Since last summer, I’ve been making an attempt (unrigorous as it might be) to read more fiction by women. I read five works from the top ten of the Feminist S.F. The Blog’s list of works that should have more attention, for instance. Then RaceFail raged all over the S.F. internet and I went to Wiscon in May. When I left for Wisconsin, I brought with me to read on the trip only writers from marginalized groups: women, minorities, foreigners, etc. Since then you may have noticed fewer white males and more of everything else on the blog. Basically, I’m making an even more concerted effort to expand my reading. Generally that won’t be anthologies like Cosmos Latinos and Dark Matter which are designed explicitly around language and race respectively. But they are as good a place as any to start.

My unofficial rule of thumb in the future is to start a book by a woman, foreigner, or minority for every book by a white male that I finish. I may not stick to it 100%, but that’s going to be my general procedure for a bit. I’ve actually been doing this for a month or so. Yes, it’s a quota of sorts. I don’t see it as a bad thing. I thought about joining up with the Writers of Color 50 Book Challenge but I’m not really one for book challenges. They aren’t bad for people who like ‘em, but I hate the feeling of trying to fill a list. Too much pressure. This way I’m reading more diversely but as an ongoing thing rather than a time oriented goal.

Dark Matter is a collection of speculative fiction written by members of the African Diaspora, as the cover calls it. Quite a few of the stories are by non-genre writers. All but one (that I could tell) had some genre element to them. In 2000, you might not have been able to fill an S.F. anthology with stories by black genre writers. Maybe you could have, but it wouldn’t have been as easy as it would be today. But the non-genre writers in this anthology generally come from music and poetry, and some of the genre writers appearing herein have that background too. U.S. black culture has generally been tied more to music than it is to science. Which makes these writings tough for me. Music and especially poetry are not my bag. Like when I read a couple of Windling and Datlow’s Year’s Best Fantasy anthologies, there was a lot of esoteric stuff that I didn’t grok.

My favorites have to be the Octavia Butler story, the second Nalo Hopkinson story, and Tananarive Due’s story. I’ve now read three Octavia Butler works since I read my first just under a year ago. It’s starting to look like she’s going to be one of my all time favorites, because I’ve really liked all three. (At one point, Orson Scott Card was my favorite author, and so was David Eddings, so getting onto my favorites list isn’t necessarily a mark of distinction or good writing.)

One quick note about the title. In the introduction, Thomas says she liked the metaphor of dark matter. Dark matter being matter in space that we know is there somewhere, but can only see by its effects on other matter. Similarly, she felt that the work of black writers was more often felt in it’s effect on other writers than from being directly observed. I don’t think it was meant to imply dark and somber. My general impression after having read the book though is that it is pretty somber. A fair number of the stories explicitly deal with race relations and race relations in America in particular, and neither subject is historically full of awesome.

Sister Lilith by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers

An imagining of the life of Lilith, Adam’s first wife before Eve. A little bitter, as I imagine the first wife might be.

The Comet by W. E. B. Du Bois

Earth passes through the tail of a comet, which releases deadly gases which kill nearly everyone in New York City except a black messenger and a white society girl. How much of racism is tied to societal pressures which disappear when society disappears? Can someone give them up what that happens? The piece directly confronts racism in more than one way. Kind of a bleak outlook.

Chicago 1927 by Jewelle Gomez

A vampire happens on a Chicago music tavern that caters to a black clientele run by a black man. She’s impressed by the owner and has to choose how to use her vampirism around him. There’s nothing really earth-shatteringly original about the story, but I was quite well done. Gilda, our vampire, does not come off one dimensional at all.

Black No More by George S. Schuyler

An excerpt from a novel where a medical process has been invented that removes most traces of Negro-ness from a man. No big lips, no wide nose, and no black skin. Negroes line up for hours to get this treatment. There’s inklings that this might not be the best choice ever, but since I just have an excerpt I’m not sure where the author took it. Excellent satire: the dream of every black man just had to be to live in harmony as a white man!.

separation anxiety by Evie Shockley

Could a reservation be more of a safe place for a culture than a concentration camp for it? The story follows a couple of professional dancers who live in such a reservation. Scrupulously protected from outside influences though, it becomes tedious and a lot like living in a zoo. Another pretty well written story.

Tasting Songs by Leone Ross

Jerry is a photographer, one of the up and coming types. He has an affair with Brianna. His wife Sasha finds out. It sounds kind of pedestrian in description, but the characters come alive in the story.

Can You Wear My Eyes by Kalamu ya Salaam

You’ve seen this one in horror movies. Organ transplant of someone else’s body parts and you get a piece of that person’s thoughts and soul. In this case, it’s the eyes, and Reggie starts to see things his wife saw. The point being that women and men see things very differently sometimes. It’s true that women rightfully see many things as threat that men do not, but I disagree with the implication that men couldn’t handle it if they did. And not that they could handle things better than women. But no worse either. Reggie does get an eyeful of his own behavior though. Stuff that he never thought twice about before he got his wife’s eyes.

