Home » Posts tagged "white privilege"

Book Review: Lady Bits by Kate Jonez


Lady Bits by Kate Jonez

Trepidatio Publishing, 2019

ISBN-13: 978-1947654815

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition

 

Lady Bits is a collection of stories with struggling female protagonists: daughters, mothers, sisters, young women with dreams, cynical and desperate older women. In addition to their other fears and strategems, almost all of them are living in poverty, without a support system. They are the invisible women and girls, inhabiting the shadows in an uncaring world. Jonez’ spare language leaves space for the reader to wander and wonder through the words.  This means that while some stories, like “Francie”,  where a runaway teenage girl is offered a potentially lucrative job, are predictable, the writing is enough to keep the reader going.  Many of the stories have an imaginative creature, such as a hobgoblin, fairy, or demon, at the center, but in an everyday environment that throws the fantastic into sharp relief. “Mountain”, in which a former diner waitress returns from college to discover the owners’ new baby is a nightmare, is a gruesome example of this. Other stories have protagonists who have an unreliable grip on reality. “Fairy Lights,” in which a mother discovers the perils of partying with the fairies, and “A Thousand Stitches”, in which a young seamstress is encouraged by her colorful coworker to escape to the city, use this to advantage.

Jonez is not afraid to venture into the gruesome and squicky, as she does in “Rules for Love”, in which a woman prepares for an unusual Valentine’s Day with a helping of arsenic and body horror, and in “Envy”, in which a wealthy white woman uses her privilege in disturbing, extreme, and deadly ways. “Accidental Doors”, in which a woman who botched her business partner’s murder finds she can step through portals to the past to fix her mistakes, also gets pretty gory. When Jonez’ women decide to do evil, they aren’t worried about getting their hands bloody.

I did start to feel beaten up by the number of stories featuring murderous or uncaring mothers. “A Flicker of Light on Devil’s Night” and “The Moments Between”, in particular, felt very repetitive, and the choice to put one right next to the other was not well thought-out. Followed by the gripping, if incoherent “Poor Me– And Ted”, this is a trio of stories that nearly did me in from exhaustion.

Other stories in this collection included the colorful “All The Day You’ll Have Good Luck,” an entertaining and exasperating story about a girl who is flattered into a dangerous position by a strange young man;  “Effigy”, in which a job interview for a nanny position goes very, very wrong; “By the Book”, in which a murderous babysitter discovers patience; “Like Night and Day”, in which Marla Ann’s new neighbor turns out to be more dangerous than he seems, although not enough to keep her from inviting him in for sweet tea; “Silent Passenger”, in which a truck driver discovers a way to alleviate her pain and grief over her husband’s death; and “No Fear of Dragons”, in which the narrator encounters a girl who is not what she seems.

It’s nice to see a variety of female characters taking on different roles in the story, instead of always being passive or victims, but I also wish some of the characters had been easier to relate to. Although feelings were communicated clearly, many character motivations seemed unclear, and that made it hard to get into the flow of the story. This isn’t a collection you can just power through; it takes time to explore what’s going on in each story, and it’s difficult for me to do that and also feel the intense emotions Jonez is trying to evoke. Lady Bits is an interesting, if imperfect collection, and moving forward, I hope we’ll see more strong stories with varied female characters.

 

 

Contains: Violence, murder, rape, necrophilia, child murder, terrorism, body horror, sexual situations.

 

Editor’s note: Lady Bits was nominated to the final ballot of the 2019 Bram Stoker Award in the category of Superior Achievement in a Fiction Collection.

Posted on April 14, 2020 by , Reply

Musings: Thoughts on Why There Aren’t More Male Protagonists in YA Horror

Over at Ginger Nuts of Horror, school librarian and YA dark fiction reviewer Tony Jones gave his thoughts on why there aren’t more strong male protagonists in current young adult dark fiction.  You should read his article first, because these are my thoughts after reading it. Tony knows a lot more than I do about YA horror, but Monster Librarian has been around since 2005 and I’ve read and written about a fair amount of YA and middle grade horror in that time period. Here’s a list of titles I put together in June, and as you can see, most of them are not very recent.

Tony suggests that the paranormal romance trend kicked off by Twilight at about that time turned a lot of boys off from reading horror, and I’m sure that was true,  at the time. In 2019, though, some teenagers might not even be aware of Twilight (quote from my daughter: “I’m not sure what it’s about. Doesn’t it have a black cover with a disembodied hand holding an apple?”). Amelia Atwater-Rhodes was a big name before Stephenie Meyer came along, and what kid knows her books now?  There were a couple of other trends that hit in the 2000s as well, the biggest one being Harry Potter. I will say that in 1999 I never would have guessed it would take of like it did, but Harry Potter has had an enduring effect on fantasy literature, complete with fearsome and bizarre creatures and terrifying sorcerers. That kind of fantasy quest fiction with a dark edge overwhemed a lot of the series horror popular in the 1990s with fantasy quest knockoffs. Tony brought up The Hunger Games as an influence, and we did start seeing a lot of dystopian and post-apocalyptic fiction around that time, with zombies becoming popular as well. There was more focus on relationships, and sometimes romance, but there were probably at least an equal number of zombie and dystopian titles with girls and boys as protagonists.

