At the beginning of The Sentence, Louise Erdrich’s darkly funny and wickedly brilliant new novel, an Ojibwe woman named Tookie faces a long prison term for illegally transporting a dead body. She looks up the word sentence and stares miserably at “its yawning c, belligerent little e’s . . . its hissing sibilants and double n’s, this repetitive bummer of a word made of slyly stabbing letters that surrounded an isolate human t.” Her American Heritage Dictionary seems appropriately titled, especially… [Read more]
Jesmyn Ward
I talked with the great Jesmyn Ward about Mississippi, Black Lives Matter, and her memoir Men We Reaped, recently published in Dutch as De mannen die we oogstten. Read it at trouw.nl/cultuur-media/jesmyn-ward-schrijven-was-iets-waar-ik-voor-wegliep-totdat-mijn-broer-stierf~be2204bf/.
Alexander Nemerov: Fierce Poise
Among all the artists of the New York School, that brilliant and quarrelsome group of postwar painters and poets, Helen Frankenthaler (1928–2011) stands out for the apparent ease of her artistic process. … Pollock, Rothko, Willem de Kooning must be good, because look what they paid in depression, alcoholism, and self-doubt. Frankenthaler’s stunning canvases challenge this equation and refuse its mean-spirited, capitalistic terms. Too pretty, too privileged, too much plain sailing? Who decides?
https://4columns.org/phillips-julie/fierce-poise
Bernardine Evaristo
“’Girl, Woman, Other’ came out of a feminist impulse, which was to create these multiple narratives from women’s perspectives. But I also wanted to see my black, British generation acknowledged, because I know that if we don’t write about it, nobody else will.”
My conversation with Bernardine Evaristo in Trouw, December 6, 2020.
500 Mice
My beloved friend Krishna–who first introduced me to Born in Flames, the 1983 feminist science fiction film by Lizzie Borden–asked me to be on a panel on the film in the Samen Tegen Racisme (Together Against Racism) series, Pakhuis de Zwijger, November 20, 2020. I appeared together with Gina Lafour, Shishani Vranckx, and moderator Manjit Krishna Kaur. Here’s the text of my talk, which was about the film, Adrienne Maree Brown’s thoughts on emergent strategy, and my reading of Ursula K. Le Guin’s Tao Te Ching. See the video here
I came here to talk about mice.
Krishna asked me to talk about where I see myself in this movie—which characters I identify with. And I thought of the part where Flo Kennedy—who was an impressive feminist lawyer in real life and here plays the mastermind behind the revolution—is talking about action and power. She says, “What would you rather see come through the door: One lion, unified? Or 500 mice? You know, 500 mice can do a lot of damage.”
At one time I would have tried to name one of the heroes. But the truth is, I’m a mouse.
I’m a mouse in a pattern of mice, a multitude of mice. Mice get things done. Patterns make things happen. In the terms of Emergent Strategy, by the Black feminist activist Adrienne Maree Brown, mice are emergent. Their actions are linked to the actions of other mice; they join together to make intersectional links of community and persistence. They adapt, they’re resilient, they’re resourceful. They chew on stuff.
They’re also hyper-intelligent, pan-dimensional beings who created the Earth in order to answer the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything—because let’s not forget that we’re in the realm of science fiction. And that’s where we need to be. As Brown says, “Science fiction is a way to practice the future together.”
When I volunteer for the Women’s March, together with others, I’m a mouse. When I show up for Black lives, for Black queer and trans lives, standing on the Museumplein, holding up a sign, I’m a mouse. When I help an American register to vote, I’m a mouse. One such act is nothing. Many such acts—that’s everything.
If 500 mice can disrupt what’s there, they can also create what’s not there. Brown asks, “What are the ideas that liberate all of us? The more people that collaborate on that ideation, the more that people will be served by the resulting world(s).” I’m there for the collaboration of the mice.
Lately, the last couple of weeks, I’ve been checking the news. I get up every morning and I say, “Is he still there? Is that fog that settled over America ever going to lift?” And a couple of days ago I thought, No. This fog of untruth is the new climate. I have to learn to live with it, and I can probably learn a lot about that from other people, the ones who’ve always been lied to about their freedom.
