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Musings: Stephen King Gets Schooled on Diversity in the Media

Awards are not the end-all and be-all, but they do have meaning: libraries make purchases based on lists of award winners and recommended titles, and so do readers. When a well-regarded organization hands out an award, there is a ripple where often that book, or movie, or theater production, will also be held in high regard and rise to the top. It might even stay there decades later, after it has become dated or recognized as problematic (true of a number of early Newbery and Caldecott winners).

Many award-granting institutions have undergone upheavals in the past dozen years or so: debate over the World Fantasy Award Fantasy Award, the Sad Puppies fiasco that attempted to taint the Hugo Awards, the renaming of the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award, the recent cancelling of the RITA Awards. There has also been a more obvious scrutiny of the Oscars, starting with the #OscarsSoWhite hashtag. Any hope that public criticism of the Oscars’ lack of diversity would have an impact on judges’ considerations was dashed this year  as the Oscars failed to nominate any woman for Best Director, just three nominations for artists of color, and, despite acclaim for both Us and Midsommar, zero nominations from the horror genre (I’m also baffled that Frozen 2 didn’t get a nomination for Best Animated Feature: it is a gorgeous film).

I haven’t felt like the Oscars were worth my attention for years, but with Joker, The Irishman, 1917, and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood racking up the nominations even I couldn’t escape the blinding whiteness and maleness of the slate. It has to make you question, are Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino really the only directors capable of making an Oscar-worthy movie? I know  women and people of color are making great movies, and that there are outstanding horror movies that deserve a look. There are stories out there being told from a fresh point of view that deserve to be seen and heard.

Author Stephen King is a judge, and decided this was the time to put himself out there and tell us:

 

I guess now that he’s won the Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, he’s become on authority on what makes quality art. Which is apparently not diversity?  Twitter does not seem to agree.

He later backtracked a little, saying everyone deserves “a fair shot”, whatever that means (marginalized people start with less than a fair shot so..?). Here we’ve got an old white guy (he comes within a day of sharing a birthday with my mom, who is in her seventies) who has locked down the bestseller lists for decades.  There can’t be too many people who haven’t heard of Stephen King, read one of his books, or watched a movie adaptation. At this point in his life, could he identify a fair shot if it walked up to him and tapped him on the nose? How many promising writers could have “New York Bestselling Author” on the cover of their books if King didn’t have a permanent place there?

Stephen King is positioned in publishing in a way that he could make a big difference in making available quality work from diverse and #OwnVoices creators, maybe not so much in the movies, but definitely in fiction. My background is mostly as a K-12 librarian, and maybe you aren’t familiar with the authors for that age group, but one of the big names is Rick Riordan, who gained his recognition writing contemporary fantasy with kids who discover they are demigods from various world mythologies. Riordan was able to use his privilege as a popular, bestselling, writer to start a publishing imprint with the specific mission of finding #OwnVoices authors who have stories to tell grounded in their own mythologies and legends. Riordan is a name, but he certainly isn’t in Stephen King’s league when it comes to name recognition, number of books written, or number of copies sold. For King to say he would never consider diversity, but only quality, is a blind spot I hope is rectified by the reaction to his tweet. Because he has the ability to find and promote #OwnVoices creators in a way that most writers do not. And it would be wonderful if he did.

Posted on January 15, 2020 by , Reply

Book Review: The Phantom Hour (Babysitting Nightmares #2) by Kat Shepherd

The Phantom Hour (Babysitting Nightmares #2) by Kat Shepherd

Imprint, 2019

ISBN-13: 978-1250156990

Available: Hardcover, Kindle edition, audiobook, audio CD

 

This summer has been a great one for discovering books with all kinds of girls, from reckless risktakers to insecure new girls, facing their fears– literally.  What a victory for representation, am I right? I wanted to make a list, but I would have spent hours on it.

Babysitting Nightmares by Kat Shepherd is a series I want to see succeed like crazy. I encountered the second book, The Phantom Hour, at the library, and it is so much fun! Apparently there’s a third out now, The Ghost Light, so I’ll be back at the library soon.  The book centers on four friends, all seventh graders, with very different interests and backgrounds. Clio is the leader,  and the book is worth reading, if for no other reason, than to encounter her aunt, Kawanna, who runs a costume shop called Creature Feature located in a storefront on Coffin Street, wears a Godzilla print skirt, hosts horror movie nights for the girls, and drives them where they need to go on their secret missions without actually interfering. Doesn’t she sound like someone you’d want to be friends with?