So what’s happening now that is different? Well, we’ve kind of moved through that fear of a far future apocalypse because it seems imminent, and the problems and fears kids are facing today have once again changed. And one of the ways they have changed is that the fears of girls, women, and other marginalized groups are taking up space that they didn’t before. and privilege has complicated the dynamic.  A lot of the books we see coming out have to do with agency being stolen, reproductive rights being limited, and things that are spinning out of control for people who already didn’t have much. With women writing most of YA horror, I’m guessing that’s where much of the horror lies.  Privilege is more complicated than just that, though, as evidenced by the clueless half-white, half Puerto Rican female protagonist from Vermont in her interactions with Puerto Rican residents in Five Midnights by Ann Cardinal Davila or wealthy Hanna and undocumented Nick in Gemina by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff. It is possible to write characters of teenage boys with nuance, and as the mother of a teenage boy, I am desperate to see it.  The #OwnVoices movement, focused on finding and publishing diverse stories by diverse authors, especially in children’s and young adult literature, has also picked up some steam. Pitch Dark by Courtney Alameda is a great example of that, with both male and female point of view characters.

I agree with Tony that there are a lot of kids who skip straight from Goosebumps to Stephen King: in fact, research by Jo Worthy from more than 20 years back documents conversations between middle schoolers who do. In fact, teen readers are even likely to read and recommend adult fiction to their peers, if the “YA Council Recommends” shelves at my public library are any indication. At the same time, there are plenty of kids who don’t want to make that jump all at once. The Last Kids on Earth, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, and Captain Underpants  remain popular at the middle school level, and graphic novels of any kind are constantly checking out.  Rick Riordan’s quest narratives also stay popular, because they allow kids to gradually level up, with the first Percy Jackson series appropriate for elementary kids and the most recent series, Trials of Apollo, of interest even to adults. Riordan isn’t writing horror, although there are certainly horrific and gruesome elements in his work, as well as comedy and in-jokes. Even when Riordan has a male point of view character, though, we get to see the uncertainties and growth that take place in his protagonists– they aren’t stock characters. Kids devour those books– I have been hearing about the release of the newest one for what feels like eons now.

Back to those kids who skip over YA and go straight to the adult stuff: while lots of us may remember reading adult horror at a relatively young age, it probably wasn’t checked out from the school library. It’s not a recent thing that middle school libraries aren’t stocking Stephen King. If you headed over to the high school in my community, it looks like they have his complete collection, but while an informal poll I did awhile back showed that Gen Xers and millenials as young as 8 had read IT, that doesn’t mean they were getting it at their school library, or even that they’d want to, and definitely they are not finding in in the middle school collections here. Some books are “underground reading”, the kind that you want to pass around with your friends without actually telling the adults in your life about, and Stephen King, before he gained respectability, used to be one of those authors. Roland Smith writes “creature thriller” type books, such as the Cryptid Hunters series and others of his books, but there’s not much in YA horror that I can find for those who love the “man vs. nature” conflict. There doesn’t seem to be a Guy N. Smith for the YA crowd (if there is, I want to know). Those readers do really have to move on to the kinds of titles that used to be found in the horror sections of used bookstores.

 

Reading choices made by my 13 year old son: Anthony Horowitz (chosen but not read) Shadow Girl (read only at home) Chronicles of Elementia (his favorite book ever, at least on Monday) and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.

Tony also discusses the gendering of book covers. It really is true that people judge books by their covers. Tony suggests that girls are more likely to pick up a book with a cover that is designed to appeal to boys than the other way around. That may be true in some cases, but I don’t think that is necessarily the case. Kids look for clues from book covers. I’ve got The Word Is Murder by Anthony Horowitz sitting next to my sofa. It has a black cover with a shiny knife and a pencil on the front. The cover is what got my son to bring it home (not read it, but bring it home), and my daughter instantly backed away.  I also have a copy of Shadow Girl by Kate Ristau, which has an orange cover with a black silhouette of a girl on it. He read this one secretly (he even tried to hide it from me) but wouldn’t take it out of the house.  I feel like a lot of this is a cultural issue– that boys might be more likely to pick up books with girls on the cover if they didn’t think other kids would embarrass them for doing so.  It’s sad that boys and girls are shamed for things like the art on the book they’re reading.

There are many fewer male protagonists in YA horror, for sure. It would be great to see this disparity addressed, but as publishers work on increasing diversity I think this is something that is going to require thoughtful discussion in the YA literature community, as there is a feeling right now that publishing has been centering male protagonists and male authors for long enough. Rudine Sims Bishop writes that books should be both windows and mirrors, which is a great analogy, but Uma Krishnaswami takes it a step further and suggests that they can be prisms: not just showing an unfamiliar world or reflecting your own back exactly, but looking at things from a different perspective. I see this as the way that YA is going to have to move in order for boys to find themselves once again as heroes in horror fiction.

