From outside and underneath
Apr. 25th, 2021 10:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dolorosa_12After yesterday's post, Matthias and I ended up taking advantage of the sunshine to do a new walk — a huge loop that took us along the river in the other direction, and back through town. The whole thing was about 4km, and we saw cows by the cathedral, and a hedgehog wandering along the road (it was an empty road, and went into the undergrowth shortly after I took the photo).
This morning I've been doing meal prep for next week, while listening to old Massive Attack albums and just marvelling at how incredibly good it is. I want to just submerge myself in the lyrics for days.
Here's today's book meme prompt:
25. A book that answered a question you never asked
I've been mentioning in response to comments at various points that I was planning to use Ursula Le Guin's Tehanu for one of the questions in this meme, and this was the one.
I first read the Earthsea quartet (as it then was) in a big combined edition, when I was thirteen or fourteen years old. While I enjoyed the first three books (above all, I adored the stuff about names — that knowing something's true name gave you power over it, and genuine understanding, that people had multiple names representing different degrees of intimacy, and so on) and found various moments in them extremely striking (there are images from those books burnt into my brain in an extremely visual way), it was Tehanu that truly got under my skin, and it remains my favourite book in the series, and my favourite work by Le Guin.
The question it answered, which I had not asked (and had not been expecting a work of fantasy to answer; in spite of my childhood diet of pointedly political dystopian Australian YA, I did not have the knowledge or context to understand that books of this kind could explore issues of gender, or misogyny, etc) was what is it going to be like to be a woman? (And, I suppose, more quietly, it was asking me, why, as a young teenage girl, I felt my own life experiences had not forced me to confront such things until that point.)
In asking that question, the book ripped me open. It gave me a new — and not necessarily welcome — perspective on things I had witnessed happening to the adult women in my life, or experiences they'd had which they'd explained to me. And it showed me that it was highly likely that I could look forward to a lifetime of doing (vital, important, foundational, community-sustaining) work that would go unnoticed and unvalued by the wider world, and that there were ways the wider world would deliberately hurt me, and then blame me for the things it had done. Most cleverly of all (in the way Le Guin handles — and indeed corrects her own earlier handling of — 'women's magic'), Tehanu offers a stark illustration of the ways those in positions of power will justify their own privilege, and claim that the efforts and endeavours of dispossessed people are somehow inferior or dangerous, even if such endeavours would (if given space and support) achieve equally powerful results.
All this makes Tehanu sound like an incredibly bleak book, and one which trampled on my youthful spirit, but in fact nothing could be farther from the truth. I understood immediately what the book was trying to tell me, and I recognised that its ideas were unfortunately going to have a lot of relevance in my adult life, but I can remember thinking at the time that I was grateful for it as a kind of preemptive warning that would help me prepare psychologically and emotionally for what was to come. (That I expected awful things to happen reflects perhaps my own pessimism, but also how convinced I was by the power of Le Guin's writing.) I remember kind of mentally nodding and thinking, well, okay then, now I know what the world will do to me as a woman, and I can't see any way around it, but at least I'll be able to recognise it when it's happening. At the same time, while I didn't quite get this from Tehanu until later rereads, I was eventually able to understand that the book was showing me that 'women's work' was powerful, and heroic, and important, and that there was a value in doing all things with a sense of integrity and purpose, even if one's actions were viewed as insignificant in the eyes of the world.
Tehanu is such a precious book to me, and I'm really grateful to have read it for the first time at exactly the right age. It comes across as a bit gender essentialist now — but one of the things I admired most about Le Guin is that throughout her career, she would revisit ideas and correct and update her earlier thinking. She was capable, as a writer, of recognising that she had been wrong, in the past, or had not had a full and complete understanding, and so her writing was in constant conversation with itself, reflecting, and learning. That's very rare in a writer.
26. A book you recommend but cannot love
27. A book you love but cannot recommend
28. A book you adore that people are surprised by
29. A book that led you home
30. A book you detest that people are surprised by
This morning I've been doing meal prep for next week, while listening to old Massive Attack albums and just marvelling at how incredibly good it is. I want to just submerge myself in the lyrics for days.
Here's today's book meme prompt:
25. A book that answered a question you never asked
I've been mentioning in response to comments at various points that I was planning to use Ursula Le Guin's Tehanu for one of the questions in this meme, and this was the one.
I first read the Earthsea quartet (as it then was) in a big combined edition, when I was thirteen or fourteen years old. While I enjoyed the first three books (above all, I adored the stuff about names — that knowing something's true name gave you power over it, and genuine understanding, that people had multiple names representing different degrees of intimacy, and so on) and found various moments in them extremely striking (there are images from those books burnt into my brain in an extremely visual way), it was Tehanu that truly got under my skin, and it remains my favourite book in the series, and my favourite work by Le Guin.
