My life in books

The non-fiction I read in 2011 was a small and somewhat mixed assortment.


William H. Patterson, Jr., Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue With His Century, The Authorized Biography, Volume I: Learning Curve

This was somewhat interesting but essentially unsatisfying. Patterson does not appear to have the detachment or the analytical bent (at least when discussing this subject) to provide more than a highly detailed but ultimately superficial look at Heinlein as man or as writer, and both his accuracy and his treatment of sources is open to question. A biography must be more than a collection of everything one could find about the subject, set down without comment even when the various sources are contradictory.


Sarah Schulman, Ties That Bind: Familial Homophobia and its Consequences

Schulman makes an interesting but not completely convincing argument that lack of full acceptance and support of queer people by their families is the basic cause, not only of social intolerance of queer people, but also of all the ills that can be found within the queer community. I think she has a point - that being that if families would fight for the rights of their queer members, both within the family and within the greater society, then much positive change would occur - but I think her argument simplifies the situation somewhat. But still, she poses some very interesting ideas and points out how easily gay men, lesbians other members of the queer community settle for the most modest shows of acceptance from their families of origin, and how much more many parents, siblings and other family members need to go in supporting, encouraging and defending the queer people in their lives just to provide the same kind of support that is automatically given to the straight people in their lives.


Arundhati Roy, An Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire

Roy is one of the most eloquent critics of the global imperialist project. These essays are from the periods of the Bush administration in the US and address issues having to do with the Iraq war as well as challenging imperialism and its effects around the world and in her own country.


Lee Maracle, I Am Woman: A Native Perspective on Sociology and Feminism

Maracle's book is part personal narrative, part history of the development of the movements of resistance and change among First Nations peoples, and part sociological analysis of the situation of First Nations peoples, and First Nations women, in their own communities and within north American mainstream society.


Carolyn G. Heilbrun, Writing a Woman’s Life

A fascinating examination of the ways that women's lives are chronicled, and how the ways that biographers and women writing personal narratives structure and organise their work differs from traditional approaches taken toward the writing of the lives of men.


Jennifer K. Stoller, Ink-stained Amazons and Cinematic Warriors

Stoller offers the reader an interesting and lively survey of many of the fictional heroines that have become part of popular culture over the past 70-odd years, from Wonder Woman to Buffy and Xena.


Barbara Ehrenreich, Bright-sided: How Positive Thinking Is Undermining America

Ehrenreich looks at the history, the current manifestations and the effects of the positive thinking and self-help movements in American culture, and demonstrates how what appeared to be a beneficial response to the restrictive culture of Calvinist thought in the 19th century has become a dangerous mass delusion in the 21st.


Stephanie Coontz, A Strange Stirring: The Feminine Mystique and American Woman at the Dawn of the 1960s

Coontz does three things in this book, all of which are quite interesting - perhaps especially to someone like myself who remember when The Feminine Mystique was first published. First, she looks at the book itself. Second, she presents narratives of women who read the book and have described how it affected them. Third, she looks at the social history of women and the the women's movement in the US using the book as a touchstone.


And finally, a book that is not really classifiable, but which I am including here because taken in whole, it is an example of writing about a woman's life, and is hence no more a fiction than are the lives of any of us.

Karen Joy Fowler & Debbie Notkin (eds.), 80! Memories and Reflections on Ursula K. Le Guin

To celebrate the occasion of Ursula Le Guin's 80th birthday, editors Fowler and Notkin invited contributions of many kinds from a variety of writers. Here are reminiscences of Le Guin, personal accounts of what her books have meant to various writers, poems and short stories presented in her honour, pieces of critical analysis, a brief biographical sketch by Julie Phillips (who wrote the definitive biography of Alice Sheldon/James Tiptree Jr.) and a few other kinds of things that one might produce in order to celebrate a most extraordinary woman.

The James Tiptree Award Anthology Volume 1
The James Tiptree Award Anthology Volume 2
Editors: Karen Joy Fowler, Pat Murphy, Debbie Nottkin, Jeffery D Smith.

The James Tiptree Award, named after the primary pseudonym/writing persona of Alice B. Sheldon, is presented annually to a short story or novel that “explores and expands gender roles in speculative fiction.” First given in 1991, the Tiptree Award has honoured writers such as Eleanor Arnason, Gwennyth Jones, Maureen McHugh, Nicola Griffith, Ursula K LeGuin, Matt Ruff, Suzy Mckee Charnas, and Joe Haldeman.

In these two anthologies, the editors have collected a range of short stories and excerpts from novels that have either won or been shortlisted for the award, plus some excerpts from Sheldon/Tiptree’s writings, contributions from other writers, including Le Guin and Joanna Russ, who corresponded with Sheldon/Tiptree during her writing career, and other pieces in some way associated with the Tiptree Award, those it has honoured, or the issues it exists to draw attention to. Which makes for some rather eclectic selections, as you will see below.

Contents of Volume 1

“Birth Days” – Geoff Ryman. Ryman’s delightful story dips into the life of a gay man at 10 year intervals, from the day he comes out to his birth family to a contented mid-life in the family of his dreams and desires.

“Everything but the Signature Is Me” – James Tiptree Jr. Text of a letter that Alice Sheldon, after being identified as the person behind the James Tiptree persona, wrote to her friend (and later, literary trustee of her estate) about why and how Tiptree came to be.

“The Ghost Girls of Rumney Mill” – Sandra McDonald. McDonald considers whether gender roles so deeply ingrained that they persist beyond the grave, and suggests that if they do, so too must resistance to them.

