![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Recent Reads: January/February 2019
Feb. 22nd, 2019 08:56 pm So I had my public library card locked because of fines so I ended up going and plundering the university library for fun academia reads. I finally paid my fines at the public library so now I can place holds again, I swear they should just hire me to work off my fines. Also I stopped at a few used bookstores looking for things that my public library didn't have and found a few things.
Ammonite by Nicola Griffith
So this is a lgbt SFF novel from the 90s which won the lambda award. I picked it up because of the biology aspects to the story. Griffith is really good at writing prose of common place functions and turning it into body horror. Ammonite itself feels very domestic/cozy since it's more about one woman's journey to realize herself. It plays with the only women world trope where men are killed by a virus. Naturally trans issues aren't handled in the novel. I do appreciate that anthropology is criticized for how ethnographies are collected, but there are other parts that are pretty lolwhat to me. In particular, the way that the one tribe on the planet speaks perfect Gaelic which apparently is a dead language in the time of the novel. It is explained but I still was like lolwhat at the explanation since that is not how genetic memory works ya'll. I liked Ammonite, but there was plenty of lolwhat moments involving biology. For some reason, there are aspects of the story that remind me of psionic sff of the 70s and 80s. If you like political machinations, survival stories, coming of age/healing stories, and lesbians then you probably would like Ammonite.
The Gender Book by Mel Reiff Hill and Jay Mays
I checked this out from the university as a reference/resource for the art tutorial I am working on. I feel it is a good 101 to gender for people who don't know much. It's like a magic school bus book, but every part features responses and stories told by lgbt people who were surveyed for the book. It also encourages self reflection and examination of gender. It isn't a perfect book, but it is really damn close. I would definitely recommend this for middle school and high school kids who want to learn about gender. For my purposes, it was really useful for getting the wording of the concepts I am trying to express. Sometimes it's hard to explain gender presentation ya know?
Nonbinary Gender Identities by Charlie McNabb
This is another find at the university library while I was looking for resources. Let's just say that my university library has an absolute trashfire of a section on trans people so I was actually surprised to find a book on nonbinary people. It was published in 2018 by a nonbinary librarian and cultural consultant. This is probably one of the most acceptable academic books on queer people I have ever read. It is written with the lay person in mind. Like I didn't have to go and dig through my roommate's gender studies and political science texts to figure out what the fuck the author is saying.
There are some things about the book that I didn't like but it relates back to my personal experience with gender. I really don't like the always knew narrative that tends to get put into things like this. I didn't know. I was let be and it wasn't until I was in graduate school i.e. last year I figured shit out. The other section that I have some criticism of is that the history of nonbinary identities, it was super basic and pretty much I could have read that all on wikipedia. I know there are people who are not familiar with trans history, but I was really hoping for something more in depth. Also somehow in that section Leslie Feinberg was skipped despite hitting a lot of other important trans activists in the history section. Also I feel that the section on lgbt community being a misnomer could have been written better. It essentially is a passage about TERFs.
What I think is the most important part of this book is the resource section which dominates most of the book. The author has put together lists of special collections/museum collections focusing on lgbt history for further research. You betcha that I photocopied that section out to keep an eye on those particular collections for job openings. The fiction related lists are ok, I would definitely say use at your own risk. The author essentially included books that have more than one gender or do not follow a gender binary probably based on literature research. I highly doubt that they had time to read everything on the list so some of the things are kinda eh. For example, Asimov's The Gods Themselves is on the list and I would NOT recommend reading it as an example of nonbinary in SFF. The same with Leviathan by Scott Westerfield, which arguably has no nonbinary representation and falls into the girl dresses as boy trope. There are also a ton of short stories that are missing from the list, but once again -- I realize that it can be impossible to get everything on a list. Although I was surprised that Queers Destroy SFF was not on the list since it was published in 2015 considering that webcomics published in 2015 are on the multimedia list.
