N is for Nagini!

Welcome to Day 14 of the Blogging From A to Z April Challenge here at Reading on the F Train. Today's topic is Nagini from Harry Potter, and some of the problems surrounding Rowling's use of Eastern mythology.


So, hanging out over on Tumblr, I saw this fascinating piece of writing about Nagini (Voldemort's serpentine soul vessel from the Harry Potter series) and the reasons why she's problematic.  Go check it out--I definitely learned some stuff.   Thanks to the author (Tumblr: Irresistible Revolution) for a great analysis. (It was reblogged by one of my favorite people on Tumblr, Sumayyah Daud, who you should probably definitely be following.  Thanks for sharing, Sumayyah!)

I've put my thoughts on Tumblr already, but it's late and I'm tired and Nagini fortuitously starts with today's letter--plus, I'm really interested to see what people think about this.   So here's my scattered two cents, reposted from my Tumblr.

This article is hugely fascinating to me (particularly the bird vs. snake stuff).  I was completely ignorant of like 95% of it, and I love it when the internet teaches me new things. 

It also makes me really think about what we can or should hold authors accountable for.  Like, I feel like there’s a good chance Rowling googled “words for snake” or something and didn’t really think about what it would imply.  I’m certain she’s not as well-versed in eastern mythology as the author of this article.  That doesn’t make her work less problematic—I’m not trying to say this critical reading is wrong—but I guess I’m asking, what exactly do we mean when we talk about things being problematic?  Where, specifically, are we locating the problem?   And what are the expectations for how much research an author needs to do?  Clearly, a little more than was actually done in this case—so how does an author know when there’s something in their story that’s not quite right?

And I wonder what would have happened if someone sat Rowling down shortly after Nagini was introduced and explained what she had brought into her story by choosing that name for a snake.  I have so, so much respect for authors who acknowledge their mistakes and try to fix them. My favorite example of this is Kristin Cashore altering elements of a character between Graceling and Bitterblue when it was explained to her that she had fallen into a problematic trope involving disability and magic.  And she didn’t just do it quietly, she talks about it in events and I believe mentions it in the acknowledgements for Bitterblue.  To my mind, this lessens the problematic elements of Graceling, so I guess I’m placing these problems in a weird liminal space (thanks, Professor Bell!) between the author and the text.  Like, if Nagini had been problematic in her first appearance but then someone set Rowling on a better course, could we give full marks, or nearly so?

No really, I’m actually asking.  When works by living authors, especially ongoing works, contain problematic elements, can a late-stage, good-faith correction effectively solve the problems?  Or is it too little, too late?

(Edited to add more questions because I want to learn about all the things.  My questions aren’t rhetorical here.  They’re totally real and not even abstract, since I’m also a writer and I worry about this kind of stuff a LOT.)

(Edited a second time: Maybe part of what I am wondering about is how much do we hold the person—Rowling, as a human—accountable for the attitudes conveyed by problems in their work?  Particularly if we don’t have the chance to ask them about it and see how they respond?  Like, for example (and I’m sorry to beat this dead horse) the first season of the show Girls was problematic because of its lack of POC; when asked about it, Lena Dunham gave a problematic response—essentially, “Yeah?  So?  That’s what my life is like.”  I have a problem with her art and also with her.  I don’t hate her or anything, and I think in general she takes too much crap for other stuff, but in that case I can at least legitimately say, ok, that thing you yourself actually said, that’s a problem.  Kristin Cashore, on the other hand, created problematic work but when asked about it, responded in a way that acknowledged the problem and her own responsibility to fix it.  So I don’t find her as a person problematic.  Thoughts?)

M is for Me and Earl and the Dying Girl!

Welcome to Day 13 of the Blogging From A to Z April Challenge here at Reading on the F Train. Today's topic is Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews!

Here are my thoughts on our Cybil Award Winner for Young Adult Fiction!

 Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

As I read this book, I couldn’t stop thinking about how much I would love to share it with some of my former students. Like, I kind of want to buy six copies, stick a different student’s name on each one (specific students, guys I taught when they were freshmen, who were incredulous and thrilled to find that I had read The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian and assigned it anyway, even though yes, I knew it had Bad Words And Sex Jokes. These guys--unless I badly miss my guess--would love Greg’s artful profanity and Earl’s combination of honesty, anger, and unpredictable weirdness.)