Like Daughter by Tananarive Due

A woman gets a somewhat unwanted second chance to help her best friend Denise. As kids, Denise always needed protecting, from others and from herself. Denise now has a child named Neecy cloned from her own DNA in an attempt to re-do her own life. Of course, she can’t fix her own life so re-doing it with a cloned child is not too likely. Paige is the successful friend, and Denise wants to send Neecy to her. Pretty sad story.

Greedy Choke Puppy by Nalo Hopkinson

A Caribbean vampire story. Not really my kind of story.

Rhythm Travel by Amiri Baraka

Teleportation by music. I suspect more interesting to people who really like their music than it is to me. I just don’t have a huge connection to music. If you did this story with books, I’d be thinking totally awesome! Music lovers might have that reaction from this short short.

Buddy Bolden by Kalamu ya Salaam

Really not my kind of story at all. Didn’t finish it.

Aye, and Gomorrah … by Samuel R. Delany

Fetishizing people who work the spaceships. I liked this better than I liked Nova.

Ganger (Ball Lightning) by Nalo Hopkinson

Science fiction horror. Skinsuits that enhance your sensation, particularly during sex. But you just can’t leave the suits alone together. Pretty damn good.

The Becoming by Akua Lezli Hope

I didn’t understand this.

The Goophered Grapevine by Charles W. Chesnutt

A spiritualist slave puts a goopher (a curse of some sort) on a slaveowner’s grapes. Not to spite him, but to help him. Slaves that eat the grapes are cursed. One accidentally does, and the spiritualist takes the curse off him partially. Afterward, the slave and slaveowner conspire against other slaveowners to take advantage of his condition. This was written in the 1800s. One thing interesting to me is that Chesnutt used black stereotypes such as watermelon eating in his story. I can understand not wanting to buck the white system to get ahead. So leaving the blacks as poor, stupid and illiterate I get. Watermelons I don’t. Obviously there’s a reason, whether internalized oppression, belief in the stereotypes himself, or something. Just wondering what it was.

The Evening and the Morning and the Night by Octavia E. Butler

An awesome story about a fictional Duryea-Gode disease. Spawned when parents take a drug that cures cancer, their children have Duryea-Gode and they pass it on genetically Which is an interesting dilemma in itself, cure yourself, but have no kids. But not the focus of the story. Say you have a great way to help Duryea-Gode patients, horribly disfigured, sometimes brain damaged. What’s your responsibility to those patients, when the way you can help requires the commitment of the rest of your life?

Twice, at Once, Separated by Linda Addison

Travel to other stars takes generations. Inside a generation ship, who would know they are traveling to another star. What you know might go through a huge inter-generational game of telephone. The protagonist here is one of the few that finds out what her world really is, after she starts having dreams of Ship.

Gimmile’s Songs by Charles R. Saunders

A female warrior in Africa meets and falls in love with a ghost of sorts. I liked it because for once the super-elite warrior person is a woman.

At the Huts of Ajala by Nisi Shawl ¹

How Loanna got an A quality head by tricking the god Ajala. Fables of gods don’t usually get me excited, but the bold Loanna I got into.

The Woman in the Wall by Steven Barnes

I didn’t notice any overt science fiction or fantasy element in this story. Perhaps I just missed it. A woman, her husband, and their child end up in a refugee/concentration camp after their plane runs into difficulties over a war-torn country. They are artists who popularize the art of non-white countries. Cultural appropriation, some might say. It’s pretty clear the woman doesn’t really feel as if she’s a part of the cultures, more like Here I am, the liberal person to save the day because she views and interacts with the camps residents as the other.

Ark of Bones by Henry Dumas

Sort of a vision quest kind of thing? Maybe? Headeye and Fish-hound are taken onto an ark of bones on the Mississippi. Headeye needs Fish-hound to be witness to his calling. What he was called to do, why, and it’s significance I couldn’t quite tell.

Butta’s Backyard Barbecue by Tony Medina

Did not get this two page work at all.

Future Christmas by Ishmael Reed

This story I could at least follow mostly, but it definitely is not my kind of story. It’s a bit of a mix of a story of the future where one company owns the rights to Santa Claus, and a story of the Nicolaite Society. The society I can’t quite tell what it is: sort of Marcus Garvey-ish group with infighting people who have the titles of Brother and Sister. But what its reason for existence is I missed if it’s in the story.

