Genderizing Kids Books

One of my pet peeves, working in a bookstore, is that modern kids' literature is so gender-segregated.  Perhaps it was this way when I was a child, before the advent of YA, but I honestly don't remember it being so.

This is really concerning to me because--and I'm fairly certain I've written about this in earlier posts--strong female characters (aka positive role-models for preteen and teen girls) drew me into SFF.  But these books weren't written solely by women, nor were they primarily for girls, but for an audience at large.

With parents and kids reinforcing that some topics are "for girls" and some topics "for boys" we reinforce gender norms that aren't so realistic.  I thought the 60's through 80's taught us that.  I want to progress towards developing believable male characters and female characters and a plot line that does not cater to one gender over another.

See, my fear is that if kids grow up reading gendered fiction that they will expect the same things from adult-level literature.  That not only closes plenty of doors for girls on books with powerful, fictional role-models, but on whole topics that should not be divvied up as "masculine" or "feminine."

I don't even want to speculate as to the societal ramifications of these ideas existing in a modern context...

Out of Place

Kasai didn't know what to make of the tall brick wall ringing the city, much less the noise and bustle beyond it, through the great bronze doors. She couldn't imagine anyone in her family living in the cramped apartments crowding the narrow cobbled streets.

But her mother's cousin did, and that's why she was here, dodging piles of horse manure and women in bright silks that looked down their noses at her.  She couldn't understand what they said to each other. The language here was all wrong.

Supposedly they spoke the same language as she, but Kasai found their nasal-vowels confounding. She could not find words in the furious and rapid chatter, There were so many people and so many streets, winding and weaving around haphazard brick buildings that seemed to bend over the street.

But they didn't. Kasai knew they didn't.  If they did, they would fall.  And they didn't fall. Still, they did not put her at ease.

She craned her neck to find the signage at each of the streets. There were never any words, for which she was grateful, as she knew none. Images of birds and trees guided her to her relative's apartment over a shambling bakery with a dusty stoop.

The whole way she felt that she had followed a maze and by the time she stood there, staring at the door she wasn't certain she'd know how to turn around and leave the city.  Kasai's inability to remember every turn she had taken on her way here was the only thing that prevented her from fleeing.

Then, the door opened.

Class in Fantasy

Source: theanachronistsjournal.blogspot.com via Drea on Pinterest

If this gets a little political--forgive me. This post is part of my perspective, and you don't have to agree with me :) But even if you don't--I think this is an interesting thing to think about. We (SFF fandom at large) have discussed sexism, we've discussed racism, and we've mentioned class vaguely when discussing hero-cliches but here are some of my thought:
I’m guilty of making most of my characters important. But we have a serious Cinderella pattern in Fantasy. No matter where a main character was born on a socio-economic ladder they inevitably find that they either are truly titled somewhere, or that they have world-altering knowledge, ability, or destiny.

It’s a trope, and I think the association with class and wealth is particularly telling. I’m not saying to completely dismantle the pattern--it certainly has enough versatility to stand up.

But I am an ardent follower of Occupy-Movement news, for all the protests’ flaws--and I like that they are drawing public attention to the fact that we have some deep-seeded resistance to actually discussing “class” in this nation. Yet, for a society that doesn’t like to think in terms of class we sure like to write about characters who find themselves waking up wealthy and important someday.

For that matter we like to read about them too. I would say that this fantasy is tied to the American dream. Once the American dream was to have a house, land and family. Now, I think it is merely to be in a better position in the future than one is now.

Inherent in that is the idea of transcending class. It is part of our worldview. No matter how we like to think of the issue, we want to believe that we won’t always be where we are. Time will improve our lot.

This is a fantasy, though, and not a reality. There is a class at the community college I attended once upon a time that deals with the “psychology of class.” There is more to class than how much is in your bank. It’s also how you respond to circumstances, to obtaining income, and beyond. As my parents used to tell me, “It’s not what you make, it’s what you do with it.”

So the Buy-Buy-Buy mentality and planned obsolescence have worked together to keep the cost of living higher than the average American needs to comfortably sustain oneself. So it becomes what one is comfortable living without, in order to find a way to get even a little bit ahead.

