Saturday 25 February 2017

Interview with Isabel Yap

Today, The Future Fire Assistant Editor Tracie Welser talks to Isabel Yap about her story in Fox Spirit Books' Asian Monsters.

Isabel Yap writes fiction and poetry, works in the tech industry, and drinks tea. Born and raised in Manila, she has also lived in California, Tokyo, and London. In 2013 she attended the Clarion Writers Workshop. Her work has appeared on Tor.com, Book Smugglers Publishing, Uncanny Magazine, Shimmer Magazine, and Year’s Best Weird Fiction Volume 2, among other venues. She is @visyap on Twitter and her website is isabelyap.com.

I was enthralled and horrified (in the best way) by your story "Grass Cradle, Glass Lullaby." Can you tell our readers more about the tiyanak, the story's monster, and how this story developed?
Filipino mythology is so rich that I had trouble deciding which creature I wanted to explore. I'd always wanted to write a story about a tiyanak and it's not one I'd seen that often, so I decided to give it a shot. Like many Filipino creatures, the tiyanak has many different depictions – in some versions it's a demon baby with sharp teeth; in others it's a baby that reveals its true nature as an old, goblin-like man. I asked friends about any possible encounters and also went poking around online.


Once I decided on using tiyanak, the story's other elements slowly came together. I wasn't planning on the fragmented narrative, but I tried a few times to tell the story directly and it didn't work. I realized the tone and the emotion of the protagonist would have to carry the story. I drew mainly on two themes: one is loneliness and isolation; the other is love without limits. I wrote the entire first draft by hand on a train because I was swiftly approaching the deadline.


On your website is the lovely line “I want the heartache, the broken glass, the stories that nibble at my guts”. This creepy tale of a would-be mother's desperate love is still gnawing at the insides of my mind! Did you scare yourself, writing this story?
I'm really easily scared – I don't watch horror movies usually because the images stay with me for way too long. But for some reason, I write quite a lot of horror, and my own stories actually don't scare me – probably because I feel somewhat in control with how things turn out. But if I'm writing really late at night, sometimes I get jumpy!


Also, that line actually came from an essay that was published on Interfictions – you can read it here! :D


The Asian Monsters anthology features several stories about creatures who appear to humans in innocent-seeming disguise. I've always struggled with stories about monstrous children (Pet Sematary, Children of the Corn and so on). Would you characterize this theme as a horror or the uncanny, and what about this appeals to you?
I think it's a mix of both horror and the uncanny. Children can be really frightening in and of themselves – there's something about that combination of innocence and being demanding and self-centered, almost to the point of ruthlessness, that makes horror stories about children have more 'creepiness' to them. It's like you don't want to believe it's possible that they can act that way – it goes against everything we know (or think we know). Personally, I always like themes that lend themselves well to ambiguity. I think it's more interesting that way. :)


What are you working on these days?
First up will be working on revisions for some stories I temporarily shelved due to 2016 craziness. One is a novella about a sorceress, a runaway princess, and a bird with a healing song set in a mythological precolonial Philippines. Another is a novelette about ex-child soldiers, trained in the use of weapons called Triggers, who are now bounty hunters...in space! Lastly I've been fascinated by the assignment of roles to boy and girl groups in kpop...I have nothing but that theme yet, but hopefully a story will come to me sometime. I have a lot of ideas, so I'm just working on getting some semblance of a writing practice back. I'm determined to make 2017 a good year for writing!

Friday 17 February 2017

Interview with Yukimi Ogawa

Today, The Future Fire Assistant Editor Tracie Welser talks to Yukimi Ogawa about her story in Fox Spirit Books' Asian Monsters.

Yukimi Ogawa lives in a small town in Tokyo, Japan, where she writes in English but never speaks the language. She still wonders why it works that way. Her fiction can be found in such places as Fantasy and Science Fiction and Strange Horizons.


I enjoyed your gruesome and moving story, “Kokuri’s Place”. Can you tell our readers more about the monster, Kokuri Babaa?
Oh thank you! Kokuri Babaa is a monster of an old woman that strips corpses of the skin and eat the flesh, and weaves stuff with the dead’s hair. The part about Kokuri Babaa wearing the dead’s skin afterward is entirely my creation.


In the book in which I learned of her, the caption says she is “feared even more than Datsueba”, and Datsueba is an old-woman monster who strips the dead of their clothes if the dead don’t have enough money with them for crossing the river between this world and the world beyond. I see similarity here, and wonder if one of them had a strong influence on emergence/evolution of the other. Funny (and sad) thing, though, is that Datsueba somehow came to be admired by a certain number of people around the end of Edo era, while Kokuri Babaa is still only a lonely, unimportant monster to this day.


Otherwordly female creatures appear in several of your recent stories, such as the yōkai in “Town’s End”, and the skeleton woman in “Rib”. All three of these stories contain subtle sympathetic touches that made the horrific relatable and even beautiful. Can you tell us what appeals to you about the monstrous feminine?
I love flipping through books that catalogue yokai, and being a woman myself, I guess the female monsters tend to easily catch my eye. These yokai books – especially the ones by Sekien Toriyama, which offer only a few lines of caption at most for each drawing of monster – never go far enough into how they came to be, or why they came to be what they are. It’s just so much fun to try to visualise these hows and whys!