Having been a bookish kid growing up when I did, it was inevitable that I had a Lurlene McDaniel phase. And it’s very, very hard to write a review of a Cancer Novel For Kids And Teens! without holding it up to the great grandmother of them all. Obviously, pretty much anything will compare favorably to those pastel, soft-focus stews of bad wigs, milkshakes, and regret, especially given their distinct aftertaste of DO YOU HAVE A BRUISE ANYWHERE ON YOUR BODY? HAVE YOU EVER FELT TIRED BEFORE? YOU PROBABLY DEFINITELY HAVE CANCER!!! As a genre, there have been some pretty large technological advances since then:

--Humor (of any kind)

--The disproving of the theory previously held by the medical community that two pretty girls with cancer who come within a hundred yards of each other will meld into a codependent best friendship that is secretly parasitic because it will end in one of them dying 100% of the time

--Characters who are less than 85% punchable


But even among these New Cancer Novels, this one stands out. Greg’s intense discomfort with himself and everything in his life rang very true, and his alarming realization that his crazy best friend was also a better person than he was felt real and familiar in a way that I loved (but didn’t love, because that’s a hard thing to feel.) I also appreciated the dynamic between Greg and Earl because it was so clear that Greg didn’t understand a lot of Earl’s life. They come from very different backgrounds, which doesn’t mean that they don’t have a legitimate friendship, but it does mean that Greg is often at a loss or in over his head where Earl is concerned. And I appreciated the utter lack of anything magical. There is no feel-good ending--you know, the kind you sort of expect even as you tell yourself how unrealistic that would be, but then it happens anyway and you’re glad? Not here. This is as honest and accurate an ending as I can think of. But, unless you’re extremely squeamish about language, violence, drugs, sex, illness, or bad filmmaking, I’m going to strongly recommend this one, so go ahead and see for yourself.

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Sunday Sunshine: In a Rush Edition!

Ok--it's late, I spent the night working, and I'm actually doing a full-time week at work for the first time in recent memory this week so I need to get to bed!

Without further ado, here's what I read this week:

 Some Girls Are by Courtney Summers
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Regina Afton is a Mean Girl.

She's also a lonely girl, a clever girl, a girl with some pretty severe psychosomatic stomach problems, a girl who misses her could've-been-best-friend...and now, a girl who has nowhere to sit at lunch except the Garbage Table.

After a harrowing encounter with her best friend's boyfriend at a party, Regina is on the wrong end of a freezeout. Suddenly she's finding out what it feels like to be on the receiving end of tactics she has employed, at her former best friend Anna's behest. (Spoiler alert: it's the worst.) Her former victims have a range of reactions--many relish the sight, with justifiable schadenfreude. But Michael, lone resident of the Garbage Table, is a little more complicated.

I've heard a lot about the great "unlikable girls" that Courtney Summers writes. I don't know if this is just the teacher in me talking, but I haven't found that to be the case in the two books of hers I've read so far. (It's hard to like the Fearsome Foursome, the mean girl clique at the center of this novel, but at the same time, it's hard not to wonder what their stories are.) But Regina is a teenager: she's screwed up a lot in the past, and she is finding that, now that she's out of favor, there are pretty significant consequences for her screw-ups. She's also trying to figure out what she "deserves" and what is just bad stuff that has happened to her; she's trying, in fact, to figure out what it means to "deserve" anything, especially anything bad, and to draw the line between things that some people might have coming to them and things that no one deserves, ever. She's angry, and a lot of the time she acts on that anger. (So are the other girls. Kara took years of torment from Regina before finding her chance to turn the tables. Anna--well, I think the reason Anna is so angry is that she actually believes Regina's side of the story, and hates that it's true, and hates that she was manipulated. I don't know what made her the way she is to begin with, but there are some hints.)

In short: Regina Afton is a teenage girl, and it takes a lot to get me to dislike a teenager. I love that she starts to stand up for herself, and even for other people, and I love that nothing about that is easy. I felt every minute of this book, and I would read the stories of any of the other characters in it. I am definitely a convert to Summers fandom, and I look forward to meeting more of her tough, difficult, real girls.

Once Was Lost by Sara Zarr
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Sara Zarr is my hero. Like, she takes on these big, serious, scary things--usually things involving families that are somehow broken--and she makes them feel so true, and not at all sensationalistic, because her protagonists are these very very alive, real girls.

Once Was Lost is no exception. Sam--short for Samara--is struggling with a lot. She's a pastor's daughter, but she's been doubting her faith. Her mother is in rehab for alcoholism. Her father is more concerned with church business than with his family. And then, suddenly, a girl disappears from her small town.

