Nebula Awards and Marginalised Writers

It's getting to that time of year where I'm catching up on my reading for Nebula nominations (which makes it sound like I'm an old hand, but I've only been doing it for a year... still, this was the time I started panicking last year).

To an extent, I wander around reading whatever I come across. But I'm also conscious of trying to find stories that often get overlooked. It's good to find them now, as it gives a chance to suggest other people read them and bask in their awesomeness.

But there's an issue. The sort of stories I'm trying to track down tend to be those by writers from marginalised groups*. They're the stories which don't get the discussion and fan squeeing, despite being something unique and worth nominating. So how do I find those stories?

One of the issues is that people who are marginalised have been told that they don't count all their lives. No one's going to want to read their stories. They're not the sort of writer who gets nominated for the Nebula, so why even bother thinking about it? On the other side, people from the dominant groups have been told the world revolves around them all their lives, and will be plugging stories in "pimp your story" threads, making sure copies are available to nominators/voters and otherwise ensuring that their story is at least read.

Being read is half the battle**.

That's sad, because I want to read those stories. If you are a writer who has self-selected yourself as someone not worthy of being nominated, slap yourself (not too hard - you need to be conscious for the next bit). Your stories are good, whether they're nominated or not. They are worth mentioning. It's not a waste of time to make sure the story is read by nominators/voters. You have as much right as anyone to post about your story in a "pimp your award eligible stories" thread. It's not pushy or obnoxious to tell people about your story when they've asked you to tell them.

And now I'm asking you. The comments thread is open to suggest a Nebula eligible story***. The full rules for eligibility are on the SFWA website, but in short, if it's published in the US in 2011, it's eligible. Ezines counts as in the US, regardless of country of the host/publisher. Feel free to suggest your own stories or someone else's****.

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* I have a list around of books I enjoyed. Many of these were written by white middle-class heterosexual men. Many of the ones remaining are white middle-class heterosexual women. This isn't because they wrote the best books in the world, but they wrote the best books of those I read during my younger years. Because basically, pretty much everything I had available to read when I was younger was written by someone in those categories.

So if anyone is about to pull "but you should pick the best story", that's totally what I'm going to do. I don't nominate stories because someone is from X group (or not nominate them because they're from Y). But I don't want my initial pool of stories to choose from to only be from one segment of the population. It's ludicrous to suggest that only one group in society is capable of producing the best stories of the year.

** The other half is seeing that reading translate into nominations. Last year, I think it did. The Nebulas had a good diversity of initial nominations and stories on the final ballot. This didn't translate to the winners, but it was a first step.

*** If you don't want to post it publicly, I can be emailed at polly@polenthblake.com. I may not reply to suggestions emails, but I will read them. However, I would note that you can post anonymously to my blog, and it'll get a wider audience if you do.

**** Though I'm welcoming suggestions by marginalised writers, you don't have to be to post. Don't question too much if you should or shouldn't. If you're eligible, be bold. If you still feel awkward, suggest someone else you think is awesome at the same time.

Writing Diary: Novels and NaNoWriMo 2011

In which I ramble about novels and NaNoWriMo. Also, coming up soonish will be my poem in Strange Horizons and story reprint in Comets and Criminals. But for now, back to the rambling.

Novel Progress

The novel is coming along well. I can't say for sure whether I'll be querying before the end of the year, as that depends on other people. I want to get some feedback before I roll it up and hit agents with it, and people provide feedback at the speed they do. But I can say that unless I get struck by a bus, I'll have done my bit by then.

I have a basic query written, the rough draft of a synopsis and neatened up my website a bit*. Scary times will be approaching.

NaNoWriMo

This year for Nano, I'm going to be a rebel! I don't really know what novel project I want to write next, so I'm going to take a break and write some short stories. As well as aiming to hit the basic word count, I'm also aiming for four to be polishing and ready for submission at the end (roughly one a week). My general guidelines set for my rebellion:

• The stories don't have to be related.
• Any length up to novella will count as short.
• Picture books and easy readers will count as short stories, but won't count towards my polished and ready total. I do hope to have a few polished by the end though, as I'd like to get a little portfolio of them ready (picture books are difficult to sell and most agents don't handle them... so it's good to have some ready in case opportunity strikes. Saving a children's editor from a rampaging T-rex. That sort of thing.)

I have a few story ideas in the wings. After the Tor.com post on lesbians in steampunk, I appear to have created a world revolving around the need for hordes of robot ponies. You can make anything sound logical with the power of science.

For picture books, I'm going to write about undead pets. I noticing a disturbing lack of zombie picture books on the Halloween shelf this year. We've got to start teaching children about zombies when they're young, so they're prepared when the zombie apocalypse comes.