Also, I have to say, I’ve been called "yokai woman" by many people, not entirely in a bad way, but not entirely in a good way either (hehe). Perhaps by depicting the not-just-horrifying aspect of these female monsters, I’m trying to come to terms with this lonely, weird woman that is me.


The stories I mentioned, and especially “Kokuri’s Palace”, are about relationships between marginalized supernatural beings and humans as they come to understand and even aid one another. How did this story, told from alternating points of view, take shape in your writing process?
I remember wanting to tell a story where a human cannot help but call the monster “her”, instead of “it”; and the monster that calls the human “it”, because for that monster, “she”, “he” or any other pronouns just don’t make sense. And to this end, the only way I could think of was letting both of them take the first-person POV.


In my culture we see many stories where humans and monsters cooperate or become friends, and recent examples include GeGeGe no Kitaro by Shigeru Mizuki, and Yokai Watch series. In many of these stories the humans are “the good ones”, with the “good” monsters trying to help the human fight the bigger threat – more evil, stronger monsters. But sometimes I find myself asking, “Really?” And this is a theme I enjoy playing with.


What are you working on next?
More stories of yokai! And a longish story about a lot of patterns and colours. Writing about things I love gives me so much pleasure and peace.

Sunday 12 February 2017

Round Table on Female Protagonists

Having being involved in the fundraising campaign for the Problem Daughters anthology in the past weeks has probably made me even more sensitive to the issue of the representation of women. The dearth of female protagonists in products of the cultural industry is hardly a news. But when reading an anthology of stories written by women, and having arrived at the fourth one without encountering a single female protagonist yet, I thought it was worth not only pointing out the issue, but also discussing it and trying to understand what makes active female characters so unlikely to appear, even in fiction written by women. After the initial surprise, I quickly realised that it was actually the same choice I made myself with my first stories some ten years ago. So I wondered what had made it easier and more natural for me to write stories from a male point of view? What were the variables that had played a role in my choice? Was the fact that I was writing horror, one of the genres with the most explicitly misogynistic tropes, one of the reasons? How much weight do our writing training, the models we are exposed to, and even the expectations of the public, have in our work? Does a story with a male character or point of view sound perversely more “right”, especially to a beginning writer? Does it feel like a “safer” choice from a publishing point of view? Lots of questions! So I invited four writers, Jo, Pear, Chinelo and Dolly, to talk about it, and to expand the discussion, including other axes of marginalisation that affect the representation of women of colour, queer, disabled and other marginalized women or non-binary protagonists.

Valeria Vitale: it seems that many women writers, especially at the beginning of their careers, still find it more natural to create male protagonists or to build their stories around men’s POV. Do you agree? And why do you think this happens?

Dolly Garland: I agree that yes it is common to create male protagonists. My first novel that I drafted has a male protagonists. After that, I moved into short-stories for a while and naturally started writing more female protagonists. As a result, the second novel that I am now hoping will be the first that I finish (editing stages) has a female protagonist. I've seen this amongst other writer friends too. I write fantasy and science fiction. I think genre you write matters because it influences what you've read. My exposure to SFF was quite male dominated. It was quite possibly a cultural thing that many of us grew up with. Men take action, and they take care of their women. I grew up in India, so this was particularly portrayed in Bollywood movies, and my general upbringing. Incidentally, when I've written non-SFF stories, I automatically tend to go for female POV because they are usually more "people" stories, focused on particular themes, which without ever being deliberate, turn out to be quite feminist in nature. And our fiction and our media needs to portray strong women but without demeaning men, or turning women into tomboys and stripping them off their feminine qualities.

Jo Thomas: I'm going to second (or are we on third?) that idea. I think it's part of the creative development cycle that, when we start, we tend to mimic what we have already been exposed to. Our creative efforts are simply part of a long conversation and representation in earlier statements / works shapes how we think of ourselves and therefore how we expect our own work to be. I had difficulty finishing work for a long time. I'm not one of those people who is gifted enough to have been writing, and only writing, from an early age but my mother did encourage self-expression so it's one of the things I used to do without really thinking or trying. However, it wasn't until my late twenties that I managed to finish anything, outside of school work, and I still have difficulty writing certain points of view or genres. Part of me knows it's because I'm not (yet?) capable of writing those things. But another part of me has come to realise it's just as much because these are not the things I need to say or see out in the conversation. The conversation needs to be expanded.

But, more than that, I think we need to make sure that people remember it expanded. It's not like there haven't been writers-who-are-women and main-characters-who-are-women, yet it seems like everyone seems to struggle to name them and they get lost. Hopefully not too far off on a tangent

VV: Absolutely not a tangent, Jo! And yes, the conversation needs to be expanded!

I agree that is natural to replicate what you have been exposed to, but I find appalling that still we are mostly exposed to stories written by men, in school as well as in popular culture, as Dolly said. Yes, there are women writers, and yes there are amazing female characters. But, in my case, I had (and still have) to go and actively look for them. And those rare times that they were presented to me, in an educational context, they were always the oddity, or the thing you "had to" include. They were never (or very seldom) presented as the masterpiece, the canon to emulate. Which might be one of the reasons it's so hard for many people to make a list of, I don't know, ten good SF writers that are not men. Also, I believe exposure affects not only the writers, but the public too. Which may make it more difficult and risky for an author to try something different.