How do you find your way in a fog? You focus on critical connections. You help each other survive and thrive. Intersectionality puts you at a crossroads: You can move toward each other, offer assistance where needed, check your privilege. Look for patterns for the many, for the mice, the ones who are, as Audre Lorde said, “seeking a now that can breed futures.”
Seeds are the future. You may not know where you’re heading, but when you get there, be ready to plant yourself and grow.
Roads are the future. Colson Whitehead writes that the Underground Railroad, the escape route from white supremacy, is built at the same time that it’s being used, by the people who travel through it and the allies who maintain the rails. “Who are you after you finish something this magnificent?” he asks. “In constructing it you have also journeyed through it, to the other side.”
Somebody once asked the science fiction writer Ursula K. Le Guin what she would do to save the world. She answered that since she didn’t actually have that kind of superpower, she would go on doing what she’d always done. She would write novels and worry.
I think that’s the mouse way. You do your work, and worry, and survive. Water wears down mountains. Mice waylay the plans of men. Le Guin preferred the way of water; she believed in patience and flowing around the obstacles.
Me, I’m here for chewing up important documents, nesting in the cabinets, doing my little bit to save the world.
Ursula K. Le Guin in Melbourne
This week I talked about Ursula K. Le Guin with host Trevor Chappell on Australia’s ABC radio. It was the late-night program, so I was grateful to be able to do it from a different time zone. I talked a bit about Ursula’s visit to Melbourne in 1975, when she was a guest of honor at WorldCon and taught a writing workshop that turned out to be hugely influential.
You can also watch the GoH speech Ursula gave in Melbourne, which is definitely worth your time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Deuas-AuzbU
The Duke, the Dauphin, and the Donald
I’ve been posting fewer reviews here lately, partly because I’ve been reviewing less (and writing more! I’ve really almost finished my second book). But it’s also because I’ve been working differently. I used to write my reviews for Trouw in English, then give them to my partner, Jan van Houten, to translate into Dutch. That was a fairly time-consuming process with a lot of consultation back and forth. In the last few years my language skills have gotten good enough that I’ve started writing my Trouw articles in Dutch, which Jan and I together turn into more grammatical, more stylistically sophisticated Dutch.
That means I don’t have an English version to post here. I keep saying I’m going to back-translate my work, but mostly I don’t get around to it.
So here’s a link to my most recent piece in Dutch, on “Huckleberry Finn.” It’s the kickoff to a series on Great American Novels, to run between now and the election. Rereading “Huckleberry Finn” this time, I was struck by Mark Twain’s cynicism. Are ordinary white Americans really that greedy, gullible, and violent?
“One reason why the novel remains popular in America is undoubtedly that Twain fulfills the reader’s desire, even–or maybe especially–in an egalitarian society, to feel better than everyone else. The naivety, avarice, wanting to have an identity, wanting to be right*–it all comes back in the feud between Trump and his opponents.”
The rest is here: https://www.trouw.nl/recensies/huckleberry-finn-gaat-in-feite-over-donald-trump~b6b60053/
I also did the second in the series, “O Pioneers!,” coming up on Saturday, September 5.
*in Dutch “gelijkhebberigheid,” “greed for possessing rightness.”
Rebecca Solnit: Recollections of My Nonexistence
Can you write an autobiography and leave yourself out? Can you be everywhere and nowhere in a narrative, or slip out of it like you would quietly exit a party? Provocatively, Rebecca Solnit has organized her new memoir around moments when she felt that she was not fully present in her own life: was not being seen or… [read more at 4Columns]
On Tiptree and naming
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In recent weeks I’ve seen a discussion taking place around the names of literary awards, with many arguing that awards should not be named after people. One of those awards is the Tiptree.
I haven’t wanted to say much about this, mainly because I’m in the middle of revisions for the book that ate my life and my last two brain cells can barely get together to tie my shoelaces. But I’ve been tagged a few times on social media and I feel like I owe you a response.
A number of people are reading the manner of Alli and Ting’s Sheldon’s death as an instance of caregiver murder, in which a person with a disability is killed by a person responsible for caring for them. There is a pattern of murders like this being downplayed or dismissed as “understandable” because the caregiver “must have been under such strain.” This is extremely upsetting and hurtful to people living with disabilities. You can read more about this here and here. (Content warnings: suicide; Americans’ appalling lack of access to heath care.)
