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juushikaTitle: Bad Boy
Author: Elliot Wake
Published: Atria, 2016
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 255
Total Page Count: 229,165
Text Number: 731
Read Because: fan of the author, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: A trans guy begins to doubt his place in Black Iris, a feminist vigilante group, when a figure from his past returns. This has much of Wake's style—the heady atmosphere and toxic, powerful relationships—but simplified and condensed. The plot is straightforward, aside from contrivances in premise and communication; one of the central events is a false rape accusation, which is in poor taste, especially within an overtly queer and feminist and social justice-y narrative. I want to champion this book, and the protagonist deserves it; the complicated way that internalized misogyny acts within his transmasculine experience, how his doubt and self-actualization coexist, is nuanced and deeply personal. But the plethora of buzzwords and commentary on social justice subculture, combined with the underwhelming plot and use of transcript-style flashbacks, saps some of the authenticity, the immediacy; makes it feel more like studied rant than lived experience. I love and admire Wake's Black Iris and Cam Girl, which feel messier and less contrived; this has so much potential, but disappoints me, especially in comparison.
Title: Of Sorrow and Such
Author: Angela Slatter
Published: Tor, 2015
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 150
Total Page Count: 229,315
Text Number: 732
Read Because: discussed here bycalico_reaction, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: A witch hides her magical abilities under the guise of herbalism in order to protect her fellows and family. This has an engaging premise and fulfills it entirely: herbalism, magic, familiars, grimoires; strong-willed crones, willful girls, complex and varied relationships between women; women's magic as a feminist lens to women's social roles, historical and otherwise. It's that concept which is more effective than the voice (adequate, but some sentence structure/punctuation feels off) and plot (it's backloaded with predictable action), but I still adored this. It's such a good premise and atmosphere, and Slatter fulfills it without tending towards hokey or idealistic, or too grim.
Title: Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places
Author: Colin Dickey
Published: Viking, 2016
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 320
Total Page Count: 229,635
Text Number: 733
Read Because: recommended by Caitlin Doughty, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: A tour of America's hauntings, nonexhaustive but diverse, from private homes to entire cities, focusing less on whether ghosts are real and more on their cultural and social function. This isn't as titillating as the premise may imply; Dickey establishes evocative atmospheres (although few nonfiction books so badly want an appendix of images), but the histories and ghosts have short narratives—as it turns out, there's not much to substantiate most hauntings. Dickey instead makes various arguments for the social function of ghosts: as a means of exploring society's secrets while upholding the dominant paradigms; giving voice to anxieties about death and social change. The number of subsections and frequency of closing arguments tends towards the repetitive and facile—I almost wish this were less structured, more organic, and that some sections had more depth. But Dickey strikes a good balance in his skepticism: he's sympathetic to the experience of haunting, to the idea of it, and so is invested in conclusions regarding its origin and purpose.
The formatting for footnotes in the ebook version (primarily using highlighted passages instead of tiny, hard-to-click asterisks) is lovely and I wish it were more common.
ETA: Things referenced in Ghostland which caught my attention, probably because of subject matter, maybe because of the way the content was described (or because of section quoted), & which I may seek out someday:
? The House of the Seven Gables, Nathaniel Hawthorne (fiction)
Winchester trilogy, Jeremy Blake (short films based on the Winchester House)
Barton Fink, dir. Coen Brothers (film)
Captive of the Labyrinth, Mary Jo Ignoffo (definitive biograph of Sarah Winchester)
Modern Spiritualism: A History and Criticism (especially volume 2), Frank Podmore (Fox sisters)
The History and Haunting of Lemp Mansion, Rebecca F. Pittman (Lemp family)
The Man Who Wanted Seven Wives: The Greenbrier Ghost and The Famous Murder Mystery of 1879, Katie Letcher Lyle (Erasmus Stribbling Trout Shue)
? For a Critique of a Political Economy of the Sign, Jean Baudrillard (philosophy)
I'm deeply invested in "asylumpunk" as a way of women conceptualizing and romanticizing their own madness, and therefore acknowledging and working to resolve their anxieties about the way that women's bodies, behavior, mental health, and social roles are conflated and controlled by a misogynistic society—historically, but in a way that impacts and continues present day.
I'm reading Colin Dickey's Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places, and he makes a compelling argument for the ways that the spiritualist movement has overlapping form and function:
I'm invested in "asylumpunk" because it's a framework I use for my crazy; spiritualism doesn't have any personal resonance, so on that level isn't as productive. But what a fertile concept for stories!
I'm familiar with asylum narratives about these anxieties (like Sucker Punch, like Emilie Autumn's music), but hadn't considered that spiritualist narratives could do similar work—Waters's Affinity is the only example I can think of, which is a lack worth remedy. I imagine gaslamp fantasy engages this, given the focus on the supernatural/fantastic and Victorian/Edwardian-era setting. I wonder how asylum narratives and spiritualist narratives could be overlapped; a few seconds of googling indicates a historical basis for it, spiritualist women committed (or arrested) in order to punish or control their behavior, ex. Louisa Lowe, Georgina Weldon. It's something worth my further thought and consumption.
What Emilie Autumn does in most all her music, but especially Fight Like a Girl; My Brightest Diamond's Something of an End; Sucker Punch; Caitlín R. Kiernan's Drowning Girl. Can we call this asylumpunk (like steampunk, like cyberpunk, like mythpunk) without entirely undermining it? The combined romanticization and anxiety and criticism of (depictions of) mental illness in women.