I usually say at this point that people are welcome to buddy me, but the buddy system is currently down. However, when it does get going, you're welcome to add me: My NaNoWriMo Profile

Lolcats Beta

Cheezburger is running a beta for a new sites feature. It's basically like a public favourites list... you select lols from around their network of sites. I got a beta invite thing to it (this either means I'm a fine upstanding citizen or I spend too long playing with lolcats). Either way, I started one for sci fi and fantasy (with a few science fact ones thrown in). Unlike their official site for such things, I've focused mainly on captioned animals and other silliness, rather than captioned screenshots from TV programmes.

Here it is: Science Fiction and Fantasy Fun

Overall, it's fun. Not all the features are rolled out yet (including some basics, like being able to add comments). But I can see it catching on as a way to highlight niche themed stuffs.

Yes, this isn't really writing related, but it involves kitten pictures. So it counts.

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* On the website note, it now has a poetry section. A couple are ones I had published. The rest are new.

NAinUF: Characters II - Supporting Roles

The previous post looked at the roles of Native American main characters. This one is about all the rest, with a particular focus on love interests (as the major supporting role that exists).

Part III will discuss how a character is identified as Native American.

~ Trigger Warning: Discussion of Sexual Assault. ~

Love Interests

Books closer to the urban fantasy/horror end often have white love interests, but some of the more paranormal romance end have Native American love interests. This is usually a man, set opposite a Northern European or mixed race woman (who as described previously, is intended to represent a Northern European woman in most cases, even if she's mixed).

Unlike main characters, the love interest is emphasised as being other and mysterious. Descriptions of the love interest tend to be exoticised, focusing on him as savage, animalist and otherwordly. He has flashing black eyes and ebony hair. These will be mentioned frequently. In addition, it's rare for him to be mixed race and he will have grown up on a reservation.

This is likely to be an import from the romance genre, where there's a market for books with innocent white women falling into the arms of Native manly men. The reader is expected to identify with the white woman, not the Native American man.

There are a couple of underlying reasons for this trope:

• Sexual Stereotypes. There's a general stereotype of non-white people being highly sexual. The men will rape you (if you're a pure white woman). The women and children are there to be raped. This is because they're savage, so rape doesn't impact them or hurt them, unlike civilized white people! It shouldn't need to be said that this is an ugly stereotype. It's been used as justification for violence against people all over the world. Not just at the individual level, but as justification for taking over people's countries.
  
  In American history, white men would ride out to capture Native American women to gang rape them. If the women's husbands tried to stop it, they'd be shot.
  
  In modern times, it hasn't stopped being an issue. Native American women have a higher chance of being raped than other women (and Native American men probably do too, but in general, men are less likely to report rape). There are still survivors of some of the missionary schools, where Native American children were raped by white missionaries. In 2011, the Jesuits agreed to pay $166 million to some of the victims of this sexual abuse. This issue is still causing damage right now.
  
  When a love interest is portrayed using this stereotype, it comes with a lot of hurtful history and racist baggage.
  
  This doesn't mean he can't be sexy, but when he's described as savage, uncontrollably sexual and intending to force his interest on white women... there's a problem.
• White Guilt. Sometimes people feel guilty because their ancestors did bad things. They write a story where they their main character falls in love with a Native American man. The main character is the ultimate anti-racist. No racist thoughts have ever crossed her mind and everyone in her new family will accept her without any comment, because she's just that great. This is often tempered with other white people being horribly racist, showing the enlightenment of the heroine*.
  
  It's not a helpful position to take, as it deals with guilt by promoting a stereotype (rather than tackling modern racism, which includes stereotypes in fiction). It turns the love interest into a statement rather than a character.
  
  And basically, it's a major dose of wish-fulfilment, at the expense of the Native American characters. Don't be this author.

The lack of reality in the relationships can be shown by the lack of realistic obstacles. There may be demons and ancient prophecies keeping them apart, but it's unusual for the heroine and love interest to discuss, or deal with, any repercussions of an interracial relationship. They won't consider if the children can be tribally enrolled, for example. The heroine doesn't have to challenge her own internalised prejudices as she enters into the relationship. She's usually depicted as effortlessly not having any. It's as though modern media never happened to her.

Other Characters

A few other supporting roles for Native Americans include:

• The villain. Skinwakers and wendigos get a lot of love (hate?). This isn't surprising, given they're scary stories that fit well into a genre with horror leanings. What is noticeable is few books follow the original Native American stories. Skinwalker is used to describe a whole lot of things, most of which wouldn't be called a skinwalker by a tribe with such stories.
  
