comp lit and mediaphilia

vanity! (sung to the tune of “agony” from “into the woods”)

mclicious — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 15:12:56 +0000

I am actually more on the girly end of the spectrum than the tomboy side, though I think that binary is absurd. I refuse to leave my house if I don’t look showered and generally put together, I own a ton of hair products, and I’m happy to get free makeup samples when I buy my Clinique moisturizer twice a year. But I’m also very forgetful, so my relationship with makeup is generally the kind where I’m walking to the T and then I remember, “Oh, shoot! I was going to put on mascara today so that I would look pretty!” I own a lot of it, and I’m always happy when someone competent is playing with my hair or putting my makeup on for me, but I guess I don’t have the gene where you naturally know how to do your hair and makeup yourself. Also, not being particularly gifted with my optic sense, I am fascinated by people who cut my hair or people who can look at a magazine photo and copy a celebrity’s makeup, because I honestly don’t know what it is that they’re seeing in the follicles or eye folds, because I literally cannot see that kind of detail.

Anyway. This summer, when I was teaching high schoolers, I noticed how much makeup they were wearing. And I came to the realization that at 22 (now 23), I have reached the point where it really is important to kind of bow to society’s demands and wear a little makeup and present myself in a way that will not hinder my ability to get job interviews, be taken seriously, be seen as my age (I got carded for buying a lottery ticket on New Year’s Eve and was told I didn’t just look under 21; I looked under 18). Also, my body seems to have gotten confused about when you’re supposed to have acne, and instead of giving it to me when you’re supposed to get it, when your life already sucks as a teenager, I have it now. Anyway, I’ve now gotten mostly used to being a little more primpy on a somewhat regular basis. My eyebrows are always at some level of plucked, which is good, because I actually like the way they look now. I also wash my face at night before bed. In summary, I do all kinds of things that normal American girls have been doing since they were 12, except I started when I was 22.

I used to find makeup-ing and hairdoing and shaving a hassle. To be honest, I still forget to shave for, like, two weeks at a time, and by saying that I now have a primping “routine,” I mean that I wear makeup at least once a week, and I take better care of my skin and hair daily. But I’m now getting more and more used to it, and I keep things like lipstick and mascara in my purse rather than hope that I’ll remember to pull them out of my Caboodle (yes, I still have a Caboodle) in the morning while I’m getting ready.

I can’t believe I found it all so difficult before. And I can’t believe how just a small amount of girliness (I believe I’m still far from the point of needing to have makeup on to leave the house, or of thinking that it’s fair that I will be judged on, say, my ability to do my job based slightly on how I look, but that’s life) actually has improved my moods. Having that small amount of routine in the morning and evening helps me feel in control, and, like exercising regularly, makes me feel like I am doing things that will ensure a happy, healthy future–is that weird?

Right before I left Tucson, I got a smoothing treatment that ended up totally straightening my hair. I (and the hairdresser) expected wavy, because I just wanted a slight change and longer hair, but now it’s totally straight. I didn’t mind, partly because it was already done, so there was nothing I could do, but also because it means I’ll stand out a lot less in my very white area of Boston. But now that it’s been nearly two weeks with this hair, I’m still not quite sure how to deal with it. How do people live without putting tons of product in their hair every morning? Also, now I don’t get compliments on my hair. Which, of course, was the point, not to be noticed, but now I’m thoroughly confused. I wanted long, wavy hair because that’s what I felt like inside, but now I can’t tell if this new hair is me.

trials of mediation

mclicious — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 19:42:22 +0000

I’m emotionally over Facebook–by which I mean I am no longer invested in it as somewhere I can express my identity and personality. I used to spend hours cultivating the perfect biographical statement, interests and favorites, and group memberships, but now it’s turned into a virtual version of my apartment on its worst days–namely, full of clutter and crap that might express me, but not in any sort of coherent or favorable way. Anything I find interesting–quotes, links, videos, gets posted in a place that I’d ideally like to keep for photographs and messages to and from friends that I can’t see in person. The one day I connected my Twitter account to my Facebook, such a barrage of crap that was probably rather interesting on a feed cluttered up my Timeline that I just couldn’t stand how it looked, nor could I find a message from a friend that I was looking for.