About male-dominated genres in fiction, I come from horror and gothic and more often than not, the woman is not just passive, but literally dead (such a beautiful corpse, though...).

Lastly, I do agree that women can be kick-ass without necessarily have to be tom-boyish. But tomboys can, and often are, awesome too. I'm not sure "feminine" is a concept easy to define. Or that has a reason to exist at all.

Pear Nuallak: It’d be remiss to not mention Ursula Le Guin, who started off writing the Earthsea Books from Ged’s point of view (casually misogynist; what few women appeared were inferior and treacherous in comparison to Ged’s strength and authority). Later works in that universe feature more women characters, explorations of gender dynamics, and domesticity in a way that appears to be redressing the earlier imbalance. A more recent work is Lavinia (2008, winner of the Locus Fantasy Award), a re-telling of the Aeneid which gives Lavinia a strongly written voice and doesn’t shy away from domestic and emotional labour, parental abuse, civilian experience of warfare. That trajectory is interesting—not what you’d call statistical sampling, but worth thinking about.

I’ve tried, to no avail, to find a nice graph or juicy statistics which illustrate broader trends over time, or breaking down the newer crops of published works. (For interest, the authorial end of SFF fiction is definitely not diverse by any metric!) I know it seems stick-in-the-mud to mention figures, particularly since I’ve been asked to provide personal commentary—but I clarify this solely because I’m already highly selective about what I consume: I’ve only read one SFF novel by a man in the past few years, and I tend to get recommendations from peers with similar tastes to mine, so most of the time I read women authors writing women protagonists with uncorrupted happiness. I also mostly read short fiction. As to why I think this happens: I'm curious about whether markets are at least partially responsible for a paucity of women-centred SFF. I want to feel out whether there’s a disparity between short fiction and novels (and maybe novellas?). The most diverse venues are smaller ones. How many manuscripts have been forgotten because agents didn’t think women protagonists would sell to a big publisher?

To add to the overall agreement about the creative development cycle: it’s interesting because, in general, almost everyone who was socialised as a woman grows up managing, anticipating, and catering to men’s needs and emotions as part of everyday life; even though we’re told not to make a big fuss about it because it’s “natural” (it’s not), it’s a highly gendered form of emotional labour. Not saying it’s 100% true for all people/cultures! But it’s certainly a broad societal trend observable in multiple cultures. Even though I grew up in a more forward-looking household, that dynamic was still present in various ways; so many of us come away well-informed on intimate, detailed masculine self-narration in general. This, then, forms the landscape of the headspaces in which we write: even though we have the choice to write whoever we wish, we write men... even if that’s not actually our most authentic voice or point of view. When I began dabbling in writing during my late teens, I still featured male protagonists and had to consciously ask myself what I actually wanted to write. I struggle to think of woman-centred SFF writing available to me during that time; The Practical Princess And Other Liberating Fairy Tales is the only one which sticks out. Even though I read plenty of women’s autobiographies and literary fiction from women’s points of view, women-led SFF was a missing piece for me. How I wish I had today’s resources!

Chinelo Onwualu: Honestly I'm not sold on the idea that there is a scarcity of women POV characters in Speculative Fiction. I do agree that women are much better versed with men's interior lives than the other way around and this is why women often write better male characters than men write women's characters. Just as the pervading whiteness of the genre means that people of colour are much more attuned to white points of view than the other way around. I also agree that it's likely that many women writers start out writing male characters then move to writing closer to heart as their work matures - that certainly happened to me. However, I wonder if there is a geographical aspect to that. In reading speculative fiction from a lot of parts of Africa, I find women tend to stick with female points of view pretty consistently. In fact, when I begin a short story with a particularly well-written female character, the chances that the writer is also female-identified is usually high. I think in many societies on the continent gender distinctions are such that women are expected to write female points of view - in many cases, women writers are only ever recognised when they write women characters. In certain parts of SFF it may be the case that there are fewer female protagonists than male - I know that hard and military SF have reputations for being more male-oriented - but I would argue the assertion overall. Perhaps it comes from my own personal taste. I have never had much patience for the kinds of misogynistic male writing in which women were reduced to walking sex objects or half-baked personas whose only job within a narrative was to fall in love with the male protagonist - despite his overall awfulness. In the last two years I have been more conscious of my reading choices in that regard, but it hasn't been hard to avoid such stories. I think the perception comes from the fact that certain stories and books tend to get the lion's share of awards and recognition - and these are often white and male.

Now, if you were arguing about the number of female protagonists of colour versus others, I would have to agree that yes, there aren't enough of them at all. It's been incredibly difficult to find writers who portray the voices of women of colour in ways that feel authentic when they are not women of colour themselves. I think it comes down to who we are best able to relate to. Personally I began my career writing white men, but thankfully only one of those stories ever got published and the rest will moulder in my desk till the end of time. But the stories that sing for me are the stories that touch closest to the issues of my heart - and those voices often sound a lot like my own.

