{"id":2915,"date":"2006-07-24T18:49:00","date_gmt":"2006-07-24T18:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/?p=2915"},"modified":"2018-11-20T05:25:37","modified_gmt":"2018-11-20T05:25:37","slug":"this-and-tha-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/?p=2915","title":{"rendered":"This and That"},"content":{"rendered":"

Strange things in my email:
<\/i>
We’ve noticed that customers who have purchased A Wrinkle in Time<\/strong><\/em> by Madeleine L’Engle also purchased books by Martina Mackova. For this reason, you might like to know that Martina Mackova’s Phytoremediation and Rhizoremediation: Theoratical Background (Focus on Biotechnology)<\/strong> will be released soon. You can pre-order your copy by following the link below.<\/i><\/p>\n

Um, Amazon? You’re SO not getting the book connections here. Phytoremediation!? Still, have to give them their props; they’re still trying to keep my business… but after all the carnage I’ve seen them do to independent bookstores, I’m making a conscious choice to buy books elsewhere. Go independents<\/a>!
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I am taking five cool minutes to say hello and let you know about the Carnival of Children’s Literature<\/a> going on at Big A little a. This is a MAJOR<\/strong> undertaking, where a children’s blogger does a roundup of all of the fantastic commentary on kidlit going on all over the web. Since Blogger is being an absolute pain, I haven’t been able to comment to them what a fantastic job I think she did, but bravo Ms. Kelly, and thanks for all of the links!<\/p>\n

Because race continues to be a daily occurrence, I’m going to make an occasional point of talking about race and racial issues in YA and children’s fiction, calling attention to those who deserve kudos, etc. The carnival links above netted me a new blog to read I Write For Young Adults, So Take That<\/a> (which is as good and snarky a title as I’ve ever loved), and highlighted in On Being Black in Fiction<\/a>, the article by Pam Noles<\/a> that talked about the shameful way that the Sci-Fi channel handled The Legend of Earthsea<\/a><\/em> miniseries.<\/p>\n

If you’re not a sci-fi geek like me, maybe you’re not familiar with the charmed and delicious worlds of Ursula K. LeGuin<\/a> and the novel wonder that is Earthsea. (Become familiar! You won’t regret it!!!) In 2004 the Sci-fi channel (and notice no link<\/strong>! I’m still furious with them, and have boycotted the channel.) hijacked her Earthsea novels into a movie… I was so bitterly disappointed I could almost have cried. (I spent the whole time wailing “But that’s<\/em> not how it happened!” to my TV.) The characters, who were brown-skinned in the book, were cast almost uniformly and bewilderingly with Caucasian actors. This completely negated the flipflop that LeGuin created — that Earthsea was made up of brown people, and that the pale skinned ones were the ones enslaved and shunned, that the brown-skinned people needed to learn to see them as human, etc. etc. It gave readers the chance to ponder a different world, it gave a chance for sci-fi fans of color to finally<\/i> have a world in which they were represented, and it was ruined in film for a reason I cannot yet comprehend (except for the obvious, my opinion that BOOKS SHOULD ALMOST NEVER BE MADE INTO MOVIES. Ahem. Well, it’s only my opinion…).<\/p>\n

When we saw the movie, we wondered why LeGuin allowed<\/a> the wreckage. It reassured me to discover that LeGuin hated it<\/a>, called it “Earthsea in Clorox” and generally made sure that her readers knew that this was something taken away from her. Though the producers of the film said that they followed the “intent” of the novel (please.) LeGuin<\/a> straight up said they ruined it<\/i>.<\/p>\n

This is, of course, old news, but it reminded me of some additional books in the fantasy genre whose brave writers, while perhaps not brown-skinned themselves, dared to include brown skinned characters in cool roles in their books. I especially love Nancy Farmer’s<\/a> book, The Ear, The Eye and The Arm<\/em>, and the warriors and blacksmiths who use magic in Tamora Pierce’s<\/a> Circle of Magic<\/i> books. It can be done and done well! Rejoice!<\/p>\n

Incidentally, Studio Ghibli<\/a> is taking a stab at doing the Earthsea books justice, releasing the Japanese version called Gedo Senki<\/em>. As the few black manga characters I’ve ever seen are either evil and male or just incidental characters in crowd scenes, I was interested to see if they would include brown characters for Earthsea. No such luck. Goro Miyazaki’s an amazingly gifted artist, and really captures the feel of Earthsea, as the trailer shows<\/a>. Still, manga is not the place to find positive characters of African or Indian descent… maybe someday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Strange things in my email:We’ve noticed that customers who have purchased A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle also purchased books by Martina Mackova….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[10],"class_list":["post-2915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-views"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2915"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2915\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3621,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2915\/revisions\/3621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}