Mostly I’ve been asked for factual answers: Did it happen? Did it not happen? It may be that a name that calls up painful associations should be changed in any case. But I believe it matters to talk about what we know and don’t know, and here are some thoughts about Ting’s and Alli’s choices.
It’s evident that the narrative of caregiver murder plays a role in how the Sheldons’ death has been discussed. Accounts of their death often exaggerate Ting’s disability. When I first started researching Alli’s life, the entry in the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction said that Ting had Alzheimer’s Disease. Last week, before I went in and fixed it,* Wikipedia said that Ting was ”a nearly blind invalid incapable of caring for himself.” Neither is true. But there’s a tendency to alter the story—originally to try to excuse Alli’s actions—by portraying Ting as severely disabled and Alli as his long-term carer.
Yes, I’m sure the Sheldons had a suicide pact. No, I can’t say there was nothing dark there, that she didn’t coerce him into it. I can’t give Ting’s side of the story. But to picture their relationship as one of his dependence and her betrayal of his trust is an oversimplification of a complicated situation that maybe I can say more about.
In the 1970s, Alli Sheldon started to develop severe depression, which made her reliant on Ting’s emotional and physical care. She began abusing prescription drugs, and Ting did not act to stop her.
In the subsequent years, until her death in 1987, Alli often contemplated suicide but refused to kill herself while Ting was still alive. There were times when she talked about wishing to take him with her. There were times when she was terrified of his death. I see faint clues that she resented her own dependence on Ting, and that her own dependence may have pushed her toward a suicide pact. But I also see her warning herself not to end their lives before the agreed moment. Jeff Smith told me Ting, who was smart about people, may have consented to a suicide pact to make Alli promise to stay alive: yes, but it’s not time yet; later, not now.
When Alli first started talking about suicide, Ting was in good mental and physical health except that he suffered from progressive blindness, which was diagnosed in about 1976. By 1977 he had lost much of the sight in his right eye, but he could care for himself and Alli until (as far as I can tell) the mid-1980s, when he lost the ability to drive and read. I know that at the end of his life he was no longer able to take care of Alli, and that was apparently a blow to him, and I think to her too. Even then he was still active, seeing friends, doing the grocery shopping, by no means helpless or bedridden.
Unfortunately I can’t restore to Ting the subjectivity he deserves. For some versions of events I only have one source, and without confirmation I don’t like to rely completely on that information. By the time of his death Ting’s health was failing overall, which suggests a narrative of assisted suicide. I’m not sure the facts fit that interpretation, either, but I don’t want to deny Ting the possibility of agency and choice.
What I do see is that the Sheldons’ relationship was very close in ways that were not entirely healthy, and within that mutual dependence the idea of suicide evolved over a long time, between two people of whom one, Ting, did not leave a statement of consent. This is a place of shadows, and I can understand that some experience it as a place of hurt and anger. Where I don’t have answers, though, I resist imposing a false narrative of absolutes, either to excuse Alli or to condemn her.
“Murder” is a heavy charge to put on someone without proof. I can’t accept it.
I couldn’t have written the book I wrote without being open to contradiction. I’m troubled by some aspects of Alli’s death, and I’d like to acknowledge those who are distressed and angry. I also love her for her life, her writing, her struggle to exist and speak honestly in a hostile world. I’d like to acknowledge those who value her insight, courage, ingenuity, and integrity. If that’s a contradiction, I hope you can let it stand.
Concerning the name of the award, I’d like to leave that discussion to others. For myself, I can say that I first encountered Alice Sheldon through the name attached to the award, and that if the award hadn’t been called the Tiptree I might never have written the biography. But I have great faith in the wisdom of the Motherboard, and also I have a book to finish. The rest I leave to you, the community, hoping for a productive dialogue and trusting in your good judgment.
*Other than this, none of what’s on the James Tiptree, Jr., Wikipedia page is by me. It’s not my baby.