JT: I think there's a possibility that the perception of the gender numbers is screwed rather than the actual figures. After all, it's hard to mention "young adult" or "urban fantasy" without someone rolling their eyes and saying something about how there are far too many angsty teen girls and kick ass women as the POV for them, which leads to another set of questions about variety of characters and whether they have to be kickass in order to be the protagonist. I would put a lot of the skew down to memory and collective interpretation. Personally, I have a terrible memory and I forget other people's names, never mind authors, extremely easily and works that don't stand out for one reason or another tend to blur into one or get forgotten. I think it's more that we've collectively mislaid the memory of an awful lot of women writers and women characters. Although, obviously, there was and is definitely a class of writers aiming for a demographic that doesn't want to think about women beyond them being rewards for a hero. There's also a class of writers aiming for a demographic who like girl cooties, so it may even out. But recognition and awards tend to be somewhat clique-y... and affect the memory. The clique-y thing also shows in how we (UK? Western? Anglophone? Anglo-saxon?) tend to divide men's art and women's art. The great works seem to focus more on men writers and men protagonists - except when it's not in that we have key markers like Austen and the Brontes, and it's not like Hardy wasn't writing about people interacted, etc, etc. Human perception is a weird thing. But, anyway, it's okay for women to write women protagonists but if your only POV is one or more women characters, you can expect to be considered one of the more frivolous genres (like romance or "chick lit") rather than literature about the human condition. If it becomes a classic, it has transcended its author's and/or character's gender. Perhaps it's more of a glass ceiling scenario - women need to break into the higher ranks more often - than a lack of women at all. Chinelo's definitely got a point on the women of colour - as well as gender and sexuality and so on - it's still something "exotic" and often clumsily done by those of us who have no experience. (Again, I'm guilty of this offence and I'm trying to do better.)

VV: My (uninformed) feeling was that mainstream products, looking at books as well as movies, are definitely male dominated with respect to both authors and characters. But, probably like all the people in this conversation, I tend to read more diverse stories, and surely I'm not scared that I will soon ran out good stuff. So, I'd say that, luckily, there are a lot of excellent authors out there, and of interesting and authentic female protagonists. But, if it is true that things seem to be changing, do you feel that they're changing enough? As both Chinelo and Jo pointed out, for example, women of color or queer women are still under- and often misrepresented.

To come back to Jo's point about "second class literature", I definitely feel that there is, at least in the western European world, the unspoken prejudice that literature written by women and with women characters is less valuable and it's implicitly meant to be read only by women. And that the systematic exclusion of non male authors from big literary prizes and awards contributes to this generic perception. I also second Jo about the fact that a character doesn't need to be "kick ass" to be a protagonist. Actually, digressing slightly, literature is full of "inept" men as protagonists, especially in 20th century big novels. But I wonder how the public would have reacted then, and would react now, to an inept woman as protagonist. Can a female protagonist afford to be not extraordinary?

PN: Just to quickly add, Strange Charm Books (which exclusively reviews SFF by women) says that only fourteen of NPR’s Top 100 Sci Fi & Fantasy Books are by women. Had a quick look at the descriptions and, yeah--not many feature women protagonists, either. But they're also classic titles, many of them decades old; that does tend to be what the broader public thinks of genre. Whereas for my social circle, comprising people who keep up with what's coming out, the recently published works which got a lot of buzz and recognition are by Ann Leckie,  Kameron Hurley, etc., which are centred around women and agender people using feminine-default language. Off the top of my head: the recent first novels/novellas by Sofia Samatar, Zen Cho, and Cassandra Khaw feature male protagonists. Not a criticism, since I've enjoyed all their works! But I note their short stories frequently feature women. Again, hardly statistical sampling, and again, that is only the corner of SFF I dabble in. I'm a Brit but much of my SFF consumption comes from the NA market. I personally would be a lot more comfortable handling more data, and I think it's best for me to straight-up admit that I don't know a lot of things and have a lot of questions. I think it's more publishers and dedicated reviewers who'd have access to a big pool of titles from which to pull such information; as an ordinary reader/writer, I can't see the forest for the trees, really. But I do strongly feel, like Chinelo said, there's definitely a dearth of WOC protagonists. Oftentimes I look at a new ToC and find it contains many white women authors writing white women characters--and of course, if you asked people to name 10 or even 5 Black women writers, they would speak as one and say Octavia Butler. And I wish it was only about recognising Butler's paradigm-changing legacy, but rather it is an incuriosity bred from inequality in SFF publishing, as reported in Fireside fiction. I myself admit to this: though, as I mentioned before, I almost exclusively read women writers (and the one male writer has a well-written woman protagonist), it is largely white authorship.

Very interested in the point re: "inept" women protagonists. This is coming slantwise from manga, so not 100% on-message, but Sailor Moon features a protagonist who can be compared to LOTR's Frodo: Usagi not actually good at very much herself, but inspires other, more competent people to come together for a common purpose. She's been criticised for being a poor role model, though. Can we think of similar woman protagonists in fiction?

VV: I loved A Stranger in Olondria too! But I think Winged Histories, Sofia’s new novel in the same literary universe, features female protagonists. So, maybe, another example of the path we talked about.

I have one last question: what are the actions you would like authors, readers, publishers, reviewers to take? More books written by women, I guess is a given. But what else? More representations of women that belong to marginalised groups (or groups that often remain invisible)? More diversity in the kind of women protagonists (not only the heroine type)? More prizes reserved to women authors? More women in the juries of literary prizes? A different marketing for women writers that doesn't seem to address only women?