In the fall I deleted Facebook from my bookmarks, and it remains gone. That makes me visit it a lot less often than I used to, and aside from article-link-posting binges, I don’t really do anything on Facebook except play Words With Friends (I love/hate you for that, Zoraida!). I don’t plan on quitting, but it’s no longer a place that works for the way I want to use media and mediation to send messages or create the virtual costume of myself. I don’t like who I am when I spend hours on Facebook, wistfully clicking through pictures of guys I used to like or girls who used to make fun of me, nor do I like how my profile page looks like, littered with shit I find interesting and want other people to find interesting about me. I don’t know why I held out on Twitter for so long, because it’s more my thing.

Expressing yourself adequately through media doesn’t just depend on how hard you work to create the right image, use the right language, and appear to be the type of person you are (or want to appear to be). It also depends on how other people use their media, because their attitudes and expectations of different media (Facebook, text, IM, etc) will color their view of how yours looks/appears. The way each person understands and approaches media is called their media ideology, and I just read a fascinating book on how relationships and breakups are mediated. The Breakup 2.0: Disconnecting over New Media by Ilana Gershon details the beginnings, (dys)functioning, and endings of 21st century relationships (mostly in college-aged and young adults) and how they can be complicated by different media.

I was super excited about this book as soon as I heard about it, and it took me until now to read it. A very readable and fun sociology book, Gershon’s study is based on interviews with tons of college students, who candidly told her their stories of being broken up with over text message, of obsessing about current boyfriends’ photos on Facebook, and more. What’s fascinating is probably how interesting I found it even though it’s totally a no brainer. This book is clearly for teachers of sociology looking for a pop text, or for adults who find the current generation interesting. But even though I don’t need the term “Facebook stalking” defined for me, I found the book rather interesting (if a bit repetitive–it didn’t need to be as long as it was with the narrow scope it had, and its topic probably would have been more interesting if it included platonic relationships and their function through media as well). And I was actually a bit surprised by how many people with seemingly “normal” relationships (I say normal because I’m never in a relationship, and instead I obsess about crushes or FWBs who are barely even Fs and never go on dates because I find them insufferable) have serious conversations (the “We need to talk” kind) about whether or not to share Facebook passwords, about whether it’s okay to take photos with members of the opposite sex at parties, and about what constitutes flirting on a wall post. And apparently it is really, really common to build Facebook profiles in order to spy on exes’ new girlfriends and stuff.

Since I can only ever live in the era and generation I am in, I don’t know what all of this relationship-building looked like pre-Internet, aside from a few glimpses when Gershon interviews middle aged people to get their perspective, but I am curious to see if there was as much nefarious stalking and such a high amount of sheer self doubt before we lived in a world that socially required us to put ourselves on display. Is there a book about The Breakup 1950-1990? Because what would make this book more enlightening would be more comparison to what things used to be like. But maybe I think that because I’m not Gershon’s target audience so much as I am her subject.

As far as the writing goes, the book treads a fine line of being straightforward and easy and thinking you are really, really out of touch with technology. I also highly recommend you do NOT read this one on Kindle, as the figures and interviews get a little wonked up in ebook form. All things considered, though, it’s a good work of nonfiction, not a textbook, that weaves in stories and explanation and interviews in a way that you feel as if you are reading for pleasure, not to get a meaty quote for a sociology 101 paper.

Oh, and I just remembered that I, too, have been dumped by text message. If I was even in a relationship with the person. Has that “in a relationship” status always been so hard to define, or did Facebook invent that uncertainty? That’s a question I’d really like Gershon to answer.

Buy it here.

evidently

mclicious — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 06:11:36 +0000

It is at 23 that you realize that, even though you were generally unhappy and incredibly uncomfortable during high school, and even though the people who treated you badly did so without question, you were also quite inexcusably a bitch during those four years. But also, it’s a high school memory, and most bad things from high school are at once meaningless and excusable but also totally and permanently scarring. Finally, this realization is an indication that high school truly never ends, by virtue of the fact that angst lives forever.

young adult

mclicious — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 00:55:58 +0000

I’m doing pretty well with this Fifty Fifty Me thing. Two books down, plus four movies. “A Small Act” is a fabulous documentary that was filmed in Kenya around the time that I was there, in 2007. “The Devil Inside” is a load of crap and is actually comedic (though not on purpose), not a horror movie as advertised. “Source Code” is harmless, silly fun. Today’s movie was “Young Adult,” and it is really, really wonderful.

