reform. As Mariame Kaba notes in her Introduction, “Today, my organizing work is focused on abolishing police, prisons, and surveillance. It took a long time for me to embrace abolition as praxis. I bought into the idea that more training, more transparency, better community oversight, and prosecuting killer cops would lead to a more just system of policing. I was wrong. The origin story of modern American policing is slave patrols and union busting. A system created to contain and control me as a Black woman cannot be reformed.”

In this book, Ritchie exposes state violence against black, Indigenous, and other women of colour, starting with the early history of policing as a means of controlling the lives of Indigenous people and African-descended slaves. She gives voice to the many black and Indigenous women who experienced sexual violence at the hands of American soldiers, slave patrollers, and later, police officers. She also examines the gender-specific forms of border policing waged against immigrant women throughout American history, many of which are based on, and reinforce, racist stereotypes of hypersexuality, promiscuity, indiscriminate child-bearing, criminality, and sexual and gender non-conformity among women of colour.

She painstakingly traces the links between race, disability and sexual and gender non-conformity, demonstrating how all are factors placing women, trans men, and queer and non-binary people of colour at high risk from violence, and frequently sexualised violence from police and other state agents. She looks at laws and policing strategies, from anti-loitering and anti-prostitution laws to “broken windows” and “quality of life” policing to child welfare and domestic violence interventions as sites of racial profiling, invasion of privacy, gender role policing and violence.

Yet in this painful litany of injustice upon injustice, there is also a record of resistance. “There is no question that the shroud of invisibility around Black women’s and women of color’s experiences of police violence has been irrevocably lifted in the post-Ferguson moment and movement. It has been forcefully pushed aside by young women on the front lines in Ferguson and by bloggers and organizers across the country who were speaking out in the days and months following Mike Brown’s killing, who were outraged at Dajerria Becton’s assault in McKinney, who rose up in widespread protest following Sandra Bland’s death in police custody, and who unapologetically demanded attention and action around #AssaultatSpringValleyHigh and the rape of thirteen Black women by Oklahoma City police officer Daniel Holtzclaw, and who demanded justice for Rekia Boyd.”

But as each new day’s newspapers and twitter feeds inform us, the state’s assault on black, Indigenous and other racially marginalised women, trans men and non-gender conforming people continues, and so must the resistance.

Annelie Wendeberg’s historical suspense novel The Fall is a sequel to The Devil’s Grin, which introduces the character of Anna Kronberg, a brilliant German medical doctor and bacteriologist, living as a man, Dr. Anton Kronberg, in the Victorian England of Sherlock Holmes. I rather enjoyed the first volume, first because of the inclusion of Holmes as a character, and second, because of the interesting portrayal of the practical and psychological issues of being a woman passing as a man.

It took me longer to engage with this book, in part because it’s primarily a novel about Kronberg and Moriarty, with Holmes appearing infrequently, and because in this novel, Kronberg is now living openly as a woman, because it is now possible, though still extremely unusual, for a woman to be a physician or scientist.

As the title suggests, this novel take place during the run-up to the canonical Conan Doyle story “The Final Problem” and provides a plot for Moriarty’s to engage in and a reason for the final confrontation between Holmes and Moriarty to take place in Germany. And of course Kronberg is at the centre of it.

Moriarty’s plans require the expertise of a medical researcher capable of creating almost single-handedly the field of germ warfare. Having been connected to the organisation that Holmes and Kronberg brought to justice in The Devil’s Grin, he knows that Anton Kronberg is the scientist he needs, but it has taken some time to track Kronberg down, and realise that the woman he finds at the end of the trail is in fact the brilliant supposedly male bacteriologist he seeks. True to form, Moriarty kidnaps both Kronberg and her father, using the threat of harm to the old man to force her to create weaponised anthrax.

What follows is a deadly game of wits and power plays. Kronberg manages to get word of Moriarty’s plans to Holmes, while trying to persuade Moriarty that she is becoming more amenable to his plans. We know, of course, that Holmes will succeed in breaking Moriarty’s organisation in the end, and that Moriarty is doomed, but the price paid for this outcome by Kronberg is both high and bitter in the extreme.

As I said, it took me a while to fully engage, but the psychological complexity of the unfolding relationship between Moriarty and Kronberg, two brilliant and damaged people, both in their own ways tied as much to Holmes as they are to each other, made for fascinating reading.