“Boys” – Carol Emshweller. In Lysistrata, women refused to have sex with men in an attempt to end a war. Emshweller’s women of the valley find they must make a much stronger statement to end the violence of men.

“Genre: A Word Only the French Could Love” – Ursula K. LeGuin. Text of a speech in which LeGuin handily demolishes the supposed importance of genre "roles" with the same disregard for rigidity that marks the works of those who would challenge gender roles.

Excerpts from Set This House in Order – Matt Ruff. This excerpt from Ruff’s book, a contemporary novel about two people with multiple personality disorder, was just enough of a taste to leave me wanting the full course. Of particular interest was the handling of personas whose gender identity differs from that of the primary personality.

“Judging the Tiptree” – Suzy McKee Charnas. Charnas, who has been both judge and recipient of the Tiptree Award, discusses what “exploring and expanding gender roles in speculative fiction” means in the context of such an award.

“The Catgirl Manifesto: An Introduction” – Richard Calder. A darkly satirical comment on the ways in which male lust is projected onto socially constructed female images/objects, disguised as an academic paper on the emergence of a new kind of woman that men can’t resist – an original perspective on the old excuse “the woman tempted me and I did eat.”

“Looking through Lace” – Ruth Nestvold. The first contact story provides an opportunity for simultaneously presenting alternative ways of social organisation and putting the familiar ones under the microscope. In Nestvold’s excellent take on a classic form, gender roles both obscure and ultimately illuminate both perspectives.

“‘Tiptree’ and History” – Joanna Russ. Russ, a long-time correspondent of both James Tiptree and Alice Sheldon, offers her insights into her complex character.

“What I Didn’t See” – Karen Joy Fowler. Fowler’s story, which centres on the events of a European expedition into African “gorilla country,” has strong links to Tiptree’s life and work, but provides something quite new and worth thinking about.

“The Snow Queen” – Hans Christian Anderson; “The Lady of the Ice Garden – Kara Dalkey; “Travels with the Snow Queen” – Kelly Link. Anderson’s tale of the Snow Queen has proved to be very fertile source material for women writers of science fiction and fantasy. The editors present a new translation of the original, followed by two Tiptree-winning stories by Kelly Kink and Kara Dalkey that draw on elements of the original.


Contents of Volume 2

“Talking too Much: About James Tiptree Jr.” – Julie Phillips. Thoughts from the author of the recent, and excellent, biography of Alice Sheldon on the crucial relationship of writer and persona that allowed Sheldon to create the brilliant body of work by Tiptree.

Letter to Rudolf Arnheim, by James Tiptree Jr. An excerpt from Sheldon’s personal correspondence discussing her writing of science fiction.

“Congenital Agenesis of Gender Ideation by K.N. Sirsi and Sandra Botkin” – Raphael Carter. A thought-provoking meditation on how we classify people in terms of gender – and how we respond when this process is challenged, delivered in the form of an academic paper.

“The Gift” – L. Timmel Duchamp. In Duchamp’s story, two people engage in a cross-cultural relationship, unaware of the fact that they do not completely share an understanding of sex or gender.

Excerpts from Camouflage – Joe Haldeman. The elements of Haldeman’s book that make it relevant to the Tiptree Award involve the experiences of aliens learning to “pass” as gendered human beings, allowing the reader to look at constructions of gender from the outside, going in. The excerpts are enticing.

Excerpts from Troll: A Love Story – Joanna Sinisalo. Sinisalo’s novel takes a different approach to the theme of the Other among us who, by his/her/its/zir/hir/their Otherness, allows us to see ourselves. Plus, girl meets troll – not an everyday love story.

“Looking for Clues” – Nalo Hopkinson. Hopkinson’s speech on who is, and who is not, represented in various parts of the universe of speculative fiction is worth reading, And then thinking about long and hard. Who is not represented in the books on your shelves?

“Nirvana High” – Eileen Gunn and Leslie What. Gunn and What tackle issues of growing up as the different one, the other, in a story that received considerable praise from the editors, but didn’t impress me quite as much. A few too many topical references to things I was only vaguely familiar with limited my appreciation. On the plus side, some very nice dark humour.

“Five Fucks” – Jonathan Lethem. There’s a male. And a female. Desire. The slow deconstruction of time, space and meaning. And an observer who is sometimes called Cornell Pupkiss. After that, you’re on your own.

“All of Us Can Almost…” – Carol Emshweller. I can’t top the editors' comment: “This is a story about the confluence of gender roles, power plays, sex, pride and desperation. So of course, it is very funny.”

“The Brains of Female Hyena Twins” – Gwyneth Jones. Jones delivered this paper at the 1994 conference of the Academic Fantastic Fiction Network, in which she looks at the then-current state of scientific research into sex differences at the psychological level in a variety of species and speculation on what the findings can offer to writers interested in exploring issues of sex and gender.

“Another Story, or A Fisherman of the Inland Sea” – Ursula K. LeGuin. This story is set in LeGuin’s Hainish universe, and addresses two very different ways in which human experience is organised – the nature of time, and the structure of the family. Published in 1994, it is by now a classic, and if you haven’t read it, before now, this would be the perfect opportunity.

“Kissing Frogs” – Jaye Lawrence. Everyone knows that a kiss from the right princess can change the frog to a prince. But what about a kiss from the right frog?

All told, I really enjoyed reading a lot of these selections, and there were very, very few that did not engage me to at least some degree.