I feel so entrenched in critical and literary theory that I don’t know how or what makes something “good” anymore, but if it has something to do with being full of things that you can point out as funny or astute or literary or apt, or if you can think of a thesis statement for an interesting analysis of the film/book/whatever, that must be a good start, right?

I have only read Maureen Johnson’s HuffPo review of “Young Adult,” and she and I think many of the same things, so I have no idea of the kind of press or critical reception or mainstream reception the film is getting. But I hope it’s positive. That said, I have little faith in that, just because it’s the kind of movie that could appear to be very silly, and since most people in America don’t care to develop critical skills, I feel like “Young Adult” might end up shoved in a category with silly movies when it is anything but.

It’s uncanny how good this movie is at capturing current YA trends, from adults being interested in them to the inter-influence of reality television and YA lit, to the way that current culture and economy makes us young adults for much longer than just adolescence, to the fact that major series are written by ghostwriters–AND it manages to get a vampire joke in there. It’s full of product placement (I’m not sure if it’s real product placement or just made to look like it since it takes place in Products Galore, Minneapolis) and often shows shots of reality television, reminding us how our lives revolve around comparing our lives to real but fake lives on TV. Unlike “Sex and the City” and every other chick flick about “writers,” this one actually shows that they don’t live wealthy, crazy lifestyles, and instead portrays the challenges of being a creative person alongside the challenge of stifled emotional and age-appropriate development and presents what I think is a very real depiction of depression+mental illness+binge drinking which is a real issue these days with Gen Y and goes largely un-talked about, because “it’s just college.” Clearly it’s not. And yes, Charlize Theron’s character in this movie is 37, so she’s not exactly Gen Y, but that’s another thing that our current era is doing is prolonging adolescent issues like binge drinking and refusal of responsibility. Right on, Diablo Cody, right on.

Also, three cheers for an ending that keeps the bitchy girl being a bitch, and without anything (too) unrealistic happening. No wedding at the end. No apologizing for being evil. No realizing that it’s not okay to treat people like crap. If what makes things literary is keeping them unhappy, again, this movie wins because it’s more like real life, in that people can change or be changed, but no change is completely instant and all-encompassing. You get the sense that Mavis, the protagonist, is changed somewhat by her experiences, but that a depressive alcoholic is also what she is, and also, her mistakes are what keep her writing. A sad but true part of being a creative type is that you have maintain some level of disrepair in some aspect of your life, I think, in order to be in the mindset to create. I dare you to prove me wrong.

It’s weird, but my one, tiny experience on a student film has really put me in a totally different mindset when I watch movies. I’m constantly thinking about shots and takes and angles, and considering what the director’s ideas might have been, and I’m even more interested in trying some screenwriting. After all, I adored writing plays and skits for drama class when I was young, and my strength in all fiction workshops is always dialogue. So that’s what I’ve been thinking about in watching these movies. This is why I was at all able to get through “The Devil Inside” (well, that and the cute guy at the movie with me), and that’s why I loved every second of “Young Adult” but also really wanted it to be over so that I could come home and think and write about it. Yeah, I’m a dork. And yeah, you should see this movie.

compartmentalize, ignore, or hate outright?

mclicious — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 20:11:41 +0000

I just started reading Stanislavski’s An Actor Prepares, which is the first of his three seminal works on the acting process. I decided to read it when I saw a friend reading it to work on her acting career; I’m reading it because I have enjoyed acting when I’ve done it, also because I have found acting difficult when done right, and also because I thought it might be an interesting approach to writing. I think for that third thing to work, I might end up reading all three of his books, not just this one.

But I got it from the library in Tucson, which means I have to finish reading it by Tuesday night, as I leave Wednesday morning. I had trouble getting it from the Boston library. It’s quite interesting so far–somewhat fiction, somewhat like a diary, rather than just “Hi, let me teach you some shit about acting.” I think writers’ guides could take a note from that approach. But now that I’ve trained myself to be critical about fucking everything ever, I’m having trouble getting through it, and so I’m only on page 10.