  It does raise a few eyebrows if the villains are the only Native Americans in the book, though many urban fantasy authors appear to have some awareness of this... if the protagonist is white, they'll get assistance from a not-evil Native American.
• Mystical mentor, offering sage advice to the main character, but having no apparent motivations of his/her own. In books by Native American authors, older people who are wise are common, but they have personalities and motivations.
• Family. Though being estranged from family is not uncommon, some characters do have family connections. Generally non-Native authors focus on parents and siblings. Native American authors have those too, but there's a stronger focus on grandparent/grandchild relations, as well as aunts, uncles and cousins.

Animal People Coyote

Though not Native American in the human sense, animal people** are common supporting characters***. However, the way they're depicted is imbalanced. Coyote is usually the one included, often to the exclusion of any of the others (if there is another, it will be Raven). Some books gloss over even mentioning that others exist, as though Coyote is a stand-in for a monotheist god.

Coyote also tends to be remarkably nice. In one book, this was taken to the extreme of him not doing anything trickstery at all. He was honest and helpful. Making a few jokes does not make someone a trickster.

Possibly some authors are worried they'll offend by having Coyote do bad things, but having a squeaky clean Coyote doesn't really work. This is one of those times when people might have taken being respectful the wrong way. It doesn't mean Coyote has to be portrayed in a way he certainly isn't in Native American stories****.

Thoughts on Supporting Characters

Stereotypes tend to make characters who are as flat as a pancake. Urban fantasy has a whole lot of pancakes. Love interests are prone to some of the worst of the stereotypes, complete with exoticising and squickiness. Other support types don't escape completely, with the old mystical wise person stereotype creeping in.

Some of it though, is just a little strange. Like the abundance of skinwalkers who aren't skinwalkers.

In many ways, the feeling here is the same as main characters: that the audience isn't intended to contain Native American readers. But there are also hints at some awareness of causing offense, such as cleaning up Coyote. It's almost as though some authors are on the edge of realising their audience is broader. They just haven't quite got there yet.

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* Regular readers of the blog might find this very familiar. Where have we seen a special white woman, going to live with indigenous people and being totally anti-racist, when everyone else was so racist? It's Marlo Morgan among the Australian aboriginal people. The only difference is she didn't have an aboriginal love interest.

** 'Animal people' is another of those terms that tends to be more common in anthropologist circles.

*** Animal people weren't common supporting characters in the urban fantasy books by Native Americans. This is one of those times where an author's reading list needs to be wider, because there is Native-authored fiction featuring animal people elsewhere. It's also perhaps a commentary on non-Native authors tending to focus only on animal people stories. Native authors draw from a wider range of stories.

**** Doris Seale comments on the issue of respect towards Coyote, in a review of Jonathan London's "Fire Race: A Karuk Coyote Tale" (quote taken from: "A Broken Flute: The Native Experience in Books for Children"):

London treats his Coyote with a whole lot too much respect. Coyote is not really a person we honor, in that way--more like, you better have a healthy respect for his ability to make trouble, and keep out of his way--even if you laugh at him.

Respect isn't about turning everything into Disney. After Pocahontas, I'd hope people realise Disneyfying can be the opposite of respect.

# The book cover is 'Savage Beloved' by Cassie Edwards - a classic example of the romance tropes involving Native American love interests. Urban fantasy may be less blatant about it, but this is the book cover I'm thinking of when I see those tropes in urban fantasy.

Dagan Books Fish Acceptance

Some time ago, I wrote a piece of whimsical absurdism. I was soon to discover it's hard to sell absurdism. And by hard, I mean some of the rejections I got implied the slush reader wanted to take my keyboard, burn it, stomp on the pieces, then burn it again, so I wouldn't write another just like it.

Then as I was browsing market listings, I came across an anthology for fish stories. My first thought being: "I have a story about fish!"*

I read the submission call and it sounded like they just might appreciate absurdism. So off went my fishy absurdism story, and I braced for a keyboard-burning rejection. It wasn't that fast though, because it hadn't reached the cut-off date and the publisher put out a few blog posts in the meantime. I didn't make any of the most common cover letter mistakes, and my fish were real fish, but I quailed somewhat when goldfish were listed as one of the most common submissions. I should have guessed they would be, but I was in originality denial. I continued the denial by convincing myself that my goldfish were different.

But they didn't want to burn my keyboard. "Thwarting the Fiends" will appear in Dagan Books 'Fish' anthology, coming out early in 2012. Yay for absurd fish!

It turns out I know or speak to a number of the authors on the list, and if I try to list them, I'll probably forget someone (or end up listing half the list). So instead, here's a link to Dagan's post:

Fish Table of Contents

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* This isn't really a surprise. Probably more surprising is I only had one story about fish.

# The cover art is by Galen Dara.