Author Archives: Jaclyn Martin

The nature of narrative

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I think Levithan is spot-on, especially with this statement: “Because, at the most basic level, what LGBT people are being asked (absurdly) is to prove that we are as much human beings as anyone else. We know this is true. And slowly but surely, other people are realizing it’s true. By getting to know us. By talking to us. By hearing or reading our stories.” And a good story is worth hundreds of straightforward attempts to change someone’s mind by facts and arguments.

When we read nonfiction, we tend to read critically, evaluating what we’re told according to what we already believe. But when we read fiction, we can (if it’s well-told) immerse ourselves in the story and empathize with the characters: we care what happens to these people, and we understand some of what they’re thinking and feeling. We can’t help seeing them as people, just as human as we are.

There’s another point he (as well as the article writer) made which I think is very important: “he went on to explain the progression of queer YA fiction throughout the past decades as going from ‘death, then death of your dog — dogs would die when you were making out with somebody in the 70s… — and then there was misery.'” A pretty significant proportion (maybe even most?) of LGBT+ lit, especially YA lit, right now is coming out stories and tragedies. (Or both.) There’s value in those stories, but the spread of plots really needs to be expanded.

LGBT historical fiction, mysteries, action-adventure stories, fantasy, science fiction, cheesy romantic comedies, epic quest stories… Gay spaceship captains zooming between planets, lesbian detectives falling in love while untangling thrilling murder mysteries, bisexual knights going on continent-spanning quests to save the world, asexual pirates crossing oceans full of mythical dangers, trans* royals and rebels duking it out over the fate of kingdoms, aromantic engineers solving problems and building communities on supposedly uninhabitable planets and moons!

The thing about fiction is that it is full of possibilities: you can never run out of stories to tell, and readers need to see characters like them–or unlike them–in more than just literary realism settings. And it’s hardly fair to restrict time travel, space travel, and fantastic worlds of every kind to straight people.

Responding to Paolo Bacigalupi

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Bacigalupi believes that “stories of broken futures” ring true and appeal to young adults because they know perfectly well that the world is broken or breaking (on a number of levels–he focuses on environmental and energy crises in the essay, but what little I’ve read of his work also deals with economic problems, fundamental inequalities, abuses of power, and how people with power are insulated from the people they’re harming), and they are choosing honest storytelling over “a lie.”

I do agree, as far as that goes. I’ve heard similar arguments before (here is one of my favorite versions), and they feel right. I can still enjoy what’s sometimes called “escapist” fiction, and I can enjoy older, more optimistic works, but dystopian lit appeals to me by first addressing that particular brand of cynical awareness that I’m not sure my parents had as kids. I do, however, think that it’s incomplete: the best dystopian stories begin in that dark, cynical place and bring it round to, if not optimism, then at least some hope–whether that’s a revolution or the characters learning from their or their ancestors’ mistakes and coming together to do better. (Although the Bacigalupi stories I’ve read…don’t. They take their protagonists to the brink of despair, throw one last insurmountable obstacle at them, and end. Or they give the protagonist a stroke of luck that highlights how horrible human beings are to each other, and end.)

I think “The Giver” appeals to a slightly earlier stage in the development of the awareness I mentioned: the point where we’re looking at the world around us and seeing the cracks for the first time. Other dystopias appeal to later stages, where we’ve confirmed and accepted the broken world (and maybe have gotten mired in it, in which case the sort of story that brings us round to hope is especially important). “The Giver” starts from a place of accepting the spotless surface of the world, and shows the process of realizing that it’s not perfect.

Jaclyn Martin

Food for thought

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I ran across this article on some lesser-known versions of Little Red Riding Hood and the history of its retellings the other day and thought I’d share it, although we’ve finished that part of the class.

Towards the end there’s a long (long, long) list of more recent retellings. I haven’t read most of them, but I can definitely recommend the short story collection “Swan Sister,” the version from Roald Dahl’s “Revolting Rhymes” (there’s a video version with different voice actors here), and the essay collection “Touch Magic” by Jane Yolen. (Actually I have a copy of that one, so if anyone wants to borrow it let me know.)

Picture book project: 1982 honor book…

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…”Outside Over There” by Maurice Sendak.

9780064431859

I mostly chose it because it was one of my favorites–not when I was first reading picture books, but when I started to read them to my little brothers. In addition, looking over the Caldecott terms & requirements, I think there’s a lot to say about it.

(Also, I haven’t re-read it in years, and this gives me an excuse to order a copy.)

Narrated by Dad

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My father is very into reading aloud. I don’t actually remember how early he started, but for several years he would keep a book in the kitchen, within reach when he’d finished dinner, so he could read a chapter or two when the rest of the family was finishing the meal. He was very skilled at it, and several of the books that I rarely re-read I can still imagine his voice reading aloud. He managed to carry three children under 12 or 13 years old through the Narnia books, A Wrinkle In Time and its sequels, and the entire Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, but although those were the most memorable, I remember that the tradition was very well established by that time.

Before we started those books, I remember him reading some of Grandma’s hand-me-down books, which were mostly animal stories like Brighty of the Grand Canyon, Misty of Chincoteague, and a little yellow-and-red hardback with the cover missing that I think was called Cubby in Wonderland about a bear cub and his mother moving to Yellowstone National Park and having adventures there. I think there was also a book about a dog that was travelling somewhere and got into a lot of trouble with a hunter. There was an illustrated version of The Just So Stories, which caused a few elbow-jabbing fights to determine who got to scoot closest to see the pictured; there was a battered blue hardback of Mother West Wind “Where” Stories, which is similar in form but has very different animals and a sense of place that is more distinctly American, as well as a recurring old bullfrog for Dad to play with a goofy, grumbly, deep voice.

That was one of the memorable things about it. He has a very measured, calm voice, just the right sort of voice for a narrator who has to both keep the attention of three small children and keep them from getting too excited and interrupting; but he also had a lot of fun putting some expression into the dialogue.

Most of the books he read I ended up re-reading later, some of them to practice reading on my own, some of them because I liked them enough to read over and over. This wasn’t a bad thing, on the whole, but it did mean that for most of my favorites I lost that sense of Dad’s voice narrating them–except, for some reason, the first few lines of the book.