Speaking of the multimedia list-- that is another use at your own risk list. Ranma 1/2 is included and I would not recommend that as nonbinary rep either despite that it did have an impact on me as a kid since it was one of the very few things with genderbending in I came across and was able to read without self censoring. In general, I tend to squint at manga/anime on lists like this because of translation/cultural contexts. Also Attack on Titan is listed and wowza I don't think the author has read/watched it since it's a pretty much a stinking pile of nationalist and antisemitic garbage. Although I do fucking love that there are several star trek episodes listed (unfortunately....they are bad....i am sorry it's all Rick Berman's fault. The writers TRIED but he was a huge dickhead). The things on the lists that I was really excited about was musical artists and podcasts since those are things that I consume A Lot because of my job, especially podcasts. The documentary list is also excellent and I have a bunch more things to watch later.
The other thing that I appreciated in this book is that there is a section devoted to nonwestren genders such as Two-Spirit and Hijra. I'm always deleted when the gender binary is addressed as being a tool of imperialist societies to oppress those being colonized.
Overall, it's not a bad book. I just wanted more information. I am way past trans 101 which is part of the problem. I want more in depth info. It's definitely something that I would recommend to people who want to learn more or be good allies. The resource portion of the book is FUCKING amazing how extensive it is. There's professional organizations, journal articles, collections, nonfiction, fiction, art, music and more.
Queer Universes: Sexualities in Science Fiction edited by Wendy Gay Pearson, Veronica Hollinger, and Joan Gordon
Yeah now this one is definitely not written for people outside of academia. I will preface this with I know fucking nothing about gender studies and queer theory in the realm of academia. Like, I literally didn't know who Judith Butler was until like 4 months ago and had to google "Is Judith Butler lesbian". Some of the essays are more readable than others, but my god there are some that I am like huh what ok there buddy.
I also wanted just lgbt content, I didn't need to know about new wave sff being more full of sex--I already knew that. There is also another essay on queering William Gibson's books through the penetration theory which FUCKING hilarious to me. Like I legit did not academics analyze shit with this idea because it seems dumb as fuck to me. However, there are two essays that I feel are good reads if you can deal with academia. "War Machine, Time Machine" by Nicola Griffith and Kelley Eskridge is the most readable thing in the whole book and is absolutely delightful. It is very much a personal essay. Sad to say that some of the stuff that Griffith and Eskridge experienced is still in the sff community (looking at the most recent fiasco with a particular old white man writer). The other "Towards a Queer Genealogy of SF" by Wendy Gay Pearson is also good but more unreadable. I would skip the first part with the genealogy theory and shit and dive right into the discussion of gender and sex in SFF, it gave me some new reading material to go find. I am not quite done with the book, I have like three essays left and one is on ecofeminism in sff through a queer lens. Just so u know, I am not a fan of ecofeminism bc it can get very wombyn and terfy.
This is one of the few texts I have been able to find in the academic arena on SFF and Queer stuff. I wish there was more, but I don't got time to write that shit when I'm drowning in caterpillars.
Bellydance Around the World Edited by Caitlin E. McDonald and Barbara Sellers-Young
Ok I ramsacked all the belly dance books from the university library. I have like three more to read. This one is 50/50 readable for the layperson. What I appreciated about this particular book is that not all the authors are white north Americans. For me, it gave more more context to certain things in belly dance that I have learned or encountered particularly in Candance Bordelon's essay "Finding 'the Feeling": Oriental Dance. Musiqua al-Gadid and Tarab". In that essay it really gives context to the divide I have seen in cabaret performances when I watch them on youtube when it comes to expressiveness. You will see dancers that are incredibly expressive during their dance compared to others who are not and just keep smiling. I was taught to always smile which I feel is a very western thing? In tribal fusion there is more freedom in expression, but it's not like the levels I have seen in Egyptian and Cabaret dancers from Europe-- they get SUPER melodramatic which is fun to watch.