The third Kronberg novel, The Journey, begins with Holmes and Kronberg - five months pregnant with Moriarty’s child - hiking through wilderness, hiding from Sebastian Moran, who is undoubtedly seeking them both to avenge the death of Moriarty. It’s not an unexpected scenario - even the most casual reader of the Holmes canon knows that it will be three years from the fall at Reichenbach before Holmes resurfaces.

The novel is indeed about a journey - several of them in fact, both geographical and psychological.

Kronberg’ pregnancy gives her several months of grace before Moran will take his revenge. Moriarty, before his death, gave orders that of anything should happen to him, she should not be harmed until after his child is born. The birth of the child is key to the disbursement of Moriarty’s considerable fortune. As Moriarty’s widow, she is entitled to inherit one-third as dower right, and to be the executor of a trust which provides for the child until their majority. Moriarty’s relatives want to control the child and the money. Moran wants to be paid.

Holmes and Kronberg spend her pregnancy travelling throughout England and Europe, sometimes together, sometimes not, knowing that when she delivers, the day if reckoning will come, one way or another. Hunted and hunting simultaneously, seeking to avoid Moran while setting a trap fir him at the end of the chase.

Meanwhile, Kronberg is forced to deal with her pregnancy, her hatred if Moriarty and inability to feel anything for the child, the loss of freedom, career, independence, that will follow on becoming a mother.

And emotionally, the time spent together, learning more about each other, brings Holmes and Kronberg closer in some ways, further apart in others.

I found the ending .... unsatisfying. The back and forth, maybe we have a relationship, maybe we don’t unravelling of emotions between a deeply repressed and controlled Holmes, and a woman who, like Kronberg, fears the ways in which a relationship might trap her as much as she might long for emotional intimacy with a man who is her intellectual equal, are perfectly good reasons for them to part after the birth of Kronberg’s child. Holmes remains in Europe, to hunt down Moran, Kronberg relocates to America, a more progressive country where she may find a career while living openly as a woman. That part worked.

What seemed too facile was the sudden deep attachment she has fir her daughter. She has struggled with this from the moment she became aware of her pregnancy. The abusive, manipulative, often violent nature of her relationship with Moriarty has weighed on her mind throughout. And it all vanishes in the act of giving birth. I could accept the beginnings of a change, but for all the trauma, all the ambivalence about being chained by motherhood that she expresses, to resolve itself into unconditional acceptance and love - it does not seem realistic.

With the two most interesting aspects of the series so far - the connection with Holmes, and the struggles of a brilliant woman living a life that rejects conventional female roles, functions and behaviours - apparently gone from the ongoing narrative line, I’m not at all certain that I’ll seek out any further adventures of Anna Kronberg.

More Retro Hugo reading - this time, it’s Best Novel finalist The Uninvited, by Irish novelist, playwright, journalist and historian Dorothy MacArdle. MacArdle herself was an Irish nationalist, feminist, labour organiser, and revolutionary colleague of Eamon de Valera.

The novel was originally published in Ireland in 1941 under the title Uneasy Freehold, and was released a year later in the United States as The Uninvited; in 1944 it was made into a Hollywood movie.

The Uninvited is a ghost story somewhat in the Gothic style, but its messages are modern - the silencing of women’s voices, women’s stories, and the ways in which women are turned into symbols to be revered - or despised - while being ignored as real, autonomous beings with both virtues and flaws. There is considerable psychological depth in MacArdle’s telling of the story, and much that delights even as it creates a slow mounting unease.

MacArdle takes her time in introducing her characters, setting the scene, suggesting the outlines of the secrets that must be brought into the open. The immediate action of the story begins with half-Irish siblings, Pamela and Roderick Fitzgerald. Roddy, the older sibling, is an established London journalist focusing on cultural issues, particularly drama. He’s dealing with the end of a difficult relationship, and writing a book on the history of English censorship (it’s worth noting that his career todate revolves around symbolism and silence). Pamela is recovering from the loneliness and isolation of several years spent caring fir their dying father (again, note the situation of a woman trapped in a position of idealised self-sacrifice).