CO: I want to give a shout out to my "inept" anime heroines. They're a big reason why I watch both anime and J-dramas. Emphasizing that women can be powerful and influential without losing any to the traits deemed typically feminine or having to be capable of violence is very appealing to me. And I love seeing Asian women outside of the context of Western understandings which often give them such stereotypical depictions, it's difficult to handle. I would love more of those kinds of depictions to show up in Western media and literature - particularly extending to women of colour. I can't stand the association in the Western imagination with women of colour and violence (either as perpetrators or victims). I can be empowering every once in a while but when it becomes the basis of nearly every characterisation, it's tiresome as hell.

In terms of changing things, I think it really starts with exposure. Our imaginations are shaped by what we see and experience, and when you have a certain space or group dominated by certain voices, those exposed to it will come to think those are the only voices allowed there. We need to reassess what it is we consider canon at its most basic level. Last summer I was privileged to attend the James Gunn Science Fiction Writing Workshop in Kansas University and I met James Gunn himself. It was an amazing experience to be able to have serious discussions about genre and writing with one of the people who lived through the Golden Age of SFF and helped shape what we think of as SFF's canon. It was fascinating to see both the outer reaches to which his generation of editors could imagine when it came to discovering new talent and telling amazing stories. But it highlighted the limits created by unexamined prejudices against women, people of colour, and people writing outside Western contexts. I was lucky that Mr. Gunn had both the patience and the clarity of mind to express his points of view to me, but I am also glad that the genre has moved on from the thinking that characterised that generation. I think we shouldn't allow ourselves to be tied down by the definitions that were created by those that came before us. We should be willing to take things off the canon that no longer work and add things newer things that reflect the kind of world we're trying to build as well as those voices that may have been overlooked during their time.

So that's my two cents. It's been such a pleasure talking to you all! Thank you for inviting me to this!

JT: Once again, I find myself agreeing with Chinelo. Although "inept" has to be handled with care, otherwise we could end up in a world filled with... what is the name of the girl in Twilight? :)

I think the main thing we can do is broadcast our existence more and boost the signal of those who come from different groups. #DiversityInSFF is a good example but it's only noticeable on a few platforms (if relatively well-known ones). More awards and so on would be good, but there's only so much bandwidth or, probably more precisely, brain-space available. I'm not saying this should stop us but we need to be aware that this functions like tv shows: it's not possible to watch / read everything being created so it's highly unlikely that any one show or author or creator is going to have such a large share of the market that they will automatically win highly recognised awards. And with the more popular awards like the Hugos are suffering a bit of an image crisis with the associated campaigning and apparent "gaming". Which is not to say that shouting as loudly as we can about diverse authors and experiences is a bad thing, simply that we can't expect to be heard by everyone. Perfection will never be achieved but it's worth aiming for. (Says me, who never was very good at shouting these things from the rooftops.)

I suspect it's time to start making sure we're collectively recorded for posterity. There are people who focus on ensuring that women and people of various minorities get their pages on WIkipedia. I think perhaps we need to encourage more people to get involved in things like that and possibly commit to filling these things in ourselves. We need Goodreads and WIkipedia and Encyclopaedia Britannica and the SF Encyclopedia (http://sf-encyclopedia.com/) and all those kind of sites to overflow with entries so that the record of the otherwise hidden or unseen people are there. But then we get into the whole "whose responsibility is it?" discussion, I guess.

DG: yes more books by women is a given, but also more diverse voices. I think prizes will definitely help - because that is what creates publicity, and publicity creates promotion, market demands etc. And that is what it comes to. Market demand. We must not forget the practical aspect. It is not merely enough to be artists in our own rights, or be good at representing the voices, or be good at what we do. The voices remain marginalized because they are not heard. So they need to be heard, and the best way to do that is by using the world we live in - whether directly, through loopholes, or by going around the "rules". Us, in our corner, talking about it is a start - but merely a start. It is not enough. Literary prizes, contests that invite only women, or reviewers who review women all add up to raising that profile. That is essential. Each of us can also take an active part in it, promoting women authors, talking about marginalized voices, and not hiding our own. I am presenting a paper in July in London which is titled, "Miss you've a very white name." It is about me - and my white name. That was a comment made to me by an A level student I was tutoring. He was right. I do have a white name. But what is a "white" name? How did we come to have such perceptions attached to names? Is my voice - that is in fact a very brown voice - weaker or stronger because of it? I don't know, but these are the questions that we need to answer when trying to amplify marginalized voices.

VV: Thank you all for your joining this round table and sharing your views. I think that you made some excellent points, rooted in your own personal experience. I hope this is only the start for a larger and even more diverse conversation that really need to take place. Everyone is welcome to add their voice in the comments to this post.