No wonder we have a Cinderella-complex in our fiction.

Fantasy Societies and Our Modern World View

Now that I can see again, and read without eye-strain headaches I'm plunging back into reading.



A month ago I had a post about my guy reading a series that I read about 13/14 years ago. And I've currently been reading Masques by Patricia Briggs. Which is awesome, because I have followed Briggs since her second novel came out. But I never could find the first :P so I was excited about the re-release.

But reading this novel and talking to my guy about his reading material has me thinking about the changes in depictions of society and how that (may) represent a shifting world view.

How so?

The Sword and Sorcery books of the 90's depicted watered-down quests, magical implements, and political intrigue. When characters traveled, they passed through any number of realms with various peoples. Think about Garion, from David Eddings' wonderful High Fantasy series The Belgariad and the Mallorean. Or Mercedes Lackey's uber-popular Valdemar books.

Garion starts out a farm boy, is hauled around by his magically gifted family from one country to another. The only time they encounter non-native people in any one realm these people are a) the enemy or b) allies looking for the wayward wizard and his awkward-but-special nephew.

While the Valdemar books carry a little more social complexity (Thalia and the Queen's Arrows Trilogy) depicts class relations, and a backwoods society that is of Valdemar, but estranged--Thalia still has to shed that connection to become a Herald of Valdemar. Karal, the outsider-who-gets-a-Companion in the Mage Storm Trilogy, is the closest the series walks toward acknowledging socio-cultural identities unrelated to national ones.

Now, I loved these books, but that quality never felt real. People don't acknowledge borders. I mean, really...there are American military bases everywhere except well, North Korea. So there are Americans working and living abroad. There are Mexican people, and Canadians, with work visas. The United States "owns" Guam and Costa Rica, so people living in those places are technically American and speak English + Spanish (and one of the few different languages spoken in Guam, if I recall correctly).

Nor is this merely because of the world we live in. Look at history.

Rome conquered Europe. The descendants of the kings who payed the Romans tithes and were part of the empire, ended up producing Charlemagne. The Carolingian Renaissance produced the early medieval artistry ...and the Holy Roman Empire. All of Europe was Christiandom, and Rome. There was such a difference of opinion about this that the Roman Pope and Eastern Patriarch ex-communicated each other (thank you Art History!:P ) but this means that all of Europe united under Charlemagne considered themselves Roman. (I have read a lot on this subject, an am forgetting the exact source but I *think* it is from Lyon's "The Origin of the Middle Ages," granted, this book is from Norton's Historical Controversies series)

The Renaissance's universal prestige of all things Greco-Roman conveyed a different perspective on the same inherited Roman-ness. That is to say, all of the European Realms, despite internal feuding, saw themselves as more similar than different. The exotic Africans and Orientals from Turkey--that was different. That was "not Christan." While ideology defined cultural connection, this doesn't mean all of Europe was "the same." Clearly different colloquial languages were spoken, even if the educated and the priests and monks/nuns all spoke Latin. There were different "takes" on art and architecture, on dress, etc. There was variation. Not to mention even smaller ethnic groups: Bretons, Basque, Jews, "gypsies," and so forth. There were Vikings in Ireland. There were the Manx, the Picts, the Scots, the Welsh--and that was on one tiny Island chain, that slowly became modern Brittain, centered in England where the invading-Angles had settled in the early Medieval period.

When the nation state idea emerged post-Renaissance, it was based on a different organizational system. One that failed to account for variety in culture, or our human unwillingness to maintain the imaginary-borders we continually create.

The 1990's saw the nation-state ideology begin to break down in the United States. With the dissolution of the USSR, the US stood as the lone super power. And, our nation, like it always does, responds to the situation--good or bad--by throwing money at it. Back then, we had lots of money.

And that was when the warlords-ethnic and ideological minorities from diverse backgrounds, which we had armed against the USSR in our desperation to stem the Red Tide-turned on us. Stateless peoples.

Movies of the 90's and now still depict "terrorists" as the bad guys. People without borders, who can go anywhere, and often have access to old Soviet tech.