They decide to buy a house in the country, where Pamela can restore her energy and Roddy can have quiet for writing. The place they settle on has been vacant for most of the past 15 years. The owner, Stella, a young woman of 18 living with her grandfather, has not set foot in the house since she was taken from it as a child, shortly after the death of her mother. The grandfather, with whom the Fitzgeralds negotiate, warns them that the house was sold before, to a couple who deserted it due to “disturbances.”

Warned but not concerned, Roddy and Pamela move in, begin renovating and making the house their own. And there are indeed disturbances - starting with lonely sighs in the night and developing slowly into a full haunting. Rooms in which one becomes unaccountably depressed, strange lights, a recurring scent of mimosa, sudden sensations of extreme cold, and eventually apparitions of a pale, blonde woman who resembles Stella’s dead mother.

Pamela convinces Roddy that they must try to discover the secrets of the house and the haunting, convinced that there must be a way to free whatever spirits are trapped there. They begin asking questions of neighbours, people who knew the family before tragedy struck. Slowly, the story emerges, but only in outline. The house was at the end home to three people - Meredith Llewellyn, Stella’s father, an artist, much disliked by most who recalled him; Mary, remembered by sll as a saintly, gentle woman with enormous patience and generosity toward her husband; and Carmel, a Spanish girl brought into the household by Meredith, his model and, most believed, his lover. Mary died in a fall from a cliff on a stormy night, with Carmel near and suspected of possibly causing her death; Carmel died not long after from pneumonia caught on that night, exacerbated by exposure after she fled the house. Pamela and Roddy, hearing these accounts, begin to think there are two spirits in the house, Carmel, filled with hatred, seeking revenge, and Mary, trying to protect her daughter Stella from Carmel’s rage.

Meanwhile, Stella and Roddy have fallen in love, but Stella’s sense of self - already damaged by her grandfather, who idolised his daughter and has tried to mould his granddaughter into her image, is collapsing under the pressure of the haunting. All too soon she seems to be racing toward madness, in a way which only further convinces Pamela and Roddy that the two dead women are somehow battling for Stella’s soul - the doctor treating her describes her condition as bordering on schizophrenia, saying “she has been a stained-glass saint and a crazy little gypsy in turns,” evoking the images that have been forming of Mary and Carmel in their minds, the archetypal contrast between virgin and whore.

In addition to exploring the consequences of this classic idealisation/demonisation trope, MacArdle also looks at, though less markedly, the ways in which race and class intersect with gender, and uses the vehicle of the ghost story as a way of suggesting the intergenerational trauma resulting from the silencing of marginalised voices.

MacArdle tells the tale with great skill, moving slowly at first, giving us a Roshomon-like perspective of the central events that led to the haunting, each observer giving a slightly different tale, each tale carrying its own weight of preconceptions and bias. As the intensity of the ghostly manifestations, and the severity of Stella’s mental anguish, increase, so does the pace of the narrative, and the urgency of the siblings to discover the truth and save Stella, until the final events, and the long-concealed truths, come rushing out. A deeply moving story, well-told.

Samuel R. Delany is as well-known and respected for his literary and social/queer criticism as he is for his writing of fiction in multiple, often paraliterary, genres, from science fiction to queer erotica. Shorter Views: Queer Thoughts and the Politics of the Paraliterary, a collection of critical essays on race, sexuality, science fiction, and the art of writing, plus a number of interviews on a variety of topics, that demonstrates the breadth and depth of his thinking and his academic work in these areas, and offers the reader a sustained experience both instructive and challenging.

The book is divided into three sections - Part One: Some Queer Thoughts, Part Two: The Politics of the Paraliterary, and Part Three: Some Writing/Some Writers. These categories, while suggestive of the overarching themes of each section, should not be taken as exclusive. In the first section, for instance, Delany has gathered essays and interviews that talk about queerness, but also queerness in relation to art, to his own writing in various paraliterary genres (science fiction, pornography), in other writers. In the second, he examines theory and criticism of science fiction, comics, and other paraliterary genres, but does so from the persoective of a queer academic, critic and author. The third section looks at specific writers and works, both literary and paraliterary.

There’s a documentary about Delany, called The Polymath, or The Life and Opinions of Samuel R. Delany, Gentleman. I’ve never seen it (though I’d love to if I can ever find a coy), but one thing I am certain of, is that polymath is one of the words that one can definitely use to describe him. It’s there in his writing, in the breadth and scope of his thinking, his references, his allusions, the often very disparate threads of knowledge that he draws together in presenting his arguments. To read Delany is to learn things you never would have imagined. To read this collection of essays and interviews is to have your perspectives on race and sexuality challenged, to have your understanding of the art and practice of writing and the genre of speculative fiction - and a few other paraliterary genres - broadened.

Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty, by law professor Dorothy Roberts, was first published in 1997, but the topic it addresses, the relationship between race and concepts of reproductive freedom, are no less fraught today than they were 20 years ago - in fact, these issues, in the era of Black Lives Matter, may be even more crucial now.

White feminism has long framed reproductive freedom as the freedom not to bear children, and advocated for access to birth control and abortion. What this fails to recognise is the ways in which reproduction for black women is a story that begins with forced rape and abduction of children during slavery, and continues through eugenicist narratives to coerced administration of birth control and forced sterilisation.

“...we need to reconsider the meaning of reproductive liberty to take into account its relationship to racial oppression. While Black women’s stories are sometimes inserted as an aside in deliberations about reproductive issues, I place them at the center of this reconstructive project. How does Black women’s experience change the current interpretation of reproductive freedom? The dominant notion of reproductive liberty is flawed in several ways. It is limited by the liberal ideals of individual autonomy and freedom from government interference; it is primarily concerned with the interests of white, middle-class women; and it is focused on the right to abortion. The full extent of many Americans’ conception of reproductive freedom is the Constitution’s protection against laws that ban abortion. I suggest an expanded and less individualistic conception of reproductive liberty that recognizes control of reproduction as a critical means of racial oppression and liberation in America. I do not deny the importance of autonomy over one’s own reproductive life, but I also recognize that reproductive policy affects the status of entire groups. Reproductive liberty must encompass more than the protection of an individual woman’s choice to end her pregnancy. It must encompass the full range of procreative activities, including the ability to bear a child, and it must acknowledge that we make reproductive decisions within a social context, including inequalities of wealth and power. Reproductive freedom is a matter of social justice, not individual choice.”

By tracing social responses to black women’s reproductive history, fertility and family choices, Roberts demonstrates the ways in which reproductive freedom has many different meanings for black women. Where white ablebodied women have in general been encouraged to have children, leading to a construction of reproductive freedom as the choice not to reproduce except on her own terms, the mass of historical and social meanings surrounding reproduction for black women leads to a far more complex formulation of what it means for them to have full autonomy over their reproduction.

Roberts begins where all narratives of black people in the Americas must begin, with the conditions of slavery. Black women were seen not only as labourers, but as the source of new slaves to add to the labour force. While systematic breeding of slaves was not common, most slaveowners were well aware of the economic benefits of black women’s fertility. Childbearing was encouraged, barrenness punished. Rape was common, both at the hands of white men, and black men chosen as mates for potentially fertile women. At the same time, black women had no rights to their children, who were legally the property of their owners. Their children might be taken from them, and sold away or rented out without any recourse. Even when their families remained intact, mothers often had little choice over the rearing of their children. As healthy slaves were required to work long hours, childrearing was often assigned to older or disabled slaves who could no longer work at hard labour.

Roberts goes on to discuss the shift in social pressures brought to bear on black women once slavery was abolished and their reproduction no longer benefits owners. The growing eugenics movement, based in a belief that a range of character traits from intelligence to moral behaviour were hereditary in nature, combined with racist constructions of black people as unintelligent, sexually promiscuous, morally lax, lazy, insubordinate, and otherwise undesirable, began to argue for limitations on reproduction among black people, as well as other “undesirable” groups. Sterilisation of both men and women in these groups, as well as limited access to prenatal and perinatal care for the poor were advocated as means of preventing the passing on of inferior genes.

“I turn to a discussion of eugenics because this way of thinking helped to shape our understanding of reproduction and permeates the promotion of contemporary policies that regulate Black women’s childbearing. Racist ideology, in turn, provided fertile soil for eugenic theories to take root and flourish. It bears remembering that in our parents’ lifetime states across the country forcibly sterilized thousands of citizens thought to be genetically inferior. America’s recent eugenic past should serve as a warning of the dangerous potential inherent in the notion that social problems are caused by reproduction and can be cured by population control.”