Valeria Vitale is assistant editor of The Future Fire and co-editor of the TFF anthologies TFF-X and Fae Visions of the Mediterranean. She is an academic researcher specialised in ancient buildings and forgotten place names. You can follow her on Twitter as @nottinauta

Dolly Garland writes fiction that is bit like her - muddled in cultures. Having lived in three countries, and several cities, she now calls London her home, though the roots of her fantasy have returned to India, where she grew up. You can find her @DollyGarland on Twitter, @DollyGarlandAuthor on Facebook, and www.dollygarland.com

Jo Thomas is the author of the Elkie Bernstein trilogy (Fox Spirit Books) and the co-editor of the anthologies European Monsters and African Monsters (Fox Spirit Books). Her fiction also appeared on TFF magazine (Hunting Unicorns, An Invisible Tide) and the anthology Outlaw Bodies (Good Form).

Pear Nuallak a London-based writer who also sometimes paints and crafts. They are interested in how people give and take, how we relate to and communicate with each other, the similar and different things we value. Their fiction was published on TFF, MouthLondon, For Books Sake, and WeAreCollision. Their story With her diamond teeth was featured on the 2016 Locus Recommended Reading List. They tweet at @pearnuallak

Chinelo Onwualu is a writer, editor and journalist living in Abuja, Nigeria. She is editor and co-founder of Omenana.com, a magazine of African speculative fiction. Her writing has appeared in several places, including Strange Horizons, The Kalahari Review, Brittle Paper, Ideomancer and several anthologies. Follow her on twitter @chineloonwualu or check her out at www.chineloonwualu.me

Saturday 11 February 2017

Feminism and LGBTQIA+ in Tunisia

Guest post by Hella Grichi

“Understand that sexuality is as wide as the sea. Understand that your morality is not law. Understand that we are you. Understand that if we decide to have sex whether safe, safer, or unsafe, it is our decision and you have no rights in our lovemaking.”
― Derek Jarman

Yet, post-revolution Tunisia, despite its leap forward in 2011, is still a nation where religious fundamentalism and obsolete colonial articles inhibit both society and law. Morality is still law. The private lives of consenting adults are still at stake. Our personal views and beliefs are—despite the constitution's clear statement on liberty of conscience―still seen as a threat to decency and morality.

It is true that Tunisian women have reached a respectable degree of women's liberation: women are able to have abortions, they receive the same salaries as their male co-workers, they can get divorced and demand child support, and education is mandatory. However, underneath this post-colonial progress lies another side of Tunisian society: the side where cisgender Tunisian men who don't pertain to any minority have the upper hand in the country. Women and minorities are still subject to discrimination, ranging from subtle misogynistic comments to outward violence and oppression. Bigotry and misogyny are so deeply rooted into the minds and language of Tunisians that they themselves are often unable to even recognize the harm they are inflicting. Gender roles are enforced, LGBTQIA topics are taboo, and breaking the vicious cycle of obligatory traditional "values" and morality turns out to be a harder task than expected. It is even more complicated and dangerous for women and minorities in rural areas. The problem is with the underlying hegemonic structure that dominates Tunisian society; laws can be amended but their implementation will only succeed when the average Tunisian will finally understand that the devotion to a dominant set of beliefs should not dictate the life of others.

Women in Tunisia are still widely expected to succumb to the daughter – wife – mother cycle. They are treated like an expired product once they near their thirties unmarried. They are expected to protect the "honor" of their families and not dance too far out of line. It is true that it is common to find women whose families encourage their daughters' professional path but the patriarchal expectations usually accompany them far into adulthood and also often overshadow their career or dreams.

From my own humble viewpoint, feminism is not intersectional enough. We need to work more on including black, LGBTQIA and disabled women. Unfortunately, sex workers are as good as unrepresented in the movement.

LGBTQIA rights are the most difficult rights to address in Tunisia. Not only because of the colonial article 230 of the Penal Code of 1913 (modified in 1964) which decrees imprisonment of up to three years for private acts of sodomy between consenting adults but also due to Tunisian society's deeply rooted hatred towards LGBTQIA. The stigma surrounding them is astonishing and the violence and inhuman treatment they are subject to is heartbreaking. They are still forced to undergo illegal and inhuman anal tests to "verify" their homosexuality (a test with no medical basis of course). This test is only there to humiliate the victim.

Human Rights Watch reports state:
"The police arrested six students in the city of Kairouan, 166 kilometers from Tunis, in their student housing apartment in December, on sodomy charges, and subjected them to anal testing. On December 10, the first instance tribunal in Kairouan sentenced them to three years in prison and ordered them banished from Kairouan for an additional three years. In both cases, the Sousse Court of Appeal reduced the sentence – to two months in the first case, and one month in the second. But the men retain criminal convictions on their records and had already served their time in jail."
What is promising though is that Tunisia has LGBTQIA associations pushing for more rights and providing a safe space for the community and victims of hate crimes and discrimination. Two famous associations are Shams ("Sun") and Mawjoudin ("We exist"). In order to paint a more tangible picture of today's LGBTQIA struggle in Tunisia, I had the honor to interview Khalil, a Tunisian who is not only a rebellious genderqueer person but also a brave activist who staunchly believes in the LGBTQIA movement in Tunisia.

Do you think the situation for LGBTQA tunisians is getting better or not? How do you think the situation can be improved?

Khalil: The persecution of LGBTQIA+ is highly increasing, mainly due to the fact that we are more visible now. The current context is not totally favorable for the emancipation of this movement although global pressure induced by the progressive forces and their interest for minorities is growing and growing. Unfortunately, the rise of conservatism and political Islamism are hindering the establishment of coexistence.

