Justine Larbalestier

Comments

1. Cherie Priest Says:

   I’m awfully fond of darling e.bear, along these lines

   January 27th, 2006 at 8:21 am

2. Cherie Priest Says:

   P.S. – drat. You already know about her.
   [:: sigh ::]

   January 27th, 2006 at 8:22 am

3. 3. Justine Says:

   Yup, Elizabeth Bear’s a goodie. We passed on two of her paperbacks to the woman we rented a house from in Mexico and she (a total non-sf reader) fell in love and emailed demanding to know where to get more. Heh heh. I love bringing ‘em over to the dark side.

   January 27th, 2006 at 8:29 am

4. cherie priest Says:

   May I recommend Justine Musk?
   http://moschus.livejournal.com/profile

   I just finished her *BloodAngel* and it was quite good.
   

   It’s hard to say – “yes! she talks about wommyn and stuff!” so she’s a feminist author, because that’s not it, exactly – but she portrays, strong, competent female characters as if they aren’t novelties, so I feel she counts
   

   January 27th, 2006 at 9:05 am

5. 5. Justine Says:

   I’ve not heard of her. Cool. Plus another Justine! And a non-Australian one. Fabulous.

   So how about you, Ms Priest? I haven’t read your book yet. (Planning to get it when we’re back in the US of A.) Would you consider it/yourself a feminist writer?

   January 27th, 2006 at 9:10 am

6. shana Says:

   oh, Cherie Priest definitely is.

   January 27th, 2006 at 9:16 am

7. cherie priest Says:

   Feminist by my own description of Justine, above – I write about competent female characters, and don’t treat their competence as a novelty act. So sure, I’ll be a feminist writer!

   In a broader sense, 4&20bb deals a fair amount with some of the issues above, though – as the POV character is biracial and living in the American south. There’s no getting around some of it, you know? But at the same time, the book isn’t *about* being biracial and living in the south.

   I guess – and here I realize I’m running long-winded – I’d have to say I tried to take the “cosby” approach with my own work. Bill Cosby once said of his TV sitcom that it didn’t deal with injustice and oppression because that wasn’t what the show was about – even though it featured a minority cast, and could have ostensibly been used as a soap box pulpit for a cause. In the end, he seemed to feel that it was more effective just to portray a family, and let people get used to seeing black families as normal – not as some “different” subset of the population.

   This doesn’t mean to write-pretend that bad things and discriminatory things don’t happen – but to be aware that there *are* other stories to be told about people-not-just-like-ourselves than merely discussing their mainstream marginalization in our fiction.

   I’m talking around what I mean, but I hope you get the general idea.

   January 27th, 2006 at 9:23 am

8. 8. Justine Says:

   Well, if Shana says so . . .

   Cherie: I think I get the general idea. There’s so much going on in a novel so hard to convey as many aspects of the world that you want that so often you have to gesture at things to give cluey readers the sense that it’s there if they just read closely, look around the corner.

   D’you know I’ve not seen the term biracial before. Interesting.

   January 27th, 2006 at 11:11 am

9. cherie priest Says:

   Yeah. Between what you said, and what I said – that’s what I meant

   “Biracial” is a pretty common term around here; or, as an old friend of mine in the dorm used to refer to herself with a smirk, “Ethnically ambiguous.”

   January 27th, 2006 at 11:21 am

10. 10. Justine Says:

    I say “racially indeterminate”. I’m always made happy when I see people who are ri. Anything that confounds my desire to pigeon hole is good. I look forward to a world in which we all are. Watch the skin cancer rates go down and down!

    January 27th, 2006 at 11:38 am

11. jason erik lundberg Says:

    Wow, I clicked here to proclaim the goodness of Cherie Priest’s tackling of some of these issues and see that she’s beaten me here. Everything she said, issues of strong female characters, interracial relationships and biracial children. And creepy creepy ghosts.

    I’m not sure if Aimee Bender considers herself a feminist, but her latest collection, Willful Creatures, talks about how women treat each other (specifically in an adolescent setting) and how men and women treat each other. There was also a story in her first collection about a librarian who turned the tables on the men who had hot librarian fantasies to her own purposes.

    January 27th, 2006 at 12:09 pm

12. Justine Says:

    Aimee Bender writes s/f/h? I didn’t know that.

    January 27th, 2006 at 12:12 pm

13. Mely Says:

    I finally started reading Aimee Bender after seeing my thousandth comparison of her to Kelly Link (she was writing long before Kelly). It’s not invalid. She isn’t as consistently amazing as Kelly is, but some of her stories are wonderful, and one story in Willful Creatures may have been the most sensual thing I read all last year.