However, Roberts acknowledges the complexity of black attitudes toward birth control. Many black women used various forms of birth control, from abstinence to barrier methods to post-coital douching and abortion. Over the first half of the 20th century, the birth rate among black women fell to the same levels found among white women. The ambiguities result from the mixed messages for birth control. Many white birth control advocates - and some Black advocates as well - used the language of eugenics, while most black advocates talked in terms of spacing families, improving maternal health and decreasing infant mortality. At the same time, a significant number of black voices called for blacks to resist family planning as a firm of racial suicide, and indeed, to raise birth rates in order to outpace white population growth.

Roberts devotes considerable space to a discussion of the use of Norplant as a birth control method aimed at - and in some cases forced upon - poor and minority women, with particular emphasis on preventing pregnancy among unmarried teens and women on welfare. Issues ranging from unethical testing on Third World women to lack of long-term testing, to side effects, health risks and problems with implant removal, point to a ‘solution’ adopted without much thought fir the real concerns of women, as a measure to control the reproduction of the poor, and particularly women of colour. Part of the hidden coerciveness of Norplant comes from the fact that, unlike other forms of contraception, which a woman can simply decide not to use, Norplant can only be discontinued with the intervention of a medical practitioner.

“Being able to get Norplant removed quickly and easily is critical to a user’s control over reproductive decisionmaking. Yet poor and low-income women often find themselves in a predicament when they seek to have the capsules extracted. Their experience with Norplant is a telling example of how a woman’s social circumstances affect her reproductive “choices.” A woman whose insertion procedure was covered by Medicaid or private insurance may be uninsured at the time she decides to have the tubes removed. A woman who had the money to pay for implantation may be too broke to afford extraction. Some women have complained that they learned of the cost of removal—from $150 to $500—only after returning to a physician to have the implants taken out.”

Other key examples of the policing of Black women’s bodies and reproduction focused on in Roberts’ examination of race and reproductive freedom include the prosecution and incarceration of poor, and primarily black, pregnant and post-natal drug users on charges of child abuse, child neglect, and similar crimes. She shows clearly that, despite rhetoric to the contrary, the goals here are not to protect black fetuses or to fight drug abuse, rather, that the factor driving such prosecutions is the desire to control black reproduction. She also dissects the American welfare system, showing how it is designed to penalise poor black women with children. A discussion of new reproductive technologies such as IVF observes the ways in which the costs if these technologies, and the fact that they are not covered by Medicaid or many insurance plans, make them inaccessible to Black women and families who are infertile or otherwise having difficulty in having a child.

Roberts concludes her examination of race and reproduction by examining the ways in which the liberal understanding of liberty as a defense of individual choice fails to provide true social justice and equality. Modern American law and society has focused on liberty as a protection from government intervention, and ignored the potential for equality that can come from government action. To ensure equality in the area of reproduction, as in many other areas, requires a balance between liberty and equality as guiding principles. This formulation of a positive, progressive idea of liberty:

“... includes not only the negative proscription against government coercion, but also the affirmative duty of government to protect the individual’s personhood from degradation and to facilitate the processes of choice and self-determination. This approach shifts the focus of liberty theory from state nonintervention to an affirmative guarantee of personhood and autonomy. Under this postliberal doctrine, the government is not only prohibited from penalizing welfare mothers or crack-dependent women for choosing to bear children; it is also required to provide subsistence benefits, drug treatment, and medical care. Ultimately, the state should facilitate, not block, citizens’ efforts to install more just and egalitarian economic, social, and political systems.”

Ann Leckie’s latest book, Provenance, is a most engaging science fictional political thriller cum murder mystery. Set in the Radchaii universe, but not in the Radch itself, it’s a smorgasbord of plots, conspiracies, political infighting, diplomatic maneuverings, hidden identities, thefts, attempted invasions, and murder, where every major character and most minor ones have at least one hidden agenda and no one’s motives can be assumed. And that is why it’s so much fun.

I’m not even going to try to explain the details of the plot, because before we’re through the first chapter, it’s gotten hopelessly complicated by circumstances. The protagonist is Ingray, the daughter of a powerful politician in the Hwae government. Overshadowed by her sibling Danach, who is favoured to become the heir to her mother’s power and position, Ingray has come up with a very risky scene she hopes will improve her house’s fortunes and her own position in her mother’s eyes. That scheme involves the dishonored and exiled child of another powerful house, and some very valuable historical documents, known as vestiges, purporting to show the origins of that house. But things get complicated, and then they get more complicated, and then... well, that’s why I’m not trying to give any plot details. You’ll have to read it for yourself. But one thing that’s very important to the success of this novel is that Ingray, despite her attempts to scheme and plot, is basically a nice person. That’s part of why things get so complicated for her. But it’s why you want to keep reading, because you really want everything to work out well for her.