Do you think the West should interfere in this or should this matter be resolved without interference?

Khalil: In my opinion, I think that the pressure that foreign elements are applying can be but beneficial especially when it comes to the decriminalization of homosexuality. The LGBTQIA+ movement as well as the Feminist movement are universal movements. These movements are not restricted to a certain minority or territory but are instead present all over the world and need to be connected and united in collaboration and cooperation to collectively further the cause. Some activists come from very different backgrounds and often bring universal values with them which can render the movement skeptical towards the interventions of certain elements or particular ideologies and behaviors.

Cross-dressing is not illegal, but transgender people and gay people, are often accused of violating Article 226 of the national penal code which prohibits "outrages against public decency." [Huffington Post. "Tunisia's New Gay Rights Fight" 2014]

Morality. Public decency. Vague, undefined, subjective constructs reign over Tunisia's youth that is ringing for breath, dreaming of tolerance, dreaming of a better Tunisia. If we could only replace "public decency" with "human decency", our country would be so much better off. If we could finally understand that what others do with their lives (as long as they do not harm anyone) is none of our business, we would be able to achieve so much. If only mutual respect for each other was the norm, I wouldn't have to fear for thousands of innocent people—many of them friends—who live every day in fear of this medieval witch hunt.



Problem Daughters is thus the ideal space for writers facing these problems. It is an anthology that provides a platform where others might fear to tread. It will "amplify the voices of women who are sometimes excluded from mainstream feminism. It will be an anthology of beautiful, thoughtful, unconventional speculative fiction and poetry around the theme of intersectional feminism, focusing on the lives and experiences of marginalized women, such as those who are of color, QUILTBAG, disabled, sex workers, and all intersections of these."

"How can I help?" you might ask?

Here are some useful links:
Tunisian LGBTQIA+ associations:

References:
  1. http://www.gaylawnet.com/laws/tn.htm
  2. https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/03/29/tunisia-men-prosecuted-homosexuality

Tuesday 7 February 2017

Interview with Chinelo Onwualu

Part of a series promoting the Problem Daughters intersectional feminist speculative fiction anthology. Please share the fundraiser and call for submissions.

Today, Problem Daughters editor Rivqa Rafael talks to Chinelo Onwualu about the two magazines she edits, African speculative fiction, and her own writing.

Chinelo Onwualu is a writer, editor and journalist living in Abuja, Nigeria. She is a graduate of the 2014 Clarion West Writers Workshop, which she attended as the recipient of the Octavia E. Butler Scholarship. She is editor and co-founder of Omenana, a magazine of African speculative fiction. Her writing has appeared in several magazines and anthologies, including Strange Horizons, Brittle Paper, Ideomancer and AfroSF: African Science Fiction by African Writers, and Mothership: Tales of Afrofuturism and Beyond. Follow her on Twitter or check out her website.

(As far as I’m aware) you’re the editor of two ambitious speculative fiction magazines. First, I’ll ask about the more established one, Omenana. I love your two-pronged mission here, showcasing African speculative fiction and challenging “normative ideas” – not to mention the gorgeous art and stories. What can you tell us about the magazine and its growth over the years?
Well, the magazine was actually the brainchild of my co-founder Mazi Nwonwu. He’d been thinking of creating a platform for the kinds of speculative fiction that he and a lot of people he knew were writing, but which just weren’t getting any attention from the arbiters of mainstream “African” fiction, a lot of whom are in the US or the UK. I’d expressed an interest in starting some sort of platform as well, so he reached out to me.
It’s been so much fun working on Omenana. I’ve read so much more African sci-fi, fantasy and horror in the past two years and I don’t think I’d have had the opportunity otherwise. The first couple of issues we had to solicit for stories, but by the end of the first year we were getting quite a number of submissions. This last issue we received nearly 50! I had no idea that so many writers were doing such amazing things with the genre.
Every month it’s a bit of a scramble, especially around our art. Plus, we became a paying platform last year – just when the Nigerian economy went into recession and our currency lost more than twice its value – and that hasn’t been easy either because we run it out of our pockets. We’ll be crowdfunding later this year to raise money to keep the whole thing going – so look out for that.
Despite it all, the African speculative fiction continues to grow – even beyond the magazine. Last year, a bunch of us writers, artists and filmmakers formally organised the African Speculative Fiction Society. We’ll be awarding our first prize for novels and short fiction, the Nommos, this year. Members are currently in the nominating process.
As for the magazine, we’re looking to expand our online presence and create more of a hub for African speculative fiction, with news, podcasts, and forums for discussion. Mainstream African stories have always had a speculative element to them, but to see how the boundaries of what is speculative are being pushed has been such an honour to witness, you know?