Margaret Atwood: The Testaments
For pure reading pleasure ‘The Testaments’, Margaret Atwood’s long-awaited sequel to “The Handmaid’s Tale,” lives up to every bit of the considerable pre-publication hype. Atwood’s original dystopian novel, published in 1985, ends like a Cold War thriller: the main character, Offred, escapes from Gilead, the Christian theocracy where as a “Handmaid” she is held in reproductive slavery. In the new book Atwood resumes the page-turning pace as she describes a plot by a small group of women, working together, to bring Gilead down.
Gilead returned to the public imagination, and “Handmaid” to the bestseller lists, after the 2016 US election and the Women’s March that followed. A TV series based on the book was then already in production; its 2017 release boosted book sales even more, while the red cloaks and white caps of the Handmaids became symbols of feminist protest. All this makes the new publication a major event. “The Testaments” is being released at an all-night book presentation in London, with appearances by literary stars from Jeanette Winterson to Neil Gaiman, plus extras dressed as Handmaids. The book has already been shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
In the new book, as in the series (which I haven’t seen), the initial shock at the eradication of women’s rights has given way to resistance. Gilead itself is settled, the powers of its fundamentalist police state consolidated. Given the current pressure on women’s rights in the US, you might expect Atwood to have adjusted Gilead to reflect current events; but she hasn’t added in a populist demagogue or concerns about migration. This makes “The Testaments” less topical, but also less prone to clichés and easy answers. Atwood was criticized after the first book came out for leaving out questions of race, but Gilead apparently remains an all-white society.
“The Testaments” wears its social critique more lightly than “Handmaid.” It opens 15 years or so after the events of the first book, and consists of the first-person recollections or testimonies of three women. Two of them are too young to remember a time before Gilead, and see it not as a nightmare but as a given. Not knowing their true relationship to the repressive state, however, puts them more at risk than they know.
One of them, Agnes, can’t help feeling nostalgic about her childhood in Gilead. “I imagine you expect nothing but horrors,” she remarks, but as a Commander’s daughter she felt only “loved and cherished.” A little wary, maybe, since girls are taught in school that they are “snares and enticements” for men whose further actions will be entirely their fault. Still, she works cheerfully at her embroidery and flower arranging. She’s never seen a book and doesn’t know there was a time when schoolgirls were taught to read.
Then, at thirteen, she is informed of her impending wedding. At first she doesn’t resist this arranged marriage except with “some moping and fretting…though since I pursued these activities alone in my room they had no influence.” Ultimately she takes more decisive action.
The second character, Daisy, grows up in free Toronto, knowing Gilead only from the news, until her parents are revealed to belong to the anti-Gilead resistance. A series of dramatic events then lands her across the border and in the hands of the dreaded Aunt Lydia, a chief strategist and anti-feminist ideologue of the Gilead regime.
It is Aunt Lydia, Offred’s old nemesis, who provides the surprising third testimony, revealing a career of expert flattery, blackmail, and torture in the service of securing influence–and with it her own safety. Power relations among women are a classic Atwood theme, and one she deploys masterfully in “The Testaments.” From schoolgirls to wicked stepmothers, all her characters, consciously or not, are fighting to move up in the social order. It’s a good thing, too, she suggests, for women to occupy themselves with obtaining power, because the only way out of Gilead is over the fallen bodies of the enemy.
Part of the pleasure of “The Testaments” is in the fresh encounter with themes at the heart of Atwood’s work. It echoes “Cat’s Eye” and “The Robber Bride,” those masterly studies of female friendship and betrayal. Along with “Alias Grace,” “The Blind Assassin,” “The Year of the Flood,” and her funny and endearing “Lady Oracle,” it navigates coming of age, showing subtly and movingly how girls play games with adult roles, putting on and taking off selves like suits of clothes. It’s telling that Daisy grows up in her parents’ second-hand store (a classic Atwood setting) and that each of the main characters in “The Testaments” is living under an assumed name.
“The Testaments” doesn’t have the emotional depth of its predecessor, with its intense focus on power, identity, and the sexual self. (Neither sex nor love has a part in the sequel.) But to read it only as a dystopian adventure story or a guide to current events is to underestimate the breadth of Atwood’s literary gifts. Part of Atwood is acting as an Aunt Lydia, a canny, self-aware manipulator of the plot. Another part invites us to think about the nature of freedom. Yet another is busy reinventing herself once more in the costume shop of literature.
Trouw, September 10, 2019