Meanwhile, the American school system also saw an influx of "minorities." So any white girl, like myself, attending an inner city school, was a minority. A real minority. In my 7th grade history and language arts class, I was one of 5 white kids. Here, the teacher spoke of American society and white society as synonymous, but from where I sat I was surrounded by representation of the ethnic communities my great-and-powerful Franco-German-Anglo-Saxon ancestors royally screwed. And in our multicultural classroom, we got to learn about all the amazing African, Asian, American, and Middle Eastern societies...Europe we never got to...

To me going forward, America was a diverse tapestry of subcultures influenced by a breathtaking array of ethnic inheritances. One national identity just didn't make sense.

But I loved my fantasy books. I thought, "That's what it would've been like in the past." But studying history independently, and pursuing anthropology in college taught me that the world was never that simple.

I think the love of vampires, werewolves, fae and the like in modern urban fantasy fill this change in our world view. They are the "others" next door, but also our family, our dearest friends, our enemies and our lovers. The magically diverse world can give us an exaggerated playground for a discussion of modern identity construction and differentiation. We are like these Others and we are not. All at once. The recurring questions in many of these novels (some of which I am greatly enjoying)is whether or not we can live with these recently-outed others.

Can we handle the global society that has led us to find so many friends--even fictitious family--with dramatically different religious/economic/cultural and sexual orientations than our selves?

I like to think so. But whatever the case, I think these are some of the issues reflected in modern literature. Subconsciously, of course :P

What are your thoughts?

Attitude, Literary Fiction & Genre Fiction, Networking

Writing is a solitary activity. Or so we would assume, as it generally involves a person planted in front of a screen or notepad typing/scrawling ideas on a page. But this is always only the first step in the writing process. Revisions are best done after the draft is seen by multiple eyes. The more solid a group of people you have to look at your work, the better. This doesn't mean you need a lot of people, but certainly a group of individuals you can trust.

I happen to believe that all writers deserve not only a group (either in the form of a critique group or a collection of independent readers/critique-rs) but a network of other writers from which to gain support. The wider network is for access to knowledge, encouragement and inspiration. Sometimes, I think this is half of the reason for conventions and conferences. While writers learn about the process at these events, we also gain acquaintances.

For this reason, networks like Facebook are very useful. Whenever I meet another writer -- even if their subject matter is not similar to mine -- I reach out to them. If people respond with snappy phrasing, they are electing to sever the potential networking opportunity. It is really easy to get into semantic debates online, and as writers I think we should be more flexible with our interpretations of words.

For instance, the definitions between "Literary and Genre Fiction." While the industry likes to pretend these are definite labels, their use indicates otherwise.

Literary Fiction has subgroups: Historical Fiction, Magical Realism, Fairytales, Psychological --mind, I don't spend a lot of time on these books as they don't tend to hold my interest, but I'm sure you can see that some of these are certainly pretending at a literariness because the author's agent/editor has seen the ability to market them so. I'll bet the individual writing "modern fairytale" owns a lot of the same non-fiction and mythology tests I have at home.

These are marketing terms. We have appropriated them both as writers and readers in order to define and describe our likes. It has become a sort of jargon, but jargon and semantics allow for the embedding of meaning that can divide groups. So we lump "genre fiction" together, despite its diversity and create a loaded term.

Loaded terms and semantics can lead writers of either end of the debate to think that their writing is more applicable to the world at large than is another. I would think that neither would be right. The difference is not content, but audience. Who do you speak too?

A lack of understanding in this regard allows people to sever themselves off from community. That might not be the intent, but it is the result of having a poor attitude.

All writers in your community are worthy of respect. Everyone is equally imaginative, but their manifestations differ. Our processes, like our minds, and interests are diverse. But and all forms of writing have literary value, at least as their most essential idea. The ability of the writer is to convince the audience of the impossible, experience the different, or gain a new perspective. Any of these goals rely on skill and communication, and can coexist.

So as wordsmiths we should be wary of the meanings of words and know that when we touch on loaded terms, our interpretation of an individual's intent and perspective are not necessarily accurate. We should be aware of the ability of a word to inspire an emotional reaction, and be conscious of that reaction. If possible, we should not take insult where insult may not be meant if semantic difference can be acknowledged.