#16. Bless Me, Ultima, by Rudolfo Anaya

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#16. Bless Me, Ultima, Rudolfo Anaya
1972, Quinto Sol

It is the 1940s.  Antonio, who is almost seven, lives with his family in a small riverside community in "the llano" -- a vast, green plain where sheep, goats and cattle graze, and vaqueros make their living herding them out in the freedom and silence.  Antonio's father comes from the Márez family, which has always roamed the llano, but his mother comes from the Lunas, settled farmers and town-builders, and she wants her youngest son to become a farmer or a priest.  Antonio doesn't know which way his blood will pull him, but he is on the brink of many changes: he's about to start making the walk across the river every day with his sisters to attend the school up in town, where, the kids say, they make you learn English; he will start catechism in preparation for his first communion, and enter into the privileged community of those with whom God shares secrets; the end of the war might bring his older brothers home; and -- most immediately and excitingly -- Ultima, known as la Grande, the venerated curandera, is coming to live with them.  Ultima is a medicine woman, a healer, and a sage -- not, Antonio is convinced, a witch, as some people call her.  But not everyone agrees with him...

( More on magic, rivers, wide plains, fish... )

Heaving Bosoms, The Velderet

[sanguinity]

56. Sarah Wendell & Candy Tan, Beyond Heaving Bosoms: The Smart Bitches' Guide to Romance Novels.

I stopped actively reading in the romance genre in the early '90s, when it became clear that Old Skool was dead. (No, that's not a coincidence. Yes, I realize this makes me a perverted freak, and out of step with these enlightened times.) Even though I'm not keeping up with the genre, I still pick up a new release from time to time, I've got fond associations for the genre, and I've never been sorry to follow a link back to the snarktastic joys of Smart Bitches, Trashy Books. Which meant that I was very much looking forward to Beyond Heaving Bosoms.

As meganbmoore pointed out in her review, Tan and Wendell are hilarious. I spent lots of time laughing over Mighty Wangs and Magic Hoo-Hoos, and insisting that whoever was nearby had to "hear this part!" There's excellent discussion of the diss that romance tends to get as a genre (plus snarktastic suggestions for how to respond to strangers who insist on criticizing your taste in books), plus many unexpected tidbits, such as the rationale behind the classic bodice-ripper clinch cover. (They were designed to appeal to men. For reals.) Oh, and the Choose Your Own Romance Adventure the authors include near the end of the book? Marvelous.

It was good to get an overview of what the genre is up to nowadays (erm, is that what's inside of paranormals? Really? I. Had. No. Idea.), and I liked the authors' insistence on dealing directly with the rapetastic narratives of Old Skool novels, and their present legacy. On the other hand, I was confused by the authors' assertion that romance as we know it began in 1972 with Kathleen Woodiwiss's The Flame and the Flower, because I know Harlequin was publishing romance in the sixties. (oh, so demure! so proper!) The farther I read, though, the less surprising that omission was: Beyond Heaving Bosoms has a marked de-emphasis on category romance (seriously, category barely gets even a handful of mentions). Some of the authors' comments near the end suggests that the category-romance lacuna might be a generational thing,^[1] but I would have appreciated category being incorporated into the discussion and analysis.

Particularly interesting for this comm, perhaps, were the two short sections near the end of the book in which the authors discuss race and sexual orientation within the genre. Both are discussed largely from a market and marketing perspective -- f'rex, there's no analysis of how race is used within mainstream romance (beside an offhand note that Cassie Edwards' work is uniformly awful in its treatment of American Indians). Instead, the authors give an overview of the primary positions in the great shelving debate -- should romance which features African-American characters be shelved in the romance section or the African-American section? Which position best benefits African-American authors? African-American readers? Non-African-American readers? To my surprise (having paid more attention this discussion in SFF circles than Romance, where the fight has been to have black characters not be shown as green on the covers), the cover-art/shelving debate includes the story of an African-American author, Millenia Black, who sued her publisher for racial discrimination after the publishers put black characters on her cover art.

The (very small) section about gay romance made no sense to me until I realized that they weren't discussing what I would call gay romance (gay male authors writing for a gay male audience, or lesbian authors writing for a lesbian audience -- and no, Sarah and Candy, we have no problem whatsoever figuring out that we have to go to the LGBT section to find those, and I'd just as soon go over there for that, thank you), but so-called "gay" romances, romances featuring m/m pairings written by straight women for straight women. I would have preferred better analysis of that phenomenon (my gut reaction is that male/male romance by and for straight women is likely to be as appropiative and harmful as female/female porn by and for straight men), but in hindsight, I suppose that two assumedly straight women are not the ones to be performing/providing that analysis.

All in all, fun, and a nice overview of conversations in and around the genre. You don't have to be an avid romance-reader to appreciate this one, but it probably helps to have a fond spot for the genre.

[1] Whippersnappers! I suppose I shouldn't be surprised -- goodness knows, I learned my love for category at my grandmother's knee,^[2] and most of the categories I read -- a mainstay of early my romance reading -- were bought/owned by women a generation older than myself.^[3]

[2] Actually, Gramma read digest versions of category novels. If you think Big Misunderstanding plotlines are bizarrely improbable in a full-length novel, you should see them when the digest-editors remove five-sixths of the text.