This is partly because, at least for the kind of reader and thinker I am, this is a book that demands to be read with a notebook at your side for jotting down quotes you want to remember, activities you want to try, or ideas you come up with. It is not a book for bathtub reading, which is what I thought when I decided to Blanche DuBois out and take a bath this morning. My bigger problem, though, is that this book puts me in the position of deciding whether it is worth it to read a good book and just ignore its problematic parts (lots of racism going on already for 10 pages), or if I should read it, love it, and then go back and criticize it on a different level, or throw it away in a fit of rage already.

I can tell I’m going to really enjoy this book as a riff on the creative process. Take, for example, this:

Many of these movements I felt to be in a high degree successful. I had worked almost five hours without noticing the passage of time. To me this seemed to show that my inspiration was real.1

When I worked at home today I still went over the old ground without finding anything new. Why do I keep on repeating the same scenes and methods? Why is my acting of yesterday so exactly like today’s and tomorrow’s? Has my imagination dried up, or have I no reserves of material? Why did my work in the beginning move along so swiftly, and then stop at one spot? As I was thinking things over, some people in the next room gathered for tea. In order not to attract attention to myself, I had to move my activities to a different part of my room, and to speak my lines as softly as possible, so as not to be overheard.

To my surprise, by these little changes, my mood was transformed. I had discovered a secret–not to remain too long at one point, for ever repeating the too familiar.2

See? Good stuff. I’m going to love it. But already, the narrator’s first project is to embody the character of Othello. First, that reminds me that I need to read that play. Second, though, the blackfacing and method acting techniques–”my general aspect was modern and civilized, whereas Othello was African in origin and must have something suggestive of primitive life, perhaps a tiger, in him”3–are obviously outdated (or not? that could be what’s scary). They reflect none of the things I find necessary to intellectual discussion–i.e. abandonment of offensive tropes and stereotypes in favor of recognizing privileged positions and being fair in descriptions of PoC; identification of the actor’s own background, identity, and physical description to qualify why these accoutrements or changes are considered necessary, or, hell, even basic political correctness would be a start.

So do I keep reading? I’m quite sure that this book is about much more than deciding how to be a white dude playing a Moor, but now I’ve been trained to look twice at these things. But how do I move on from there? Am I allowed to still love the book? (Years ago, in junior English, I wrote a paper defending the word “nigger” in Huckleberry Finn, but I’m sure that was weak and it was pre-me reading Racialicious and taking ethnic studies classes in college.) Can I chalk the racism up to context, make sure I acknowledge it, but still appreciate the other merits of the book? Also, how can I identify with the ideas presented in the books when it clearly presents a worldview and intellectual position that presupposes that I and anyone like me is incapable of or at least uninvited to taking part in its ideas and practices?

I feel like somewhere in me I know the answer, but I can’t figure out how I am supposed to approach my continuation of reading. But I think I will really find the book valuable. Still, though. Generally, I feel like the more education and training I receive in reading and criticism and media and art, the more I want to explore and think and try and continue learning. But also, the more skills I get in criticism, the more confused I get as to how I apply them. Help.

All footnotes, obvi:
Stanislavski, Constantin. An Actor Prepares New York: Routledge, 2003.

ummm, except i did sort of sign up for a quantitative challenge

mclicious — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 14:18:01 +0000

I am so bad at doing what I say I’m going to do, especially if what I say I’m going to do is be less busy or committed to things. I signed up for the Fifty Fifty challenge, which is to read 50 books and watch 50 films in 2012. I liked it as soon as I saw it, because I’ve been relying heavily on episodic television, and while a lot of it is good, also a lot of it is bad, so it’s about time I taught myself to watch narratives that take longer than 43 minutes to unfold, and to watch things in full screen without zipping around to a bunch of other open tabs. Television is something I multitask at, but I’d like to watch films again to remind myself to focus.