The question it answered, which I had not asked (and had not been expecting a work of fantasy to answer; in spite of my childhood diet of pointedly political dystopian Australian YA, I did not have the knowledge or context to understand that books of this kind could explore issues of gender, or misogyny, etc) was what is it going to be like to be a woman? (And, I suppose, more quietly, it was asking me, why, as a young teenage girl, I felt my own life experiences had not forced me to confront such things until that point.)
In asking that question, the book ripped me open. It gave me a new — and not necessarily welcome — perspective on things I had witnessed happening to the adult women in my life, or experiences they'd had which they'd explained to me. And it showed me that it was highly likely that I could look forward to a lifetime of doing (vital, important, foundational, community-sustaining) work that would go unnoticed and unvalued by the wider world, and that there were ways the wider world would deliberately hurt me, and then blame me for the things it had done. Most cleverly of all (in the way Le Guin handles — and indeed corrects her own earlier handling of — 'women's magic'), Tehanu offers a stark illustration of the ways those in positions of power will justify their own privilege, and claim that the efforts and endeavours of dispossessed people are somehow inferior or dangerous, even if such endeavours would (if given space and support) achieve equally powerful results.
All this makes Tehanu sound like an incredibly bleak book, and one which trampled on my youthful spirit, but in fact nothing could be farther from the truth. I understood immediately what the book was trying to tell me, and I recognised that its ideas were unfortunately going to have a lot of relevance in my adult life, but I can remember thinking at the time that I was grateful for it as a kind of preemptive warning that would help me prepare psychologically and emotionally for what was to come. (That I expected awful things to happen reflects perhaps my own pessimism, but also how convinced I was by the power of Le Guin's writing.) I remember kind of mentally nodding and thinking, well, okay then, now I know what the world will do to me as a woman, and I can't see any way around it, but at least I'll be able to recognise it when it's happening. At the same time, while I didn't quite get this from Tehanu until later rereads, I was eventually able to understand that the book was showing me that 'women's work' was powerful, and heroic, and important, and that there was a value in doing all things with a sense of integrity and purpose, even if one's actions were viewed as insignificant in the eyes of the world.
Tehanu is such a precious book to me, and I'm really grateful to have read it for the first time at exactly the right age. It comes across as a bit gender essentialist now — but one of the things I admired most about Le Guin is that throughout her career, she would revisit ideas and correct and update her earlier thinking. She was capable, as a writer, of recognising that she had been wrong, in the past, or had not had a full and complete understanding, and so her writing was in constant conversation with itself, reflecting, and learning. That's very rare in a writer.
26. A book you recommend but cannot love
27. A book you love but cannot recommend
28. A book you adore that people are surprised by
29. A book that led you home
30. A book you detest that people are surprised by
no subject
Date: 2021-04-25 01:14 pm (UTC)one of the things I admired most about Le Guin is that throughout her career, she would revisit ideas and correct and update her earlier thinking
Yes, me too. From her essays and interviews you could see that she could be quite critical of her own past work, and that ends up being obvious in her fiction as she continually incorporates new understandings. I think it's really valuable that we have this body of work from her that spans a period of time when concepts of gender and feminism were evolving so rapidly, and she was always right there grappling with it.
no subject
Date: 2021-04-25 04:48 pm (UTC)Le Guin had exactly the right balance of intellectual curiosity and humility. Unlike most people, when faced with new information, she revised her opinion, and corrected herself in writing. She had such a sense of integrity — most people would not feel comfortable admitting they were wrong, or that their ideas had developed.
I think it's really valuable that we have this body of work from her that spans a period of time when concepts of gender and feminism were evolving so rapidly, and she was always right there grappling with it.
I agree entirely.
no subject
Date: 2021-04-25 07:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-04-26 03:02 pm (UTC)And YES YES YES about how her body of work reflects the development of feminism! It's so fascinating and cool!
no subject
Date: 2021-04-26 07:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-04-27 03:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-04-25 05:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-04-26 10:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-04-26 03:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-04-27 03:24 pm (UTC)An Earthsea reread is always a good idea! The interesting thing is that while Tehanu is a correction of Le Guin's preceding three books in the series, a few years later she also wrote The Other Wind as something of a correction to Tehanu!
no subject
Date: 2021-04-27 03:47 pm (UTC)The interesting thing is that while Tehanu is a correction of Le Guin's preceding three books in the series, a few years later she also wrote The Other Wind as something of a correction to Tehanu!
Yes! I'd forgotten this!