A lot of the action, the scheming, the secrets and mysteries, centre around vestiges. The Hwae have a deep regard for the histories of things - houses, events, people. And what other peoples might treat as souvenirs, or interesting historical artefacts, are matters of great seriousness in their culture. A signed menu from an important dinner. The original draft of an important law. A floor tile from a building where something significant happened once. These are vestiges. For the Hwae, vestiges have almost the status of sacred artefacts. They connect them to their past, tell them who they are by declaring where they come from, what they have done, and who they have been.

As one might gather from the title, history, documentation of history, and the legitimacy of such documentary evidence is at the heart of much of the plots and conflicts in the novel, from the ownership of a space ship, to the foundations of a house, to the origins of an entire people. The social and philosophical questions that underlie the narrative are very much about how we construct history and self, and the value we place on how things came to be, in comparison to how things are. As one of the characters says: “Who are we if our vestiges aren’t real?”

The Tiger’s Daughter is K. Arsenault Rivera’s first novel, and it is both lovely and problematical. Which leaves me conflicted in talking about it.

It’s a love story between two warrior women who are destined to inherit the rulerships of their respective peoples. That’s what’s lovely about it. The childhood friendship that grows into love, the fact that we have two ‘chosen ones’ both with warrior mothers who pass on their skills, both with special abilities, both with extraordinary abilities and courage. Two women who will grow up to fight demons and to love each other, parted for a time by fate but never forgetting one another. That’s the wonderful part.

What is not so wonderful is that this is a secondary world which is based on actual Asian cultures, uncomfortably exoticised.

Shizuka is the daughter of a warrior and a poet, the niece of the childless Emperor, the Son of Heaven. Her homeland is Hokkaro, and there is a lot of talk about calligraphy and chrysanthemums and jade, and how important it is to use the correct honorific with a person’s name, and these are the things that define Hokkaran culture.

Shefali is the daughter of a Kharsa of the Qorin, a nomadic people who are masters at horsemanship and archery, live in felt tents called gers, and drink fermented sheep’s milk. These are the things that define Quorin culture.

Other than these blatant borrowings from Sino-Japanese and Mongolian traditions, we really don’t learn much more about either culture. Only the Gods of the Hokkaro seem to have ben developed originally, rather than taken from an existing Asian culture. And the gender equality.

And of course there is racism between these peoples, and colourism - Shefali and her brother are the children of a political marriage between their mother and a Hokkaran noble, of mixed race, taunted by other Qorin for their colour and their “rice-eater” ways. It can be argued that racism exists, colourism exists, they are things that humans do, and Rivera is only being realistic when she includes such behaviour in her story. And I would not dispute this if these were wholly invented cultures. But this is racism as the white people of this world have directed against the real peoples the Rivera has imported into her fantasy. And the relationship between Hokkaro and its client states replicate some of the most difficult parts of the history of relationships between Asian nations. This is neither a true secondary world fantasy, nor a historical fantasy. And that’s what makes this a problem.

There are other problems, too, structural ones. This is an epistolary novel in the extreme. The entire scope of the novel occurs within one extended scene, in which Shizuka, now the Empress Yui, receives a thick packet from Shefali, a letter in which Shefali recounts the entire history of their early lives together, their meetings and adventures as children, and her own adventures while they were apart. Shizuka, reading, occasionally pauses to recollect events that Shefali was not present for, to eat and drink and sleep before continuing to read Shefali’s letter.

It’s a very distancing device, although it does allow for some poetic language intended to underline the intensity of their ever-deepening relationship. But the implausibility of it all detracts more than it adds. Does Shefali really believe she has to rehearse every aspect of their past lives together, as if Shizuka will have forgotten these precious experiences?

So, there it lies. I loved the love story, the characters, their long struggle to be together, the twists of fate that kept them apart, the wonderful, heartwarming ending, the underlying story that still remains, of two strong warriors, wife and wife, who have a destiny to battle the demons that still infest their lans. But the worldbuilding is deeply flawed and appropriative. And that is not something that can be ignored.