"Local Performance/ Global Connection: American Tribal Style and its Imagined Community" by Teresa Cutler-Boyers was interesting in the aspect of the author's claim that ATS classes are very diverse. You see the problem is that the author went to classes in two different major cities which does not give an accurate snapshot of diversity in belly dance classes. Having lived in three very different areas, it's incredibly dependent on population size and demographics. In my hometown, there is currently to my knowledge exactly one active belly dance studio. I have not gone, but from class photos and performance videos the dancers are primarily white middle class women. The dancers who preform at the Greek restaurants are also predominately white. My home town is a decent sized town with diversity, but that doesn't mean there's an active dance scene or that people can afford an hobby like dance because of the economic depression the area is in. (Belly dance is easily MORE expensive than fencing because of the amount of fucking fabric I go through). In Orlando, my campus belly dance group was the most diverse group I have ever danced with. At one point I was one of two white people. I suspect the higher diversity had to do with college campus and large city. There is also a belly dance scene in Orlando unlike my hometown that my college club regularly performed in. The group danced cabaret, but we would invite guest instructors from the tribal groups for special workshops. Now in Colorado, the scene is less diverse. Out of the two groups I dance with, I would say that the tribal fusion group is more diverse. But from seeing performances and attending different studio classes what I found was that most participants were middle aged white women despite being in a college town. It was really awkward at first for me because I am ALWAYS the youngest. In Denver, it's more of a mix. But Boulder, isn't exactly the shining beacon of diversity. It's probably the whitest area I have ever lived in. Like, I grew up in Florida in a very multicultural area ok. Colorado was somewhat of a shock to my system in more ways than one.
What I wish I could find addressed in more texts on belly dance is gender and sexuality. There was some gender related content in this book, but not in the way I was looking for. I currently know of only 2 other trans dancers. I know of very few gay dancers. It bugs me when people try to claim that belly dance is only for women because it is not. I think the best gender tidbit I got out of the book is that saidi (aka cane) traditionally plays with gender roles. The dancer embodies both masculine and feminine roles and switches between them during the choreography. The way that the cane is handled during the traditional/folkloric saidi is very important to which gender the dancer is embodies. Spinning the stick, whacking the stick on the ground, being more acrobatic with the stick is read as masculine. Holding the stick and using it as something to highlight chest shimmies, hip movements is considered feminine. Cane is one of the two props I have not used (the other being candelabra). So I am going to definitely bug my instructors to bring a cane choreo back.
There was also an essay on ecofeminism in belly dance and it was just a lot of lolwhat for me. Did I mention I'm not a fan of ecofeminism? The essay literally said nothing and gave no new insights. If you've been around belly dance long enough, you will see the influence of goddess feminism like instantly.
I am currently reading books for my thesis. Host-Plant Selection by Phytophagous Plants by Chapman and Bernays is the one I'm doing right now. My adviser said I didn't have to read it all, only the applicable parts. However, I am using my thesis books towards my goodreads challenge soooo I kinda want to at least skim the entire book.
Ammonite by Nicola Griffith
So this is a lgbt SFF novel from the 90s which won the lambda award. I picked it up because of the biology aspects to the story. Griffith is really good at writing prose of common place functions and turning it into body horror. Ammonite itself feels very domestic/cozy since it's more about one woman's journey to realize herself. It plays with the only women world trope where men are killed by a virus. Naturally trans issues aren't handled in the novel. I do appreciate that anthropology is criticized for how ethnographies are collected, but there are other parts that are pretty lolwhat to me. In particular, the way that the one tribe on the planet speaks perfect Gaelic which apparently is a dead language in the time of the novel. It is explained but I still was like lolwhat at the explanation since that is not how genetic memory works ya'll. I liked Ammonite, but there was plenty of lolwhat moments involving biology. For some reason, there are aspects of the story that remind me of psionic sff of the 70s and 80s. If you like political machinations, survival stories, coming of age/healing stories, and lesbians then you probably would like Ammonite.
The Gender Book by Mel Reiff Hill and Jay Mays
I checked this out from the university as a reference/resource for the art tutorial I am working on. I feel it is a good 101 to gender for people who don't know much. It's like a magic school bus book, but every part features responses and stories told by lgbt people who were surveyed for the book. It also encourages self reflection and examination of gender. It isn't a perfect book, but it is really damn close. I would definitely recommend this for middle school and high school kids who want to learn about gender. For my purposes, it was really useful for getting the wording of the concepts I am trying to express. Sometimes it's hard to explain gender presentation ya know?
Nonbinary Gender Identities by Charlie McNabb
This is another find at the university library while I was looking for resources. Let's just say that my university library has an absolute trashfire of a section on trans people so I was actually surprised to find a book on nonbinary people. It was published in 2018 by a nonbinary librarian and cultural consultant. This is probably one of the most acceptable academic books on queer people I have ever read. It is written with the lay person in mind. Like I didn't have to go and dig through my roommate's gender studies and political science texts to figure out what the fuck the author is saying.