I found Sam's reactions to all of these things to be really believable. I remember feeling a lot of the things she feels: the need to occasionally bolt; the desire to take on a project and then the loss of steam halfway through when you realize what you really want isn't that project at all; the sudden closeness to someone new at the same time that there is a new distance between you and the people who've always been with you. This book is a quick, engrossing read--I actually gasped once, while reading it--and I highly recommend it.

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L is for Last!

Welcome to Day 12 of the Blogging From A to Z April Challenge here at Reading on the F Train. Today's topic is Last, my current WiP!

So, today, I'm taking a big leap and sharing two short excerpts from the project I'm working on.  It evolved from my NaNo project...sort of.  Except the story is completely different, so this is essentially a second first draft.

It's called Last for now, because it was inspired by "My Last Duchess" by Robert Browning.  I feel like that will eventually change, but hey--it gets me an "L" entry.

Here's the setup: Bridget, the MC, is totally in love with her best friend Maggie.  There have been hints that Maggie feels the same way but they aren't talking about it; neither one has ever dated a girl before.  Maggie has just started dating cool-new-guy Duke; Bridget has just had a Moment at the bus stop with boy-next-door Rob.  The first snippet is on the bus with Maggie; the second is after school with Rob.  There's some stuff in between, but these were two of my favorite scenes to write.

    “So what was all that about?” she asks.

    “All what?”  I try to play it cool but I know my face is at least bouncy-ball pink.  

    “What just happened with you and Rob?  You’re all red.”  

     I shake my head.  “Nothing,” I insist.  “I mean...I think nothing.”  My face heats up another few degrees.

     Maggie grins.  “Ok, details.  Maybe I can help decipher this mysterious nothing.”  

      “We just made plans to meet up and work on a newspaper thing after school.  Then he gave me a high five.  But he like...grabbed my hand.  For a second.  That’s it.”  

     Maggie twists around to check that Rob isn’t looking at us, then slumps down into the seatback for extra privacy.  She holds up her hand.  “Show me what he did,” she says.  

     I hold my hand up, and nod at her.  She reaches in for the high five, and I squeeze her hand as our fingers touch.  I forget to breathe for a second, as the electricity of Maggie’s touch jolts through me.  I realize I’ve held her hand for much longer than Rob held mine, and I drop it abruptly.  

     Maggie’s eyes get big.  “Oh yeah.  That was definitely something,” she says.  

     I shift away from her, leaning into the window.  The chill of the glass and metal shocks me through my thin sweater, but I stay where I am.  “I don’t know.  It wasn’t really like that.  It was probably nothing.”  I don’t know who I’m trying to convince.  I don’t even know what I want.  I just know that whatever just passed between us isn’t something I want happening on the stupid cheese bus, surrounded by half the neighborhood.  I cross my arms over my chest, suddenly feeling like there’s a huge neon sign over our seat blaring something about “hot girl-on-girl action.”

     Maggie, apparently, feels no such thing, because she slides closer to me.  “Well, something happened.  He looked like he’d won the lottery and you looked like a tomato.  Are you--” she drops her voice and puts her face achingly close to mine--”Are you into him?”  She raises her eyebrows and smiles hopefully.

     Time slows down in that moment.  I can feel Maggie’s breath tickling my ear.  I can smell her strawberry shortcake gum.  I panic momentarily about my own breath, and clamp my mouth shut.   Every part of me is aware of every part of her, but rather than enjoying it, I feel my stomach tighten.  She’s not interested.  She met Duke a week ago and they’re already all up on each other at the bus stop.  If she wanted you, she’d have done something about it by now.  I look her straight in the eye.  “Yeah,” I say.  “I like Rob.”  It comes out a little defiant, and I think I see her expression change just a tiny bit.  She deflates, just barely, just for a second, but then she amps up the excitement and I wonder if I imagined what I saw.

   

***

That afternoon, Rob and I sit on the steps of the school waiting for the late bus.  Our interview was a bust; Ms. Holmes never showed.  But we waited long enough that we missed the first bus, so here we are anyway.

Rob fiddles with his camera.  He’s actually one of the only people I know--other than parents--who still has an actual camera, rather than just using his phone.  And he carries it with him pretty frequently, so I should be used to it by now.  But when he points it at me, I hold my hands up in front of my face.