One of the recommendations at Fifty Fifty is to come up with majors and minors (i.e. follow the work of a specific director, actor, or writer; read books set in a certain country or written in a certain time period, etc) or other thematic lists to guide your reading and watching. Aside from having a to-read list, I can’t really plan exactly what I’ll read because I am so moody about it, but I have some general ideas that I’ll work on making more specific as the year goes on.

Books for school won’t count towards this total. Also, per the rules of the game, rereads and re-watches don’t count.

In books:

Read books from different areas of the world, both in translation or written originally in English.

Read one book in Spanish. Because I can, so I should. Or I’ll forget how to speak it.

Read more speculative fiction.

Read some of the more “difficult” or “boring” or “classic” books that I’ve been meaning to have read, but never seem to actually read.

Read more history, biographies, and memoirs.

In films:

Watch documentaries.

Watch more indies, both in theatres and thanks to prescreen.com.

Watch foreign films, especially in languages I’m learning.

Choose films based more on director and screenwriter, rather than actor.

Watch films that you could call “speculative fiction,” if more people knew that was something you could apply to film.

I’ll keep track periodically, in list form and in blog posts. And on my twitter! Because I have a domain and a twitter now. Before I know it I’ll be buying smartphones and tumblring. Nah.

bloggish resolutions

mclicious — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 22:38:37 +0000

This year I made myself some non-specific, qualitative-rather-than-quantitative resolutions that will probably become clear as I continue blogging. But as far as this blog is concerned, I plan to focus it more and have more consistent “columns” and themes. I’ll continue doing my informal research updates on biracial literature, but I’ll also be using that reading for actual academic research that I hope to present at a conference or two and then turn into a paper. I’ll write here more consistently, but not at the expense of the stuff I should be writing–namely school stuff and the novel(s). Finally, I’ll keep better track of my reading not just numerically but qualitatively, writing more, privately and publicly, about what I’m reading, why I chose to read it, what it’s meaning to me, and how it relates to my schooling, my creative projects, my intellectual pursuits, or just my general enjoyment/interest. Like Nick Hornby did in The Believer, I also want to keep track monthly of books I buy, books I borrow/check out from the library, and books I read, as well as magazines and journal articles that I read, and do a beginning and end of month roundup of those things.

Also, more extra media stuff. I’m trying to remember how to have a vocabulary for discussing music, another important part of my life, in the same way I discuss literature. Should be interesting, not to mention relevant to one of my novel(s).

BUT, since it’s always fun to be a little quantitative when you can rub your awesomeness in other people’s faces, I did decide to make an infographic of what I read this year.

My goal was to read 150 not counting stuff I read for school. I came in under that goal, but I still read a total of 162 books, so I can’t exactly call myself a failure. Here are the biggest genres/styles/themes in what I read this year, infographically, and then textually. You can click on it to view a bigger version.

Out of those 162, 29 were for school. Fifteen related to food, nutrition, or cooking. Thirteen I would call memoir or biography. I only read a paltry nine books of poetry, and just eight picture books. Since I read an overwhelming amount of fiction, I divided between short fiction and novels and found that I read 96 novels and seven works of short fiction, either by one author or multiple ones. I would say that 10 of the books I read could be called essays or manifestoes. Then I decided to see how many authors of color or Latin@ descent I read. If I could not discern the author’s race from their biography or photo, or if a work contained multiple authors and wasn’t thematically related to race or ethnicity, I did not include that book in the count. Authors are counted for every book of theirs I read, so the number represents a great number of authors who have written multiple books. But I think that it ended up being 41.

What this says about my reading plans for next year: I decided a couple weeks ago that my main goal in terms of reading in 2012 would actually be to read less and write more. That still stands. But I’d also like to read a little bit more in nonfiction, more classic and historical works, and more biographies and memoirs. In fiction, since I know I’ll read a ton of it, I’d also like to beef up my reading of non white writers, read more speculative fiction, and read more literary realism. I’m going to request fewer books to review for BookReporter, TeenReads, and KidsReads unless those books really fit into my goals and interests. There’s just so much to read, and so little time.

requisite end of 2011 post

mclicious — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 23:53:50 +0000

This has definitely been the year of the most change, transition, growing up, getting my ass kicked, learning what’s important to me, freaking out for the first time about my future, etc etc. It’s been a year. Whatever. So are all other years. I don’t really do New Year’s Eve stuff if I can help it–last year I went to dinner with friends and then refused to go to a party, went home, and got a really good night’s sleep, starting at about 10:30pm. It was awesome. This year I’ve conceded to at least partially celebrating, but I never really cared for celebrating holidays much (by never, I mean for the last six or so years), which is why I try not to do stuff for my birthday, Halloween, etc. It’s never as fun or meaningful or what I want it to be anyway, and I don’t like forced sentimentality when random moments that are good or bad or whatever are so much more meaningful anyway.