At Life’s Limits by Kiini Ibura Salaam

Traveler from another planet WaLiLa goes to Earth (specifically Cuba) to collect nectar from Pedro Alonzo. Sort of a machine, I gather, she fuels herself with flower petals and speaks natively through motion. Of course, Earth has poison for her and she’s not the only visitor from her home planet. Pretty decent story, though my reaction to it may have been pushed up a bit because it’s the only story in the last few that I got.

The African Origins of UFOs by Anthony Joseph

Two pages in, I skipped over the rest. Totally confused.

The Astral Visitor Delta Blues by Robert Fleming

Another story I didn’t get. Guy goes into a bar and someone there is an astral visitor? Maybe…?

The Space Traders by Derrick Bell

The premise: aliens come to Earth and promise technology that will save it from certain economic and environmental ruin. In return, the aliens want America’s black people. You have two weeks to decide. Go!

The Pretended by Darryl A. Smith

White people invent robots to play black people so that whites can continue to pretend that black people aren’t really people. Blacks are already non-existent. I don’t understand whites making up robots specifically in that manner when they should have lots of ethnicities or other ways to make people into the other without having to invent them. But as a literary device I’ll go with it. The kicker for the story is that black robots really can’t pretend not to be people; if they are to pretend to be black, they have to be people too. And so whites consign black robots to the scrap heap (in concentration camp like trains) because they couldn’t do something that blacks also couldn’t do, not be people. (I think I got the phrasing right there. Too many negatives…)

Hussy Strutt by Ama Patterson

Another work whose poetic stylings lost me.

The following are non-fiction pieces:

Racism and Science Fiction by Samuel R. Delany

Delany tells of several incidents over the years where he has experienced racism among S.F. fandom and professionals, from outright I can’t publish stuff about Negroes to more subtle things like automatic pairing between he and Octavia Butler at conventions. His action item is that analytical systems need to be established. In other words, taken in isolation his being paired with Octavia Butler wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing, but as a system (i.e., always pairing the two) it’s problematic. His other necessary requirement is that enough black writers get notice that it becomes commonplace for S.F. writers to be minorities. Sadly, nearly 10 years after publication of Dark Matter that’s till not the case, though there are greater numbers.

Why Blacks Should Read (and Write) Science Fiction by Charles R. Saunders

A follow up to a piece he wrote in the 1970s (that I haven’t read) called Why Blacks Don’t Read Science Fiction. Then it was because S.F. was white on white in white. In this piece he notes that blacks should read science fiction to support the continued and emerging presence of black writers and whites who write better black characters. Otherwise the black experience in S.F. will continue to be told by unsympathetic white writers who may not get it right.

Black to the Future by Walter Mosley

Short piece describing Mosley’s hope that a crop of black S.F. writers is just around the corner. Something that I think turned out to be true.

Yet Do I Wonder by Paul D. Miller

Kind of a poetic essay about Miller’s interaction with culture that touches on S.F.

The Monophobic Response by Octavia E. Butler

Musings about aliens in the stars and among us.

¹ I met Nisi Shawl this spring at Wiscon 33. In addition to S.F., we share a predilection for pie and she’s been to my place for one of my periodic Pie Nights. It’s not a conflict of interest, but my personal interaction with her may color my judgment. If I start hanging out with more authors, I may have to come up with a real policy here.

Title: Dark Matter
Editor: Sheree R. Thomas
Series: Dark Matter; 1
Imprint / publisher: Aspect / Warner Books
Format: Hardcover
Length: 427 p. (includes biographical material)
Publication date: 2000
ISBN-10: 0-446-52583-9
Subject: Science fiction, American
Subject: Fantasy fiction, American
Subject: American fiction — Afro-American authors
LC classification: PS648.S3 D37 2000

After reading Midnight Robber last year, I decided to use one of my Audible.com credits to pick up Nalo Hopkinson’s Brown Girl in the Ring. Brown Girl is Hopkinson’s debut novel, the winner of a new voice in fiction contest that publisher Warner Books held in the 90s.

While interesting, I wasn’t as enamored of this book as I was of Midnight Robber. For one, I expected science fiction. But it’s really a horror novel set in the near future using Caribbean folk religion as the base. Too much voodoo ritual and too much blood for me. Voodoo in quotes not because it’s bad or scary but because I don’t know what the name for the religious tradition is for the kinds of things Hopkinson uses. If you’re into that sort of thing, this will be a great book. I don’t mean that facetiously either. The writing was really quite good. I’m just not into religious themed horror.