Hidden Youth: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History, edited by Mikki Kendall and Chesya Burke, is a companion volume to the Rose Fox edited Long Hidden, also published by Crossed Genres, the sadly defunct publishing house that, in its short life, nurtured some remarkable authors and released some important volumes of speculative fiction.

The focus of this anthology is marginalised youth - narratives of children and adolescents from many settings and time periods who share the experience of being outside, oppressed, ignored, othered, and sometimes worse. They represent those who exist in the margins of history and society.

Evocative as most of these stories are, not all reach the same heights of overall craft. Some deal in familiar times and places, others unveil pieces of history not often explored in fiction, or for that matter, in factual narratives. And as always in any collection, some touched me deeply, and others, even if technically admirable, were less engaging. Among my personal favourites are:

“A Name to Ashes,” by Jayme Goh, which tells a story I was not aware of, that of Asian workers pressed into slavery in Cuba under Spanish colonial rule.

“Trenches,” by Sioban Krzywicki, about a young trans person who magically comes into her own reality after leaving home to fight in the trenches during WWI.

“The Girl, The Devil and the Coal Mine,” by Warren Bull, in which a 12-year-old black coal miner’s daughter takes on the Devil in a battle of wits to save her brother.

“How I Saved Athens from the Stone Monsters,” by Erik Jensen, is a bawdy yet heroic tale of two child prostitutes in ancient Greece, a cityful of animated phallic statues, and Isis’ interest in a new penis for Osiris. Not recommended for folks with castration anxieties.

“North,” by Imani Josey is the story of a young black woman who moves north during the Great Migration, where she is given a choice between comfort, and love.

These and other stories collected here shine a light on times, places and people that history tends not to care about, letting us see into hidden lives. There is fantasy, and magic, and strange creatures, but there is also truth and history.


*There are 22 short stories in this anthology, 11 written by women, 10 written by men, and one written by a person who chose not to indicate their gender.

Kate Harding has been writing for feminist and current affairs blogs and websites, magazines and newspapers, for some time now, and has turned her public voice to an analysis of what is more and more often being recognised as “rape culture.” Her book, Asking for It - The Alarming Rise of Rape Culture and What We Can Do About It, looks at the elements that make up rape culture in North America, and discusses ways to initiate change.

It’s written in an easy, almost conversational style, and is highly accessible in terms of explaining, and demonstrating, exactly what is meant by the term ‘rape culture.’ It’s also startlingly real. I found myself flooded with a sense of recognition, the feeling that the author had distilled my own experiences, into just about every paragraph. This is a book that will have most women who have done any thinking about the dynamics of sexual assault saying ‘yes, yes, that’s it, exactly’ all the way through.

Harding begins with a brief summation of rape culture from the perspective of by far the most typical victims, women:

“In the preamble to their 1993 anthology Transforming a Rape Culture, feminist scholars Emilie Buchwald, Pamela R. Fletcher, and Martha Roth write, ‘In a rape culture, women perceive a continuum of threatened violence that ranges from sexual remarks to sexual touching to rape itself. A rape culture condones physical and emotional terrorism against women and presents it as the norm.’ “

Continuing her discussion of rape culture, Harding presents and explodes a number of myths about rape, building again on earlier feminist thought:

“Like ‘rape culture,’ the concept of an identifiable set of ‘rape myths’first arose among feminists in the seventies, and has been refined and studied by social scientists ever since. In a 2012 paper published in Aggression and Violent Behavior, researchers Amy Grubb and Emily Turner explain, ‘Rape myths vary among societies and cultures. However, they consistently follow a pattern whereby, they blame the victim for their rape, express a disbelief in claims of rape, exonerate the perpetrator, and allude that only certain types of women are raped.’ “

First venturing into the supposedly “murky” area of consent, she points to research indicating that the common excuse that women fail to express lack of consent clearly enough is, essentially, a steaming pile of bullshit. In any other area of human interaction, men (like all other human beings) are perfectly capable of decoding polite demurrals as ‘noes’ - it’s only in the area of sexual advances that even plain statements become somehow insufficient. She also challenges the frequently expressed idea that having the obtain clear consent for each intensification of sexual activity “spoils the mood.”