If you were thinking “this sounds like The Babysitters Club dressed up with ghosts”, you’d be wrong. While there is a standalone storyline in this book, there’s also a thread that connects it to the first book and on into the third. In the first book, the four girls had to enter the Nightmare Realm to retrieve one of their charges who had been replaced with a changeling,  but apparently the Nightmare Realm is not done with them. So as they go about their daily lives and babysitting jobs, they also have to contend with containing the Nightmare Realm. In The Phantom Hour,  Clio takes a job babysitting for the Lee family, who have just moved into the abandoned Plunkett Mansion. Of course the mansion has a supernatural resident, and it’s up to Clio, with help from her friends, to figure out what’s going on and resolve it.  Shepherd does a nice job not just of portraying a diverse group of girlfriends (including three girls of color) who really support each other. The little girl Clio is babysitting is hearing impaired and she’s also represented respectfully.

While most hardcore horror lovers might not get much of a scare out of this book, it has some genuinely creepy and frightening moments– the ghost in the story is not a friendly one.  This series is a nice change from books about girlfriends who are crushing on boys and tearing each other down. It’s not every day you see a positive depiction of four smart, geeky girlfriends taking on and defeating the supernatural, and this one is tops.  Highly recommended.

 

Posted on August 7, 2019 by , Reply

Book Review: A World of Horror edited by Eric J. Guignard, illustrated by Steve Lines

A World of Horror edited by Eric J. Guignard, illustrations by Steve Lines

Dark Moon Books, 2018

ISBN-13: 9780998938325

Available: Paperback, hardcover, Kindle edition

A World of Horror includes twenty-two dark and speculative fiction stories written by authors from around the world, each presenting the legends, monsters, and myths from their homelands. The book presents a vast array of diverse tales that will linger with the readers after consuming the tales between its pages. Guignard includes an introduction regarding cultural diversity in fiction, recognizing that representation is powerful and long overdue. There is a wide range of storytelling in this book that hold all the genres of horror or speculative fiction, and what they do to the genres are incredible. The following are only a few of my favorites from the anthology.

Two stories from authors hailing from South Africa are must-reads in this anthology.  “Mutshidzi” by Mohale Mashigo tells the tale of an African teenager who raises her younger brother and must run the household after their mother dies. She begins to see and hear things that remind her of her mother, but there is so much blood. In the speculative fiction piece “Chemirocha” by Charlie Human, a South African pop song is personified, and how it needs to survive. While not in essence a horror story, it can bring up in the reader a bittersweet memory of that one song that may have affected them in their lifetime.

“One Last Wayang” by L. Chan from Singapore struck a particular chord for me, as my grandmother in-law gifted three wayang puppets to me several years ago. Wayang is a form of puppet theatre that makes use of shadows cast by the puppets to tell a story. Isa’s grandfather tells him of his youth living in a tight knit community, of the hardships they faced, and of the traveling entertainment that would pass through the village. One particular wayang troupe put on a mesmerizing show, and the shadows seemed a bit too real to have been created by the wayang puppets. What follows is the grandfather’s horrific discovery. Without giving anything away, I have a different feeling about the wayang puppets sitting in my office now…

In Thersa Matsuura’s “The Wife Who Didn’t Eat”, a modest Japanese farmer’s prayer to the gods comes true for a bride who was as hardworking as he is, and who doesn’t eat anything. The gods see fit to answer his prayer, but he later discovers the truth about his dutiful wife. I loved the language and twists in this story.

People with disabilities in horror fiction usually take the form of the villain or monster, but Dilman Dila, from Uganda, brings us the story of Agira, a crippled hunter who is shunned by his village but is the only one who can face the “Obibi”.

“Honey” by Valya Dudycz Lupescu is a story from Ukraine with the fallout from the 1986 Chernobyl disaster at its center. Luba Ivanova has stayed in her home, even after the evacuation and warnings about the environment and dangers that living in her home could entail. It’s years later and she opens her home to urban explorers who regularly make their way to the Chernobyl site. What they find in the forest outside her door is something they could never dream of seeing in their lifetimes, and they never get the chance to tell the world about it. Luba never minds this ritual of delivering the last meal to her guests, with the exception of the most recent visitor. He reminds her of someone she once knew. Will she let him wander out in the night after their meal?

There are so many more stories in this anthology I could discuss, but I don’t want to give too much away. Guignard’s selections are powerful, and the authors each bring unique tales from regions some of us may never have explored before. I find myself wanting to read more by those who contributed to A World Of Horror. I have a feeling you will, too.

Highly recommended

Reviewed by Lizzy Walker

Posted on January 24, 2019 by , Reply
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