That said, I do like to keep track of how many books I read in a calendar year; I do my taxes, so I keep track of how much money I make in a calendar year; and between semesters is as good a time as any to reflect on how my life has changed most recently.

So behold: my list of stuff that 2011 was made of. Tomorrow I’ll tell you how many books I managed to finish, and what I plan on doing with my 2012. And then I’ll get back to my normal, Scroogey, unholiday self.

1. I didn’t go to school for EIGHT months and instead worked a bunch of part time jobs. I learned not only that working sucks when it’s all you do (previously I was a workaholic, but apparently that was because school wasn’t totally fulfilling and because I like being busy), but that jobs that sound like tons of fun (children’s museum) are actually full of lazy full time people and bitchy full time people and bad management all around and a generally crappy time to be had by all. I also learned that I can’t just assume that the whole world knows that I am generally a rather intelligent person. This was the first and only job where not only was I not assumed to be smart, but I was treated like I was stupid. I will never let that happen again, because sorry, but I’m nowhere near stupid. I now know what it’s like to be at a dead-end, unhappy, unfulfilling job, and I’m sorry for the many Americans for whom that is a reality that will never end, but in Scarlett O’Hara fashion, I will never let that happen to me again.

2. On January 1st, I “gave up” gluten (with a few accidents as I learned all the secret places it lurks) and by May had followed that with a no soy and no gluten and very little of lots of other food recommendation from my doctor. I’m still nowhere near perfect with my health, but I’ve said goodbye to bimonthly colds, chronic bad breath, constant nail breakage, bad hair health, nonexistent immune system, and depressive moods. I’ve also retrained my body to think that not working out means a crappy, uncomfortable day, and healthy food tastes better than unhealthy. Win!

3. I got rejected from a graduate program at a school which, when I was a high school senior, had desired me A LOT. And I it. That was hard. But I got in everywhere else I applied, and then I was hit with the hard facts of how master’s degrees are the most expensive and thankless ones out there. And then I decided to go for two of them in a city I spent about 48 hours in. Probably the most seat-of-my-pants thing I’ve ever done.

4. That leads to that time when I got a moving truck and put ALL my loads of crap in it and then someone drove it across the country, where I met it and moved into an apartment all by myself. So I moved across the country alone and started grad school alone out of the apartment where I live alone. So I learned (it’s a work in progress, really) how to be my own, singular person with no attachments and no family nearby and it’s all very strange and I’m not sure if I like it yet. Some days I do, other days I don’t.

5. I hosted a couch surfer for the first time. And then for the second time. And neither time was I raped, murdered, robbed, or anything bad. Nice girls, both times.

6. I started grad school and had all of my expectations of it turned on its head. Am liking it so far, but don’t totally have my people or my places or routines yet. Thought I would be overprepared for the library program and underprepared for the lit program and learned that the opposite is true. Went to my first professional conference for librarians. Volunteered but didn’t have a job for the first time in more than six years. Learned an incredible amount of stuff and felt like I really stretched my brain in new ways. Felt disappointed with the lack of more people like me in my programs. Lived for the first time in a new city and felt for the first time in awhile very aware of my status as a minority. Felt incredibly lonely. Felt very alone. Felt independent. Felt autonomous. Felt powerless.

So a lot of what this year was was anticlimactic, disappointing, hard to adjust to. It was probably good for me, in a bad tasting medicine sort of way. But it was nowhere near as exhilarating as I expected.