    “Come on, Bridget,” he coaxes.  “Let me practice.  We’re doing portraits in my photography class.”  

    “No way I’m letting you take a picture of me for class,” I tell him, my hands locked in place.  

    “Please?  You look really pretty with the sun on your hair like that.”  I’m so shocked by Rob’s compliment that I drop my hands to look at him.  Before I know what’s happening, the shutter whirrs.

    “Hey!  You tricked me!”  But he’s got the goofiest grin on his face, and as much as I want to yell at him, I can’t help but return his smile.  He snaps another shot, lightning fast. I roll my eyes, laughing, and he steals a third before sitting down--a safe distance away--and looking down at his screen.  When I see the look on his face as he studies the pictures he just took--pictures of me--something twitches in my chest.  He slides toward me on the steps, close enough that our legs touch, and holds the camera toward me.  

    “Wanna see?”  As I lean in to look at the pictures, my shoulder presses against his.  I’m surprised by how solid he feels, given how scrawny-looking he is.  The warmth and weight of him feels nice, and he doesn’t shy away from the contact.  I focus my attention on the pictures.  

    “Wow,” I say.  “I don’t hate these.”  In fact, I’m startled by how almost-pretty I look.  He must have gotten me from a flattering angle, because I barely look fat at all.  Don’t get cocky, I remind myself.   These aren’t real.  This is not how you really look..  

    Rob elbows me in the side.  “Geez, tough audience,” he teases.  “I think you look great.”  He doesn’t break eye contact with me, and we hold each other’s gaze for a long moment before I finally feel my face heating up and look away.

K is For Knope!

Welcome to Day 11 of the Blogging From A to Z April Challenge here at Reading on the F Train. Today's topic is Knope...Leslie Knope!

WARNING: Spoilers ahead for Parks and Rec, through the current season.

Why am I turning over a whole day just to Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler's character on Parks and Rec) when my blog is about books and writing, you ask?

Because she's awesome, y'all.  She's fierce and hard-working and smart and loyal...and occasionally totally nuts in the way that everyone interesting is.

Case in point: Eagleton.  Now, I pointed out yesterday that Schenectady, where I grew up, was in many ways Pawnee.  And one of those ways is that we had our very own Eagleton.  We were a small city with very little money, surrounded by fancy, much more affluent suburbs.  But the one that was within spitting distance, where rumor had it they could afford hydraulics to sink the ship into the stage when they did Titanic: The Musical at their high school while we were nailing together used plywood scrap to make rickety staircases for our sets...Niskayuna.  I'm sure in real life there are plenty of lovely people in Niskayuna.  That's almost definitely true.  But I'm not entirely capable of rational thought when it comes to Niskayuna, just like Leslie and Eagleton:


Yeah. Pretty much.

She's this great combination of insanely ambitious and driven, and completely nerdy, both of which are demonstrated pretty clearly here:


("My name just came out of your mouth" was all I could think when I met Julie Andrews at SCBWI!)

And on top of all of that, she really cares about the people in her life.   I love her relationships with her friends, and her romantic relationship with Ben Wyatt (played by Adam Scott) is one of my favorites, ever.  I love this scene in particular: they'd been dating secretly, because of rules against intra-office relationships,  but had to break up when Leslie decided to fulfill her dream of running for city council.  After a few episodes of Leslie trying to spend more time around Ben, and Ben resisting, Leslie realizes that she has to listen to him and actually change her behavior, because she's hurting him. That in and of itself is kind of rare on sitcoms, but this scene just feels so real and Leslie is so vulnerable and I love it SO MUCH:





Anyway, there are tons more clips I could post to share my love for Leslie Knope, but instead, I will just say: do you like awesome ladies, hilarious jokes, and the best relationships (big-and-small-r) on TV right now?  Awesome.  Then you should be watching Parks and Rec.

J is for Jess!

Welcome to Day 10 of the Blogging From A to Z April Challenge here at Reading on the F Train. Today's topic is Jess (that's me)!

But seriously, pals, I've played enough icebreaker games where you have to identify yourself with a word that starts with the same letter as your first name to know that the letter J offers slim pickings.  (Ok, ok, so I did actually just polish off a bag of jellybeans.  BUT I'M SICK OF TALKING ABOUT JELLYBEANS.  Also jumproping, jam, and jubilation.)

So here are five things you might or might not know about me.