There are some things about the book that I didn't like but it relates back to my personal experience with gender. I really don't like the always knew narrative that tends to get put into things like this. I didn't know. I was let be and it wasn't until I was in graduate school i.e. last year I figured shit out. The other section that I have some criticism of is that the history of nonbinary identities, it was super basic and pretty much I could have read that all on wikipedia. I know there are people who are not familiar with trans history, but I was really hoping for something more in depth. Also somehow in that section Leslie Feinberg was skipped despite hitting a lot of other important trans activists in the history section. Also I feel that the section on lgbt community being a misnomer could have been written better. It essentially is a passage about TERFs.
What I think is the most important part of this book is the resource section which dominates most of the book. The author has put together lists of special collections/museum collections focusing on lgbt history for further research. You betcha that I photocopied that section out to keep an eye on those particular collections for job openings. The fiction related lists are ok, I would definitely say use at your own risk. The author essentially included books that have more than one gender or do not follow a gender binary probably based on literature research. I highly doubt that they had time to read everything on the list so some of the things are kinda eh. For example, Asimov's The Gods Themselves is on the list and I would NOT recommend reading it as an example of nonbinary in SFF. The same with Leviathan by Scott Westerfield, which arguably has no nonbinary representation and falls into the girl dresses as boy trope. There are also a ton of short stories that are missing from the list, but once again -- I realize that it can be impossible to get everything on a list. Although I was surprised that Queers Destroy SFF was not on the list since it was published in 2015 considering that webcomics published in 2015 are on the multimedia list.
Speaking of the multimedia list-- that is another use at your own risk list. Ranma 1/2 is included and I would not recommend that as nonbinary rep either despite that it did have an impact on me as a kid since it was one of the very few things with genderbending in I came across and was able to read without self censoring. In general, I tend to squint at manga/anime on lists like this because of translation/cultural contexts. Also Attack on Titan is listed and wowza I don't think the author has read/watched it since it's a pretty much a stinking pile of nationalist and antisemitic garbage. Although I do fucking love that there are several star trek episodes listed (unfortunately....they are bad....i am sorry it's all Rick Berman's fault. The writers TRIED but he was a huge dickhead). The things on the lists that I was really excited about was musical artists and podcasts since those are things that I consume A Lot because of my job, especially podcasts. The documentary list is also excellent and I have a bunch more things to watch later.
The other thing that I appreciated in this book is that there is a section devoted to nonwestren genders such as Two-Spirit and Hijra. I'm always deleted when the gender binary is addressed as being a tool of imperialist societies to oppress those being colonized.
Overall, it's not a bad book. I just wanted more information. I am way past trans 101 which is part of the problem. I want more in depth info. It's definitely something that I would recommend to people who want to learn more or be good allies. The resource portion of the book is FUCKING amazing how extensive it is. There's professional organizations, journal articles, collections, nonfiction, fiction, art, music and more.
Queer Universes: Sexualities in Science Fiction edited by Wendy Gay Pearson, Veronica Hollinger, and Joan Gordon
Yeah now this one is definitely not written for people outside of academia. I will preface this with I know fucking nothing about gender studies and queer theory in the realm of academia. Like, I literally didn't know who Judith Butler was until like 4 months ago and had to google "Is Judith Butler lesbian". Some of the essays are more readable than others, but my god there are some that I am like huh what ok there buddy.
I also wanted just lgbt content, I didn't need to know about new wave sff being more full of sex--I already knew that. There is also another essay on queering William Gibson's books through the penetration theory which FUCKING hilarious to me. Like I legit did not academics analyze shit with this idea because it seems dumb as fuck to me. However, there are two essays that I feel are good reads if you can deal with academia. "War Machine, Time Machine" by Nicola Griffith and Kelley Eskridge is the most readable thing in the whole book and is absolutely delightful. It is very much a personal essay. Sad to say that some of the stuff that Griffith and Eskridge experienced is still in the sff community (looking at the most recent fiasco with a particular old white man writer). The other "Towards a Queer Genealogy of SF" by Wendy Gay Pearson is also good but more unreadable. I would skip the first part with the genealogy theory and shit and dive right into the discussion of gender and sex in SFF, it gave me some new reading material to go find. I am not quite done with the book, I have like three essays left and one is on ecofeminism in sff through a queer lens. Just so u know, I am not a fan of ecofeminism bc it can get very wombyn and terfy.