 

 

 

Posted on September 25, 2019 by , Reply

Musings: The Black Witch by Laurie Forest

The Black Witch by Laurie Forest

HarperTeen, 2017

ISBN-13: 978-0373212316

Available: Hardcover, Kindle edition, audiobook

 

Not too long ago, there was controversy over racism in The Black Witch. based on this review. I was sent a copy for review, and the press release seemed to indicate the book was supposed to be the exact opposite of racist, so I sat down and read it, and thought about it. About two days later, there were protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, and I had to rethink my first impressions.

The Black Witch is the story of Elloren, the granddaughter of the great hero-mage of Gardneria, the Black Witch.  Elloren looks just like her deceased grandmother, but unlike her, has no magic. She has lived a sheltered life, raised by her uncle far away from pretty much everyone and everything. She’s nice enough, but doesn’t have enough experience to form her own opinions, and is easily led. Now that Elloren has turned seventeen, her Aunt Vyvian, a powerful mage and political leader, has come to take her to be wandfasted (wandfasting is a magically binding marriage contract) as part of securing a political alliance. Elloren’s uncle, however, has made arrangements for her to attend university and train as an apothecary. Vyvian offers to take Elloren to the city to outfit her, and attempts to convince her to abandon her studies and instead marry into another powerful, magical family. Not knowing any better, Elloren absorbs Vyvian’s cruel, elitist, racist views instead of trusting her own instincts, and makes both friends and enemies. Despite her aunt’s best attempts, though, Elloren insists on attending university.

The problem with university is that it encourages independent thought, and also exposes Elloren to people who are different from her, in race, attitude, culture, and socioeconomic class. These include the Lupines (werewolves, considered bestial and dangerous by most Gardnerians) selkies (part seal, part human), Kelts (losers in the last war against Gardneria), Vu Trin,  Amaz (similar to Amazons), Urisk (treated as slaves, after all males were exterminated), Elves of various kinds, and the demonic-looking Icarals. While Vyvian is wealthy, Elloren’s uncle is not, so Elloren she is stuck on work-study with Urisk and Kelts who despise Gardnerians, and forced to room with Icarals who terrify her.

In a strategic error, Vyvian refuses to help with Elloren’s situation until she decides to wandfast, meaning Elloren is forced to learn to get along with a wide variety of people, many of whom don’t like her because of who she is. She makes a lot of mistakes, some of which are painfully cruel– there’s one horrific scene in which a nasty and politically powerful mage threatens the families of the Urisk and Kelt kitchen staff after Elloren tattles about their bullying– but she slowly learns to work past many of her prejudices. She’s very lucky that there are a lot of people willing to cut her a break. All this is going on in an atmosphere of growing authoritarianism that is about to take a sharp swerve into fascism. While it doesn’t touch her in the same ways as some of her fellow students, even Elloren is not exempt from the government’s racist, homophobic, misogynistic ideas and decrees.

The story of Elloren is the story of a lot of white people who have never met someone who isn’t like them, believe what they’re told by authority figures, and don’t think for themselves, who then leave for university and learn that the world is more diverse than they’ve been led to believe (I’ve known many of them). It can be a long process of back and forth, making mistakes, obliviousness, and selfishness before reaching self-awareness and beginning to consciously notice and change your views and actions. Most of the time it’s a slow process– people don’t magically change. I think this is the journey Forest wants us to see, and there are many people who can relate or who might reflect on some of the atrocious views and behaviors in this book and decide that maybe they need to change their own.

After the protests in Charlottesville,  Elloren’s slowly growing awareness seemed like a story that didn’t need to be told with the same urgency that many others do, and that might even be painful for some people to read. Despite some tantalizing beginnings, it’s hard for me to recommend this book unequivocally.  Forest has said she was attempting to address racism, not create a racist book, and I believe that, but it still packs a powerful punch. Here’s the thing: Forest has created a potentially rich world with a lot of characters, most of whom barely have their backstory sketched in. Even with just outlines, some of their personalities are vivid, and I wanted to know more. Where are their voices? The characters and relationships that are most interesting are the ones in the margins or beneath notice of the powers that be. I am sure some of that will be addressed in the sequel, but in choosing a single point-of-view character, Forest chose the one with the narrowest and least interesting vision. In general, I think multiple point-of-view characters in YA fiction is a technique that is heavily overused, but here, I think it would benefit the story and the readers.

In writing about race, I think it’s now more important than ever to really think about how you are doing it and what effect it’s going to have on the readers you want to reach. There are a lot of people who just aren’t going to care about Elloren’s journey if that’s the central theme of the book. I notice that Tamora Pierce blurbed the book, and she’s an author who I feel has dealt skillfully with race and class in her Circle of Magic and Circle Opens books. Forest’s writing is awkward in comparison. However, I think Forest is a good storyteller, and I’m hoping she’ll learn from the controversy over this book and use it to grow as a writer. One of the better aspects of The Black Witch is the friendships that develop as the very different characters interact with each other in new ways. This gives her opportunities to reshape her narrative in the upcoming sequels. It’s not necessary to center white people in an obvious way in a book addressing race head-on when there are so many possible relationships to explore and stories to tell.

 

 

Posted on September 23, 2017 by , 2 comments