Harding reminds the reader of all the things we know about rape - that it is about power, not sex; that it is a violation of a person’s autonomy and not a trivial act that means little to a sexually experience woman; that it is intentional, not accidental; that it is not something any one secretly wants; that men who rape do so because they like it and know they can get away with it; that all the advice about dressing and acting appropriately does nothing to forestall it. She talks about the ubiquity of victim-blaming and the perverse focus on how being charged and convicted of rape will affect the lives of rapists while dismissing the trauma experienced by those who are raped. She takes aim at the cultural assumption that when looking at strategies for rape prevention, it is somehow the responsibility of women to avoid rape, rather than the responsibility of men not to rape.

Harding also takes a close look at how the police and the legal and justice systems function - or far too often, don’t function - in a rape culture. She explores the myth, all too frequently held by police, that women often make false accusations of rape, and looks at how the refusal to accept and investigate sexual assault allegations as legitimate complaints allows rapists to continue committing crimes, endangering more women. As Harding notes, “The greatest challenge, though, is changing the culture. Both a law enforcement culture in which one former Philadelphia detective—­echoing Milledgeville’s Sergeant Blash—reportedly called Special Victims the “Lying Bitches Unit” and the larger society we all live in.”

She also explores the role of media - from popular music to film and television to video games - in creating snd perpetuating rape culture through the way women, sex and violence are portrayed. Including online social media in her discussion, she looks at the issue of online sexual harassment and the meanings of rape in gamer and ‘manosphere’ culture.

In her closing chapter, Harding talks about beginning to see changes in the general acceptance of rape culture, in the way more women were beginning to come forward, and the increase in conversations around the concept of enthusiastic consent, the idea that only yes means yes. The book was published in 2015, before the seachange that is #MeToo and #Time’sUp swept through the media. Each year, perhaps we put a few more cracks in the rape culture.

Celebrity is a strange thing. Most people whose fame goes far beyond any recognition they might reasonably have attained through their own work in their field, or their actions with their own circle, do so because the media picks them up, enhances who they are or what they do. Zoe Quinn became a celebrity because a bunch of overly privileged manboys decided that she had harshed their gaming mellow and threatened to kill her. Zoe Quinn became a celebrity because of the people who hate her, and remains one because of her response to that, and the people who came to admire her for it.

Crash Override: How Gamergate [Nearly] Destroyed My Life and How We Can Win the Fight against Online Hate is the story of how all that shit went down. It’s also the story of how Quinn survived and went on to found an organisation designed to help others facing the same shit that was thrown at her. And it’s the story of how much more has to change before any real dent can be made in the toxic sludgery that is the natural environment of the Internet abuser.

The first part of the book interweaves a linear account of the early days of the Gamergate assault on Quinn following he revenge post of an abusive ex-lover, with Quinn’s account if growing up poor, nerdy, and queer in a dysfunctional family in small town America. The later part of the book focuses on an exploration of the nature of online harassment, her anti-harassment activism and the tactics adopted by her organisation - also called Crash Override - on behalf of their clients, general advice on what to do if you are being harassed, or expect to be, and thoughts on what our social institutions - such as lawmakers, police, academic researchers, the media, and companies with internet presence - can do to ameliorate the problem.

Quinn earns significant points in my book for pointing out that as bad as the harassment has been for her, a white cis woman, it is worse for trans folk and people of colour, and worst of all for trans women of colour - as it is in life off the net as well. She makes clear the linkages between the reddit and 4chan gamergate abusers, highly sexist denizens of the MRA and ‘manoverse’ netspaces, and the alt-right/white supremacist/fascist community centred on breitbart and similar sites.

And by admitting her own involvement in internet abuse as an insecure teenager with unresolved frustrations, she underscores the point that internet harassment is bullying gone digital, it is a manifestation of something that has been part of human interaction for a very long time, and it will take a cultural seachange to prioritise empathy over dehumanisation.

“We need a culturewide solution because individual change is difficult when online abuse is frequently a group activity. It’s harder to hear the voices of the people you’ve hurt over the dozens of others cheering you on. These mobs spring up partly because a lot of people like teen me don’t have a community anywhere else. Participating in an abuse campaign is something to have in common, with a target to bond over and rally against. The mob is a place to belong and find acceptance; it just happens to be built on someone else’s suffering.”

A brave, painful and sometimes funny examination of the underside of Internet culture that will probably leave you wondering what would happen if the trollmobs came after you.