Here’s to something–anything–interesting happening in 2012. Not that it means anything different than 2011.

researchin’

mclicious — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 05:45:53 +0000

Last week I went down to New York for a day and a half to do research for the novel I tell people I’m working on. It was a really illuminating experience for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that I don’t really know what doing research with primary documents entails. For a library school student at a college that boasts a huge archives program, I’ve never really been in an archives, so stepping into Schomburg was new for me. And then I’ve also never done research to write a novel before, not having finished a long narrative work since the novel I wrote when I was 12 (I think it was 54 pages, single spaced, which is actually not all that bad). But I’m in the school of fake it til you make it, so I was all prepared to fake it.

Fake it I did. But I felt rather awkward. The biggest two things I’ve learned in library school thus far are that everyone is excited that you’re in it until you ask working librarians for help/interviews/jobs, and then they stop being interested in you, and also that you can’t work in a library unless you’ve already worked in a library/you can’t know how to use an archives unless you already know how to use it. And that’s exactly what happened at Schomburg–I’m sure it’s not on purpose, but archivists tend to kind of look at you like you’re a jackass for not knowing how to behave in an archives, but really that’s absurd, because it’s not even a library, so it’s not exactly like you learned the proper usage of one back in elementary school. Anyway, I figured it out, got my temporary NYPL card (!), and found out that the sound archives I requested weren’t there yet, but that I could go upstairs and look at the rest of the stuff I wanted.

I got to look at three of the 25 or so boxes they have on the person I am researching. I have obviously been fascinated by her since I was 7; otherwise she wouldn’t be a character in the book I’m writing. But I didn’t think I was so obsessed or invested in her until I started touching things that she had owned, like her passport and concert programs and letters. I was so happy just to be peeking into her life that I was scarcely taking notes at all, except when I actively reminded myself that people were watching and it would probably look weird if I didn’t. Because, remember, I don’t know how to do research, so I didn’t know what I was doing. But what I was really there for was insight into her character and personality, so really sinking in was what I needed, and I did take notes on her tone, her style, her attitudes, and all that. I realized that I was writing her as snarky and that seems to be actually how she was. I realized our fathers are very similar. I realized I miss studying piano. I realized I miss traveling. I realized that I am totally obsessed with this girl, and this one novel might not even be enough to get her out of my head.

I’m now home in Tucson and have been too busy to write, but I’m planning on it. (I know I always say that, but I’ve been pretty decent at it lately, so.) But I now feel like I have the tools I need to finish the novel. And what’s more, I really, really love doing research! It makes me feel a little selfish that the best thing I’ve gotten out of library school so far is the desire to use my skills to further my own projects and interests, but I’ve learned so much about expert searching in databases and search engines, and now I know how to use an archive, so I just have piles of ideas for novels and screenplays that I’d like to do research for. I just want to be creative and studious! All the time. Forever. There’s so freaking much to learn about and absorb, why would I ever want to do things like teach people or help better society? Pssh.

new worlds: cinder, worldbuilding, and current ya sci fi

mclicious — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 19:03:14 +0000

I want to talk about worldbuilding in sci fi and dystopia. And just the qualities of sci fi itself. Lately it’s my favorite genre of television, but I can’t quite figure out why. It’s pretty elementary to identify social fears and how they transfer into imagined technological advances, but that’s part of what makes it such an ever-relevant genre. There are always new societal fears and scapegoats and advances and changes that lend themselves well to commentary in the form of fantastical re-imaginings. But when too much sci fi or dystopia comes out during the same era, especially when that era is also characterized by fast, serial publishing, hyper-commodification of literature, and technology-dominated culture, it ends up all the same and ends up being derivative of itself, rather than clever or astute.

I know I’m kind of writing my own dystopia right now, but I’m satisfied that it’s more speculative than outright sci fi dystopia, and I think it’s fairly different from a lot of other YA dystopia. That doesn’t mean it’s going to be better, but we’ll see how it goes when it’s done. But in the meantime, I still want to read in my one of my favorite genres, and I get disappointed when it all starts to be the same old story: society controls teens as far as who they marry, and some plucky young girl decides that that’s not right. Touchscreens run everything, people have silly names, and daily life is controlled by a faceless, totalitarian government. Obviously that’s the hallmark of most sci fi because it’s the fear of most societies, but the plots are starting to run so similar that it’s dull as doornails. Not even the execution of the same old ideas is unique anymore.

