{"id":939,"date":"2018-01-09T20:55:52","date_gmt":"2018-01-10T04:55:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.slowbloom.com\/blog\/?p=939"},"modified":"2018-01-16T19:49:54","modified_gmt":"2018-01-17T03:49:54","slug":"literary-ancestry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.slowbloom.com\/blog\/2018\/01\/literary-ancestry\/","title":{"rendered":"Literary Ancestry"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a data-flickr-embed=\"true\"  href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/jillbertini\/13155218193\/in\/photolist-QAy5Uw-D465sj-C91Ngz-D6p6vc-D45Tny-CDhhTC-xv6d4m-riBzzC-oLLe65-poHioL-pqHHmj-poZimL-poZknE-p7vLEn-p7vKq8-p7mLPQ-oYK5pc-neLYo2-m3uLf9-m3tW3M-m3xurj-juKoAN-jgzR2v-jgAqc8-iGseMN-h12rQk-iGgcB6-hazXdx-h11vYd-gRSRF5-gLTQFs-fLSUSu-fEALpN-cxshuq-g5jdP-g5jdR\" title=\"world book\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/farm4.staticflickr.com\/3818\/13155218193_17e14445f2.jpg\" width=\"500\" height=\"331\" alt=\"world book\"><\/a><script async src=\"\/\/embedr.flickr.com\/assets\/client-code.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Last October I attended <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sirensconference.org\/\">Sirens<\/a>, a conference about women in fantasy (and science fiction). Each day a different author talked to us. V.E. Schwab talked about her literary ancestry and it was something that resonated for me, so I thought I would share those who have influenced me.<\/p>\n<p>Going back to my wee days, the stories I remember first have to be <strong>Beverly Cleary<\/strong> &#8211; especially her wild child, Ramona. I haven\u2019t read any Ramona books in decades, but my memory of her is a very unruly child. No, not just child, GIRL. She was willful. She was smart. She was brave. From <u>Ramona the Brave<\/u> to <u>Ramona the Pest<\/u>, she was always moving forward and tackling what she wanted.<\/p>\n<p>Next came <strong>Judy Blume<\/strong> &#8211; from <u>Starring Sally J Friedman as Herself<\/u> to <u>Then Again Maybe I Won\u2019t<\/u> to <u>Are You There God? It\u2019s Me, Margaret<\/u> &#8211;  all the messy girls who were smart and worried because they weren\u2019t cool, they didn\u2019t fit in, they were different in some way that set them apart, and they made ME feel less alone.<\/p>\n<p>In between Cleary and Blume was <strong>Madeleine L\u2019Engle<\/strong>, whose Time books shattered my worldview in the best possible way. I am BEYOND thrilled and can\u2019t wait to see what Ava Duvernay is going to do with <u>A Wrinkle in Time<\/u>. L\u2019Engle was the first science fiction I read and it blew my little mind. It was so different from the fairy tales. Not to mention Meg, a smart, capable girl. I would read and re-read her books every few years, each time finding something I had forgotten or not noticed in the previous reading. As an adult, what really stands out is how she writes about <em>family<\/em>, loving families &#8211; parents and children who all love each other.<\/p>\n<p>In my teens I read a lot of science fiction, but mostly what I remember is <strong>Anne McCaffrey&#8217;s<\/strong> dragon riders. She, like L\u2019Engle, turned fantasy into something that felt rooted in reality (the distinction between fantasy and science fiction is for another time). <\/p>\n<p>I don\u2019t remember reading any queer characters until I got to Rubyfruit Jungle. So thank you, <strong>Rita Mae Brown<\/strong>, for sharing your happy gay ladies. It wasn\u2019t until I discovered <strong>Nicola Griffith<\/strong> that I found queer women whose sexuality wasn\u2019t driving the plot. (Aside: I discovered it on the shelf at my public library. THANK YOU PUBLIC LIBRARIES.) I have written about <a href=\"https:\/\/www.slowbloom.com\/blog\/2016\/10\/writing-queer-characters\/\">writing queer characters<\/a>, so I\u2019m not going to go into it here. Needless to say, Nicola turned my world upside down, much like L\u2019Engle had two decades earlier. The idea that a queer character could BE without having their sexuality commented on in the text was revolutionary.<\/p>\n<p>Where does that bring us? To me, currently flailing around and thwacking things as I try to wrap my mind around this system called <strong>story<\/strong>. I hold these girls and women tightly in my memory, and they help one another break down structures that no longer serve. They work to build more inclusive spaces. They go on adventures. They fall in love, they fall out of love, they try and fall down and get back up, or they fall down and ask for help, and they get help or they don&#8217;t get the help they think they need but they learn something. They fail. They hurt people. They learn and grow or they don&#8217;t. They are flawed like we are all flawed. We try and fail. We make mistakes. We learn and apologize (hopefully). <\/p>\n<p>I don\u2019t know how to write the stories I want to write, YET. I am learning and trying and stumbling around. In the meantime, I keep these characters and authors in my back pocket and in my heart. I am descended from them and hope to honor them as best I can.<\/p>\n<div style=\"padding-bottom:20px; padding-top:10px;\" class=\"hupso-share-buttons\"><!-- Hupso Share Buttons - https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/ --><a class=\"hupso_pop\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/button100x23.png\" style=\"border:0px; width:100; height: 23; \" alt=\"Share Button\" \/><\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\">var hupso_services=new Array(\"Twitter\",\"Facebook\",\"Linkedin\",\"StumbleUpon\",\"Reddit\",\"Print\");var hupso_icon_type = \"labels\";var hupso_background=\"#EAF4FF\";var hupso_border=\"#66CCFF\";var hupso_image_folder_url = \"\";var hupso_url=\"\";var hupso_title=\"Literary%20Ancestry\";<\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/js\/share.js\"><\/script><!-- Hupso Share Buttons --><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last October I attended Sirens, a conference about women in fantasy (and science fiction). Each day a different author talked to us. V.E. Schwab talked about her literary ancestry and it was something that resonated for me, so I thought I would share those who have influenced me. Going back to my wee days, the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n<div style=\"padding-bottom:20px; padding-top:10px;\" class=\"hupso-share-buttons\"><!-- Hupso Share Buttons - https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/ --><a class=\"hupso_pop\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/\"><img src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/button100x23.png\" style=\"border:0px; width:100; height: 23; \" alt=\"Share Button\" \/><\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\">var hupso_services=new Array(\"Twitter\",\"Facebook\",\"Linkedin\",\"StumbleUpon\",\"Reddit\",\"Print\");var hupso_icon_type = \"labels\";var hupso_background=\"#EAF4FF\";var hupso_border=\"#66CCFF\";var hupso_image_folder_url = \"\";var hupso_url=\"\";var hupso_title=\"Literary%20Ancestry\";<\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/js\/share.js\"><\/script><!-- Hupso Share Buttons --><\/div>","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[13],"class_list":["post-939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing","tag-writing-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slowbloom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slowbloom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slowbloom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slowbloom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slowbloom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=939"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.slowbloom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/939\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":944,"href":"https:\/\/www.slowbloom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/939\/revisions\/944"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slowbloom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slowbloom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slowbloom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}