1) I've gotten my ears pierced three times.  Not for any cool extra holes, mind you, but because I apparently have magical healing powers and my holes close up unless I leave earrings in constantly.  Like, years after getting them pierced, we're talking.  So I sleep and shower with earrings in.  Enough is enough.

2) I'm 5'10".  I used to hate that about myself (oh my god, before all the boys in my class got their growth spurts?  I wanted to die.  I used to sit around all summer dreaming that this would be the year all the boys came back taller than me.)  Now I love it, except when shopping for pants.  Happily, my husband doesn't care when I wear heels that make me an inch or two taller than him (because he's awesome.)  Tall girls: it gets better.

3) My first attempts at writing fiction of any length was Ally McBeal fanfiction, when I was like...13?  14?  (I still do not understand how my mother, who wouldn't allow a single R-rated movie till I was 17, decided that Ally McBeal would be the one time she would listen to "everyone else is watching it!")  Eventually, I expanded my repertoire to include West Wing fanfiction, and my magnum opus was a crossover between the two series.  (To my eternal chagrin, it is still on the internet.  Let this be a lesson to you, kids: the internet is forever.)

4) I have weird, weird taste in music.  Well: more specifically, I just have no shame.  I own the complete works of one Taylor Swift.  I have a truly excellent '90s playlist (well...more like '96-'99) that I break out at parties (people my age have been known to SCREAM with joy when I crank that sucker up).  I'm dismayed at how well I do on SongPop's "Today's Hits" category now that we have a car and can drive around listening to the radio.  And of course, I have a truly geeky knowledge of American musical theater, particularly Sondheim/Schwartz/(Jason Robert)Brown. 

5) I am a proud ex-pat Schenectadian.  I really, really want people to know that about me.  I already know that I can't see The Place Beyond The Pines in a movie theater (at least not one outside the Capital District) because I will not be able to control myself.  YOU GUYS, THEY SHOT IN MY HIGH SCHOOL.  AND MY CHURCH.  There's a scene in the trailer that appears to be a baptism RIGHT WHERE I WAS BAPTIZED.  I can't even.  Anyway, Schenectady is not just some sad-sack town where banks get robbed (although they do, a lot.)  It's a strange, amazing town and I love it forever.  Also, reading a quote from the director of The Place Beyond The Pines in this article made me realize Schenectady and Pawnee, Indiana have a lot in common:

“The movie is all about legacy, and one thing about Schenectady is that is has a real past, a real history. If you look at the police badge, there’s like a burning building with a bunch of Indians chasing these Dutch people out with spears. That happened in Schenectady; there was massacres in the 1600s. And I feel like whenever I go there, they tell you about the massacres. It was a good place to talk about American legacy and everything that doesn’t go away,” he said. 

YUP.  (Actually, we mostly talk about the horrendously named Lawrence the Indian, who was friendly to the settlers.  I was always told, growing up, that he did some kind of Paul Revere midnight ride to warn the settlers before one of the massacres and/or giant fires, but now I can't find anything to corroborate that.  Whatever the case, he's a local landmark now, and we love him.)

I is for I Hunt Killers!

 Welcome to Day 9 of the Blogging From A to Z April Challenge here at Reading on the F Train. Today's topic is I Hunt Killers by Barry Lyga!

This is another Cybils finalist that I haven't discussed on the blog: 


I Hunt Killers by Barry Lyga
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I know everyone’s been raving about this one, but I didn’t think it would be for me. A serial killer’s son tries to crack the case of a killer copying his imprisoned dad’s gruesome crimes? Doesn’t really sound like my cup of tea. I’m happy to report that this one was a pleasant surprise--thank you Cybils--and that I am eager to read the next book about Jasper “Jazz” Dent. (Game, out soon!) The narration is perfectly tuned, with some really great turns of phrase: “G. William had a massive, florid nose, the sort of bulbous schnoz usually seen on heavy drinkers, though G. William rarely, if ever, touched booze. His nose was a combination of pure genetics and thirty-five years as a cop, being hit in the face with everything from fists to gun butts to planks of wood.” (p. 15) But when action is going down, it does a great job of getting out of the way. The book is tightly paced and engaging, and I could see many of my students devouring it whole. I got sucked in by Jazz’s anxiety about becoming his father--this is a tough thing to do, to have a character constantly angsting about who he might turn into, but I thought it was handled really well--and I rooted for him wholeheartedly. This book has a satisfying ending, while creating a huge opening for book two. I highly recommend this one for anyone looking for some action and excitement (as long as you’re not put off by gore.)

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