The first issue of your other magazine, Anathema, is forthcoming this year, and it will exclusively feature queer authors of colour. How did this project come about, and what are you looking forward to seeing in this new magazine?
Full disclosure: I consulted my co-founders and editorial partners, Andrew Wilmot and Michael Matheson, on this, and this response was formulated with both of their inputs. So the first issue of Anathema will actually be out this spring. We’re still in the submissions phase this month. The idea for the magazine really began at a lunch gathering at a friend's place. Andrew and Michael were discussing their frustration at seeing the way academia was co-opting the voices of cultural insiders in a way that felt uncomfortably colonialist. From there, I joined the conversation and we started discussing which underrepresented and marginalized voices we wanted to see more of and how we could help give those voices a chance to speak for themselves, to provide them with a platform. The ideas took on several forms and had several different people involved (at one point we thought about starting a press) before it settled into its current form as a tri-annual magazine.
Basically, we wanted to start something that would allow us to showcase the voices you don’t get to hear very often in the genre in a way that suited our various tastes and personalities. I think it is especially important in the era we live in today where a lot of civil society is being squeezed and human rights are under peril in a lot of parts of the world.
As for what we're looking forward to, we want to further the existing queer-lit conversations in which people of colour are often relegated to the sidelines, providing the exotic line or two as a nod to diversity. Whatever topics they want to speak on, whatever stories they want to tell, we just want to provide the space where they can do so without fear of censure. Already we’ve got some amazing stories and art, and we’re seeking more. We can’t wait to share them with the world.


Much of what I’ve read of your fiction and non-fiction could fit into either of these publications. Is this a conscious decision, or something that's happened naturally?
A bit of both, really. I made a conscious decision to shift my storytelling closer to home, but other than that, the rest has just been my natural inclination. I’ve always been interested in speculative fiction – though I had to struggle with seeing it as a legitimate form of writing. It seemed so frivolous to write about magic and spaceships when there were issues like poverty and abuse all around me. It was complicated by the fact that, until about a decade ago, I’d never read much speculative fiction by non-whites. So when I first started writing, my stories weren’t speculative at all. They were set in Western countries like the US and filled with white characters.
After attending Clarion West in 2014, I realised that there was a niche I could fill by writing about the world I came from and the issues that were important to me while still being true to my love of the speculative. I realised it wasn’t something that just white people did. Since then, I’ve tried to keep my writing true to the things that most inspire me.


Are there any writers you'd like to publish, but haven't yet? Please tell us about their work!
Lesley Nneka Arimah is a Nigerian writer whose speculative story “Who Will Greet You At Home” was published in The New Yorker in 2015. It was such a chilling, well-crafted piece of work that I’ve been eager to hear from her since then. I would love to see one of her stories in Omenana. It would totally make my day.


Despite (or perhaps because of) the lack of representation of African women in Western media, I can still think of tired tropes and stereotypes about them (and about Africa in general, of course). Is there one in particular that you'd like to never see again?
Oh man, I think I would like to see the Strong Black Woman trope die in a fire. Don’t get me wrong, I love all the badass black women in literature, film and TV, but often their toughness is taken for character. Being able to make your way in a hostile world is a quality, not the sum total of who you are. Strong Black Women are often portrayed so one-dimensionally that they can lack basic humanity.
In general, I think the association between black women and violence in the western imagination needs to be broken. Black women in Africa are often portrayed as helpless victims of violence, while black women in the Diaspora are often seen as perpetrators of it. Either we’re mutely suffering some horrible situation and waiting for our white saviours to come, or we’re loud, vulgar, and angry – one moment away from beating someone up. It’s ridiculous.


What else does 2017 hold for you?
https://ssl.gstatic.com/ui/v1/icons/mail/images/cleardot.gifI’m very, very slowly chipping away at a YA novel. It’s set in a future Nigeria and it’s got spirits, goddesses and two wily teenagers trying to stay one step ahead of the chaos. It’s a blast. Of course, a friend recently reminded me I’ve been talking about a novel for over a decade now, so yeah… I’m also hoping to put together an anthology of African women in speculative fiction, to showcase some of the amazing women I’ve come across. So let’s see about that.

Thursday 2 February 2017

Interview with Eve Shi


Today, The Future Fire Assistant Editor Tracie Welser talks to Eve Shi about her story in Fox Spirit Books' Asian Monsters.

Eve Shi is an Indonesian fangirl and writer. She loves tea, singing to herself, and has lived most of her life in the West Java Province. You can contact Eve via Twitter at @Eve_Shi.

I really enjoyed “Blood Like Water.” Can you tell me about the impetus for this story?
I wanted to base my story on a creature that’s neither very well-known nor associated with women or sexuality. On research, I came upon lelepah, a creature that's usually found by the river. It eats raw fish but supposedly also has a penchant for human flesh. What if the creature transforms into a human? And the story just went on from there.


The main character of this story is an innocent-seeming girl with a dark secret, and I couldn't resist imagining future Wiya as a young woman with all-new troubles fitting in. One of your other recent stories, “The Skin Shimmers”, also features someone who is not what she seems. What is it about the duality of these figures that you find appealing?
Society often expects women to be sweet and compliant, while many of them are the farthest thing from that. Plus, I always like monstrous women – those who wreak havoc, and especially those who are not out to seduce men. So I combined the above into the two stories.


A central theme of the story seems to be vengeance. Is this a common element in legends of the monstrous lelepah?
It isn't. It's something I thought up when exploring the idea's possibilities. If a human couple adopts the lelepah, what would it do for them in return? Does it do so out of a sense of obligation, or is there something else?


What other creative projects are you working on that readers can look forward to?
In English, nothing that will be published soon. In Indonesian: I'm working on a novella for a thriller series. Can't wait to see who the other authors are.