My linkpost is like footsteps in the snow

[dolorosa_12]

Canny readers will have noticed that today's post contains three weeks' worth of material, and is posted on a Thursday instead of the usual Friday. While I have no excuse for skipping several weeks' posts, I should explain that I will be spending most of tomorrow on a train, and felt it would be easier to post today instead.

Amberlin Kwaymullina: 'Let the stories in: on power, privilege and being an Indigenous writer'.

Here is a Q and A with African writers of science fiction at Omenana. I found some of the questions (from students at Simon Fraser University, Canada), to betray some rather ill-informed assumptions on the part of the questioners, but all of the answers were illuminating.

Tansy Rayner Roberts' Continuum 11 speech: Fantasy, Female Writers & The Politics of Influence.

'In The Rustle of Pages', a short story by Cassandra Khaw.

I loved this poem, 'A Visit With Morgan Le Fay', by Sofia Samatar.

Via my partner, this review of the new Channel Four show Humans.

Aliette de Bodard has begun posting regular 'Shattered Wings Thursday' posts, which consist of related content for her upcoming novel House of Shattered Wings. Keep an eye out for upcoming posts in this series.

One of my former academic colleagues, Myriah Williams, who works on medieval Welsh manuscripts, has written about the rather surreal experience of having her research attract wider attention in the mainstream media.

YA Books Central is running a giveaway for Serpentine, Cindy Pon's latest book.

No Award posted about Australian kids' TV show themes (Lift-Off forever!).

'The Definitive Oral History of How Clueless Became an Iconic '90s Classic'.

Comments

[dolorosa_12]

Yeah, like I said, I'm missing a lot of social and cultural context here, so I don't really feel qualified to discuss that side of things. I would say that discussions of other people's (complicated) identities and making assertions about how they choose to identify makes me a little uncomfortable, so I'd prefer not to continue along those lines in the comments here with regard to Aliette.

I do understand cringing when you read works set in 'your' cities and the authors appear to get it wrong. An author whose work I otherwise adore had a story with several Australian characters, and they mentioned swimming and hanging out in a part of Sydney where no resident would go - a really touristy area, and certainly not anywhere that you'd swim. It was like a flashing neon sign that the author wasn't very familiar with Sydney, in a book that was otherwise absolutely fantastic. There was also a recent (Australian-made) political thriller on TV here in the UK. It was set in Canberra (where I grew up), and they were trying so hard to make it seem like this bustling, fast-paced metropolis - very different from the empty, silent city I remember!

Anyway, like I said, I have no problem with this line of discussion, but I would prefer - if we're having it here - to keep it general, rather than about individual people who I consider friends.

[dhampyresa]

Sorry. I completely undertsand why it makes you uncomfortable, since it tends to make me uncomfortable too. I would just like to say that I'm not objecting to Aliette who is by all accounts a nice person, but to de Bodard who has benefitted from French societal issues, if that makes sense? idk. Mostly I want you to know that if I ever go full grump on this subject again, it's all to do with my own issues. /drops subject

I don't think I can talk about what's wrong (so far) with the portrayal of Paris without touching the subject dropped above, so I will have to drop it too.

And Now For Something Completely Different! Can you explain the Morgan poem, please? Because I didn't get it and now I feel like an uncultured slob.

[dolorosa_12]

The way I read it is it's about the tiring, silent, unnoticed 'women's work' that goes on in the background, and that is undervalued and unrecognised. There are also scattered references to small kinds of folk magic, the kinds of stuff that witches are always portrayed as doing in weird little folktales from around Britain and Ireland (knotting horses' tails, gathering dew, dancing on frost-covered grass with feet smeared with fat to protect against the cold). It's a small, homely kind of magic.

I also see resonances with a medieval Irish poem normally given the title 'Lament of the Old Woman of Beare' in English. Here's a link to a translation, although I'm not sure if Samatar was alluding to it in her poem. Ignore most of the rubbish written online about this poem (it's all 'sovereignty goddesses' and 'mystical Celts' and is complete nonsense), and you can see that it speaks from the persona of an old woman lamenting the passage of time, initially mourning the loss of her privileged youth (when she ate and drank well and was loved by kings), and ultimately being reconciled with her age and impending death.

At least, that's what I think is going on in 'A Visit With Morgan Le Fay'.

[dhampyresa]

Thanks for the answer! It's very interesting, even though it completely doesn't fit with how I see Morgane (and I will chalk this up to 'the British are doing their thing again').

Thanks for the Myriah Williams link too! I finally got a chance to read it and it was great.

Also, I ended up writing this post, sort of spurred by our conversation above. No obligation for you to read it, btw. I just thought maybe you'd be interested.

[dolorosa_12]

Yeah, I guess the beauty of Arthuriana is that it can be so many things to so many people, and the characters and their stories can get used to say so many different things.

I'm friends with Myriah, so I was able to sort of follow her experience in real time as it was happening. It was a very surreal, but rewarding experience for her as an academic, and I thought she wrote about it really beautifully.

I did see that post, and I appreciate you explaining your thoughts on the matter. I think I've said all I wanted to say about the situation in the comments here, but thanks for being so understanding about the whole thing.