So I’m so, so happy that I got to read Cinder, the start of a four-book series by Marissa Meyer, due out this January from Macmillan. It’s awesome, because it combines two genres I love: sci fi and fairy tales, and yet it’s not overly derivative, not tightly controlled by the tale it’s based on, and does an excellent job of worldbuilding. It takes place in the city of New Beijing, for one. Need I say more? Also, it incorporates the fairy tale we all know into other recognizable tropes and stories of warring nations, long lost princesses, cult leadership, and human rights, all while just going about its business of being its own story about a cyborg who doesn’t long for anything except to be left alone. By having that as her central problem, rather than the desire to be a regular girl again, or to find her birthparents, or to save the world, Cinder remains firmly a girl of a YA novel, rather than an MG or adult novel protagonist who just happens to be of teen age.

Props for the most interesting teen job in a book yet: Cinder is a mechanic. Also, sidekick props: Cinder’s best friend is a technically imperfect and badly made android who is boy crazy. Also, this could just be because my sci fi knowledge is actually pretty limited, but I’ve never read or watched anything about cyborgs before, and I find the issues there fascinating, especially since cybernetic technology and organisms actually already exist (thanks, Wikipedia!). Cinder nearly died in a car crash, and as a result, her body had to be put together again with computer bits, so she’s about 33% inorganic. That has interesting implications for human rights in the story as well as for medical advancements. She meets the prince of her nation when he comes to her to fix his android, and they keep running into each other again. Like any good modernized or YA-ized fairy tale retelling, she’s totally not into the prince, and her disinterest is a complete turn-on, so he pursues her even though she’s really just trying to save him, because the prince can’t love a cyborg!

That part actually bothers me. I hate how, especially in YA, girl characters are either obsessed with a boy or just totally not into them at all, no temptation. It’s especially strange to me that in sci fi that otherwise does an excellent job of discussing current society and its pitfalls and obsessions by creating a new society, the idea of gender conditioning vs. feminism vs. biological impulses never comes into play. Why can’t a character be a normal human who is hormonally attracted to someone? And why can’t that be compounded by the fact that our current society, at least, tells us that we should be attracted to them? Why is the problem of unrequited crushes or saving someone the trouble of dating a problem protagonist never addressed with regard to the fact that it is totally natural for humans to want to have sex with other humans? I don’t buy that Cinder is totally uninterested in Prince Kai, and I wish she had to struggle with mentally not wanting him versus emotionally wanting him based on the fact that he’s a prince charming, or that she had to struggle with the idea that she’s maybe not into him, but she’s into someone, because it’s pretty natural that teen girls would be sexually interested in SOMEONE at SOME POINT IN TIME for SOME REASON because humans tend to desire sex. Why are fairy tale retellings populated with asexual, unaffected by social conditioning girls who don’t get butterflies?

But that’s a conversation for another time.

As far as plot devices go, this is still a very plot-y book, and one way of reading it would definitely be just to go through and, at each chapter, ask yourself, “Okay, who’s the fairy godmother going to be?” “What twist do I think is coming?” “What does this reveal have to do with the other problems going on in the book?” “Is that a trap for the character, or is that a trap for me the reader to fall into because I think it’s a trap for the character but actually it’s not?” The fact that I’m thinking about this makes me wonder if I’ve been reading too many “simple,” “easy” books, or if all books are basically like this, and if identifying it has just made me incapable of totally enjoying a book ever again without also analyzing it. Because probably all books, good and bad, highbrow and lowbrow, literary and commercial, can be reduced to some of those questions.

I know I just made it sound like there is too much going on in this story, but there isn’t, precisely because not one of the things I mentioned is overdone, out of left field, or standing alone. There is a mythology here that is American enough to offer the cool look at our own lives that sci fi does, but it’s also creatively fresh, satisfying my more literary and writerly interests in finding a story that’s not like every other book being published. As I read less and less fiction for pleasure, I’m so glad I made room for this one, and now I’m really pissed that I have to wait even longer for the next one because I read the first one early. Cinder was the perfect fairy tale retelling for me, and at the same time, it was the perfect sci fi book for me. The fact that those two disparate things come in one package makes me very interested to see what comes next.