[3] I read a lot of category romance while babysitting. I was a draconian enforcer of bedtimes, because the faster the kids went to bed, the more time I could spend reading their mothers' romance novels.


57. Cecilia Tan, The Velderet: a cybersex s/m serial.

Cecilia Tan runs Circlet Press, which publishes books SFF Erotica. I'm more familiar with Tan as an anthology editor and short-story writer, but in addition to The Velderet, I see she's published a number of books about baseball. (And has just released an e-pub baseball-themed erotic romance, The Hot Streak.)

The Velderet is set in an anti-oppression utopia, a utopia in which BDSM sex has been squelched in its "thou shalt not oppress others" social politics.^[1] Merin and Kobi, our intrepid heroes, spend the novel re-inventing ethical BDSM practice^[2], building a social network while evading the social workers and network censors, and ultimately saving the world by proving to the Kylarans -- a trading empire that (apparently ethically?) embraces sexual-social hierarchies as comprehensively as Merin and Kobi's society rejects such hierarchies -- that their own race is just as... Um, okay, I'm not sure what got proved in the novel's climax. But hot sex was had, the world was saved, the oppressive stormtrooper underbelly of the so-called utopia was exposed, Merin found her sexual-romantic soulmate, and Kobi got himself a happily-ever-after, too. (And if any of that counts as a spoiler, you haven't read enough erotica. I'm just sayin'.)

The Velderet began its life as a serial in A Taste of Latex, which went defunct halfway through the serialization. The writing in the opening chapters of The Velderet reads clunkily to me, but seems to improve around the mid-point of the book. (Alternatively, maybe I just got better at ignoring it as I progressed.) FWIW, I don't think of Tan as being a clunky writer: "The Game", which is also set in the Velderet universe, and "Telepaths Don't Need Safewords," both use language well. Where use of language is concerned some people might be happier with her collection of erotic shorts, Black Feathers (which I haven't read; I'm making assumptions on the basis of the shorts of hers that I've seen anthologized elsewhere).

[1] This is not an uncommon premise in BDSM SFF -- Patrick Califia has used it, too, except his setting was out-and-out dystopian. The frequency of the premise is a direct outgrowth of the feminist sex wars, which also spawned Chrystos's In Her I Am. I'm most familiar with anti-oppression slamming of BDSM coming from a feminist direction -- still an issue, btw, as there's a relevant essay in Yes Means Yes -- but for the record, it's an issue with respect to race, too: see here and here.)

[2] Tan touches upon the ethics of race play via a discussion of erotic use of re-enactments of the genocide that founded the utopia. While I appreciate the nod that suppression of BDSM porn pushes people to using accounts of historical violence as porn, I also believe the ethics of historical-oppression-as-porn are not so simple as portrayed here. The in-novel ethics are somewhat simplified by the genocide victims having no descendants (a grossly unrealistic premise, in my view, and thus an ethical cop-out), but even so, I don't think that assumption sufficiently simplifies the ethics to justify the resolution portrayed here, not when the genocide is the origin of the society's utopic prosperity.

#10: The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros

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I listened to the unabridged audiobook by this, read by the author. When Cisneros first spoke, I was taken slightly aback and afraid I wouldn't like the book: her voice is light, sweet, girly. I thought it might be twee, or goofy-sounding.

But I was quickly won over by her warmth and excellent reading. She has a deft, smart delivery, and she treats her listener like a confidante or best friend. The introduction was especially affecting (I am not sure if it's just in the audiobook or is included in newer editions of the book as well), where she talked about the reactions her book has inspired in readers over the years.

osprey_archer sums up the book very well here; I want to recommend the audiobook as a good car read, because the short chapters lend themselves well to short trips around town, and again, because Cisneros is such a good reader. I felt like I'd gained a new friend by the end of the book.

2. In the Time of the Butterflies, Julia Alvarez

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Julia Alvarez’s In the Time of the Butterflies tells the story in the alternating voices of the four Mirabal sisters, who defied the dictator of the Dominican Republic, Trujillo, until he had three of them killed. (This is not a spoiler; you find it out in the first chapter.)

I really wanted to like this book, on account of the title is so cool, but in the end I can't muster any strong feelings for it. I didn’t dislike it, but I didn’t like it either; it’s really pretty forgettable.

I think the problem is the focus of the book. The book is focused very much on the family life of the Mirabals: the relationship between the sisters and their husbands and all their various relatives. Unfortunately, only two of the sisters have interesting voices; the other two are forgettable.

The other problem with this approach is that the attempt to organize a revolution against Trujillo occurs almost entirely off the page. Therefore, it doesn’t make emotional sense to the reader when the Dominicans start looking up to the Mirabal sisters as heroines of the resistance. What have they done to deserve it? A lot, we’ve been told, but we haven’t seen any of their revolutionary actions so it doesn’t feel real.

In the end, the problem is that the book isn’t sure whether it wants to be a family or a political drama. Instead, it tries to mix the two, and as a result the family drama is half-baked and the politics too thin to make up the difference.