Ti-Jeanne lives in near future Toronto, an ungoverned zone abandoned by the Canadian government and ringed with roadblocks to prevent the lawlessness inside from touching the still extant normal society in the rest of Ontario. Kind of like I imagine lots of people want to do to Detroit right now. Her mother left a decade prior to the story, and she lives with her grandmother Gro-Jeanne, who serves both as a medical doctor of sorts as well to the masses and as a Caribbean witch doctor to those who believe. Ti-Jeanne has newborn, not even named just yet. The father is Tony, a low-level runner for the Posse, the drug gang that controls most of Toronto. Ti-Jeanne left Tony to move back in with Gro-Jeanne because he couldn’t straighten himself out and Tony doesn’t know the child is his. She still carries a torch for him though, which is why she talks Gro-Jeanne (who doesn’t like Tony) into helping him escape from Toronto to the burbs. Outside, he’ll straighten up, find work, and send for Ti-Jeanne.

The Posse’s boss Rudy knows Tony is shiftless, but that he has some medic training. They give him a job to find a donor human heart for which the Posse will receive a generous fee from a hospital outside lawless Toronto. He doesn’t want to do this. Tony doesn’t seem so much unwilling to kill, as scared.

Here’s where the religious horror comes into play. To get Ti-Jeanne and Tony out of Toronto, Gro-Jeanne calls on the spirits to hide the two. But then it becomes apparent that Rudy himself has a Caribbean duppy (human soul) under his control. The duppy can do most anything, including track Tony. This starts an escalating war of spirits, which doesn’t end bloodlessly. Really, lots and lots of blood.

Gro-Jeanne, Ti-Jeanne and Tony are great characters. Rudy is more of a caricature, but he’s still pretty enjoyable. The Caribbean flavor to the characters is somewhat interesting as well. Surprisingly, there’s very little unique to Toronto in the story. The Posse’s headquarters is in the CN Tower, and Hopkinson makes liberal use of Toronto’s street names and neighborhoods. But the culture seems to be Caribbean focused. Then again, Toronto isn’t known (at least to me) for it’s distinctive culture.

Unlike Metatropolis, I really enjoyed the narration in Brown Girl in the Ring. Peter Jay Fernandez was the narrator for the book. He did distinct voice characterizations for everyone. Best was the women got female sounding voices, without Fernandez using weird falsettos or anything like that. I won’t shy away from anything he’s reading in the future.

Title: Brown Girl in the Ring
Author: Nalo Hopkinson
Narrator: Peter Jay Fernandez
Imprint / publisher: Recorded Books
Format: Audiobook
Length:
Publication date: 1999
ISBN-13: 978-1-4361-7966-9
Subject: Inner cities — Fiction
Subject: Obeah (Cult) — Fiction
Subject: Future in popular culture — Fiction
Subject: Toronto (Ont.) — Fiction
LC classification: PR9199.3.H5927 B76 1998

Fourth of five books from the Feminist SF The Blog list of obscure speculative fiction works that shouldn’t be so obscure.

I thought the book was tough to get in to. A somewhat interesting world called Toussaint where nano-technology underlies everything. But the story of Tan-Tan as a child kind of dragged. And while the Caribbean dialect used both for the characters and narration made things interesting, it slowed down my reading. Perhaps that’s for the best, making me consider what I read rather than gloss over. I felt like my reading didn’t get in to a groove early because I had to constantly stop and decipher the language. That’s more me than it is the book though.

But it didn’t take overlong to pick up. Once I got to the part where (minor spoiler), Tan-Tan’s father Antonio, mayor of some part (or maybe all) of Toussaint kills the man cuckolding his wife, then things got interesting. I question why he decides to jail break and head for New Half Way Tree, the other dimensional parallel world exile colony. If that’s where he’s going to end up anyway, why not let himself be convicted and go there with the supplies the exiles get? Maybe, in addition to being a real bastard (charming, but a complete asswipe), he’s not really that smart. Perhaps.

On New Half Way Tree, I love the combination of first-contact and post-apocalyptic rebuilding society tropes.

Tan-Tan is a great character. Hopkinson mixed parts strength and parts vulnerability and it hangs together quite well. There were a lot of other characters I really liked that only appeared for a short while. I wish they had been worked in to the story more. Quamina, Aislinn, Benta, and Melonhead. Chichibud was pretty good too, though a little too much the alien teacher S.F. archetype.

The confrontation ending the book I thought wasn’t so strong. It just didn’t feel correct that an argument results in one combatant having an epiphany in the middle and giving up. We humans don’t like to do that.

But, despite nits here and there, this was a really strong entertaining story. Not to mention, this is not a white mans world. No that it really has an overt feminist theme. It’s just different, and presented normally. A black girl as heroine. Women in prominent and natural seeming roles. The book passes the Bechdel test as well. But the real draw, the great story.

Title: Midnight Robber
Author: Nalo Hopkinson
Cover creator: Don Puckey (design) / Leo Dillon, Diane Dillon (artists)
Imprint / publisher: Aspect / Warner Books
Format: Paperback
Length: 329 p.
Publication date: March 2000
ISBN-10: 0-446-67560-1
LC classification: PR9199.3.H5927 M53 2000