    Susan Vaught’s Stormwitch is about race and gender in the US South in the 60s–possibly the best YA novel I read all last year. Nnedi Okerafor-Mbachi’s Zahrah the Windseeker is another YA novel which is doing interesting things with race and gender.

    Susan Palwick isn’t a new writer, but she did just publish her first new novel in a long time — and it deals with race and gender and also religious faith. I was surprised it didn’t get more attention.

    I think you’ve probably heard of everyone else I have. I haven’t been reading a lot of new writers.

    January 27th, 2006 at 2:34 pm

14. shana Says:

    nice to have authority recognized.

    seriously, cherie, 4&20 rocks. kept me diverted on an extremely ill day in mexico, after being up all night.

    aimee bender is speculative, maybe? who knows whether she’d categorize herself as such. interesting suggestion, jason, i like.

    justine, keep this as an ongoing conversation, will you? i’d like to see who else chips in.

    January 27th, 2006 at 2:46 pm

15. jason erik lundberg Says:

    Bender’s fiction isn’t classified as SF/F/H, but it could easily be. She trope-poaches aplenty, and her stories are often eerily surreal.

    January 27th, 2006 at 2:46 pm

16. shana Says:

    a later thought: jennifer stevenson’s trash sex magic (published by small beer) is pretty fabulous and forward-looking.

    January 27th, 2006 at 3:10 pm

17. Chris Barzak Says:

    Aimee Bender is a writer who spec fic readers would, in general, still enjoy a lot. She uses fantasy elements often, and then other stories are what I would consider horror stories. No scifi yet, I think, but definitely magic and horrorifying elements. She gets published by literary magazines and Doubleday does her collections, though, so she’s considered a literary author who many specfic readers read.

    January 27th, 2006 at 7:07 pm

18. Gwenda Says:

    I’ll have to think about this to try and come up with anyone you’re not already reading or aware of (not publishing _in_ genre, but Rachel Ingalls is great, have you read her?). I would toss out Caitlin Kiernan though, as someone whose work is only getting better and better and is definitely working with some of these concerns.

    January 27th, 2006 at 10:30 pm

19. cherie priest Says:

    Wow – thanks to those of you who have chimed in on my behalf

    January 28th, 2006 at 1:41 am

20. Colleen Says:

    I included a review of Ann Halam’s YA book “Siberia” in my column at Bookslut in December. It was amazing. Halam created not only a strong mother character, who is trusted with safeguarding the DNA strings for all wildlife in a dark and frozen future world, but her daughter Sloe is out and out a fantastic female character. Sloe discovers herself, embarks on an epic journey, and embraces the “magic” of the science that she must save. It’s very very good and certainly not just for teens.

    I also thought Pauline Fisk did a great job with “Midnight Blue” in creating kind of a creepy alternate world where a young girl must literally leap to death in order to save the lives of those around her. (And although that sound Buffyesque, it really isn’t.) It was intense and most unusual.

    January 28th, 2006 at 8:03 am

21. TansyRR Says:

    I loved Trash Sex Magic. I also love the women portrayed in Nina Kiriki Hoffman’s fiction.

    Tricia Sullivan’s Double Vision was interesting for its portrayal of an unconventional female protagonist. Though personally I was a little disturbed by the fact that the fact that the protagonist is overweight (this isn’t the only unconventional element) and yet does not eat throughout the whole of the book; as in, is physically restrained from eating by a mystical force that I never quite understood…

    January 28th, 2006 at 12:54 pm

22. Lewis Says:

    I happen to like Kim Harrison’s work – Dead witch walking; the good, the bad,
    and the undead; and Every which way but dead. She has a 4th novel that
    was probably just published. see her website: http://kimharrison.net.

    January 28th, 2006 at 2:07 pm

23. Roger Says:

    What is this feminism you speak of?

    January 28th, 2006 at 4:11 pm

24. 24. Justine Says:

    Wow! Thanks so much everyone for all the suggestions!

    Colleen: Yeah I adore all Gwyneth Jones’ work (Ann Halam)—she’s amazing. And just my kind of feminist.

    Roger: Roger, Roger, Roger. Sigh.

    January 29th, 2006 at 7:55 am

25. Benjamin Rosenbaum Says:

    Re: the speculativeness of Aimee Bender, cf. http://www.strangehorizons.com/2003/20030303/conversation.shtml

    February 8th, 2006 at 9:05 am

26. emily Says:

    Lyda Morehouse is lately my favorite. She writes a really good blend of science and religion with a diverse cast of well-developed characters. Absolutely worth a look (though it seems as if the first 3/4ths of her series is out of print, a damn shame).

    February 15th, 2006 at 12:42 pm

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