This is one of the few texts I have been able to find in the academic arena on SFF and Queer stuff. I wish there was more, but I don't got time to write that shit when I'm drowning in caterpillars.
Bellydance Around the World Edited by Caitlin E. McDonald and Barbara Sellers-Young
Ok I ramsacked all the belly dance books from the university library. I have like three more to read. This one is 50/50 readable for the layperson. What I appreciated about this particular book is that not all the authors are white north Americans. For me, it gave more more context to certain things in belly dance that I have learned or encountered particularly in Candance Bordelon's essay "Finding 'the Feeling": Oriental Dance. Musiqua al-Gadid and Tarab". In that essay it really gives context to the divide I have seen in cabaret performances when I watch them on youtube when it comes to expressiveness. You will see dancers that are incredibly expressive during their dance compared to others who are not and just keep smiling. I was taught to always smile which I feel is a very western thing? In tribal fusion there is more freedom in expression, but it's not like the levels I have seen in Egyptian and Cabaret dancers from Europe-- they get SUPER melodramatic which is fun to watch.
"Local Performance/ Global Connection: American Tribal Style and its Imagined Community" by Teresa Cutler-Boyers was interesting in the aspect of the author's claim that ATS classes are very diverse. You see the problem is that the author went to classes in two different major cities which does not give an accurate snapshot of diversity in belly dance classes. Having lived in three very different areas, it's incredibly dependent on population size and demographics. In my hometown, there is currently to my knowledge exactly one active belly dance studio. I have not gone, but from class photos and performance videos the dancers are primarily white middle class women. The dancers who preform at the Greek restaurants are also predominately white. My home town is a decent sized town with diversity, but that doesn't mean there's an active dance scene or that people can afford an hobby like dance because of the economic depression the area is in. (Belly dance is easily MORE expensive than fencing because of the amount of fucking fabric I go through). In Orlando, my campus belly dance group was the most diverse group I have ever danced with. At one point I was one of two white people. I suspect the higher diversity had to do with college campus and large city. There is also a belly dance scene in Orlando unlike my hometown that my college club regularly performed in. The group danced cabaret, but we would invite guest instructors from the tribal groups for special workshops. Now in Colorado, the scene is less diverse. Out of the two groups I dance with, I would say that the tribal fusion group is more diverse. But from seeing performances and attending different studio classes what I found was that most participants were middle aged white women despite being in a college town. It was really awkward at first for me because I am ALWAYS the youngest. In Denver, it's more of a mix. But Boulder, isn't exactly the shining beacon of diversity. It's probably the whitest area I have ever lived in. Like, I grew up in Florida in a very multicultural area ok. Colorado was somewhat of a shock to my system in more ways than one.
What I wish I could find addressed in more texts on belly dance is gender and sexuality. There was some gender related content in this book, but not in the way I was looking for. I currently know of only 2 other trans dancers. I know of very few gay dancers. It bugs me when people try to claim that belly dance is only for women because it is not. I think the best gender tidbit I got out of the book is that saidi (aka cane) traditionally plays with gender roles. The dancer embodies both masculine and feminine roles and switches between them during the choreography. The way that the cane is handled during the traditional/folkloric saidi is very important to which gender the dancer is embodies. Spinning the stick, whacking the stick on the ground, being more acrobatic with the stick is read as masculine. Holding the stick and using it as something to highlight chest shimmies, hip movements is considered feminine. Cane is one of the two props I have not used (the other being candelabra). So I am going to definitely bug my instructors to bring a cane choreo back.
There was also an essay on ecofeminism in belly dance and it was just a lot of lolwhat for me. Did I mention I'm not a fan of ecofeminism? The essay literally said nothing and gave no new insights. If you've been around belly dance long enough, you will see the influence of goddess feminism like instantly.
I am currently reading books for my thesis. Host-Plant Selection by Phytophagous Plants by Chapman and Bernays is the one I'm doing right now. My adviser said I didn't have to read it all, only the applicable parts. However, I am using my thesis books towards my goodreads challenge soooo I kinda want to at least skim the entire book.