The romanticization and fetishization and objectification comes from without, because that's how society views women—and mental illness echoes both what society views as valuable (weakness) and terrifying (acting out) in us. And we internalize it, so we use it to talk about ourselves. We reclaim it, even take comfort in it (that saving grace of our illness: that it is, in some way, beautiful). But we also engage with it in order to tear it down, because there's nothing beautiful or desirable or pale-waif-on-a-fainting-couch lovely about being crazy. We use it to criticize the way that society's hate for our gender and bodies and minds creates and aids our illness. We criticize the fact that illness becomes an excuse for even more dehumanization, for making the illness worse. We criticize both sweeping it (us) away, out of care, out of sight, and romanticizing the illness as something profound, while giving voice to how formative it can be.
See also: Fight Like A Girl: thoughts on mental health, female sexuality, and Emilie Autumn.
Author: Elliot Wake
Published: Atria, 2016
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 255
Total Page Count: 229,165
Text Number: 731
Read Because: fan of the author, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: A trans guy begins to doubt his place in Black Iris, a feminist vigilante group, when a figure from his past returns. This has much of Wake's style—the heady atmosphere and toxic, powerful relationships—but simplified and condensed. The plot is straightforward, aside from contrivances in premise and communication; one of the central events is a false rape accusation, which is in poor taste, especially within an overtly queer and feminist and social justice-y narrative. I want to champion this book, and the protagonist deserves it; the complicated way that internalized misogyny acts within his transmasculine experience, how his doubt and self-actualization coexist, is nuanced and deeply personal. But the plethora of buzzwords and commentary on social justice subculture, combined with the underwhelming plot and use of transcript-style flashbacks, saps some of the authenticity, the immediacy; makes it feel more like studied rant than lived experience. I love and admire Wake's Black Iris and Cam Girl, which feel messier and less contrived; this has so much potential, but disappoints me, especially in comparison.
Title: Of Sorrow and Such
Author: Angela Slatter
Published: Tor, 2015
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 150
Total Page Count: 229,315
Text Number: 732
Read Because: discussed here by
calico_reaction, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County LibraryReview: A witch hides her magical abilities under the guise of herbalism in order to protect her fellows and family. This has an engaging premise and fulfills it entirely: herbalism, magic, familiars, grimoires; strong-willed crones, willful girls, complex and varied relationships between women; women's magic as a feminist lens to women's social roles, historical and otherwise. It's that concept which is more effective than the voice (adequate, but some sentence structure/punctuation feels off) and plot (it's backloaded with predictable action), but I still adored this. It's such a good premise and atmosphere, and Slatter fulfills it without tending towards hokey or idealistic, or too grim.
Title: Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places
Author: Colin Dickey
Published: Viking, 2016
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 320
Total Page Count: 229,635
Text Number: 733
Read Because: recommended by Caitlin Doughty, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: A tour of America's hauntings, nonexhaustive but diverse, from private homes to entire cities, focusing less on whether ghosts are real and more on their cultural and social function. This isn't as titillating as the premise may imply; Dickey establishes evocative atmospheres (although few nonfiction books so badly want an appendix of images), but the histories and ghosts have short narratives—as it turns out, there's not much to substantiate most hauntings. Dickey instead makes various arguments for the social function of ghosts: as a means of exploring society's secrets while upholding the dominant paradigms; giving voice to anxieties about death and social change. The number of subsections and frequency of closing arguments tends towards the repetitive and facile—I almost wish this were less structured, more organic, and that some sections had more depth. But Dickey strikes a good balance in his skepticism: he's sympathetic to the experience of haunting, to the idea of it, and so is invested in conclusions regarding its origin and purpose.
The formatting for footnotes in the ebook version (primarily using highlighted passages instead of tiny, hard-to-click asterisks) is lovely and I wish it were more common.
ETA: Things referenced in Ghostland which caught my attention, probably because of subject matter, maybe because of the way the content was described (or because of section quoted), & which I may seek out someday:
? The House of the Seven Gables, Nathaniel Hawthorne (fiction)
Winchester trilogy, Jeremy Blake (short films based on the Winchester House)
Barton Fink, dir. Coen Brothers (film)
Captive of the Labyrinth, Mary Jo Ignoffo (definitive biograph of Sarah Winchester)
Modern Spiritualism: A History and Criticism (especially volume 2), Frank Podmore (Fox sisters)
The History and Haunting of Lemp Mansion, Rebecca F. Pittman (Lemp family)
The Man Who Wanted Seven Wives: The Greenbrier Ghost and The Famous Murder Mystery of 1879, Katie Letcher Lyle (Erasmus Stribbling Trout Shue)
? For a Critique of a Political Economy of the Sign, Jean Baudrillard (philosophy)
I'm deeply invested in "asylumpunk" as a way of women conceptualizing and romanticizing their own madness, and therefore acknowledging and working to resolve their anxieties about the way that women's bodies, behavior, mental health, and social roles are conflated and controlled by a misogynistic society—historically, but in a way that impacts and continues present day.
I'm reading Colin Dickey's Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places, and he makes a compelling argument for the ways that the spiritualist movement has overlapping form and function:
Among the many reasons Transcendentalists like Emerson might have viewed Spiritualism with skepticism may lie in how it took a philosophy authored by men and transformed it into a women's movement. Spiritualism tended to valorize traits that were elsewhere labeled as women's psychiatric diseases, including convulsions, incoherent babbling, open displays of sexuality, and other violations of Victorian decorum. Behavior that would have then been diagnosed as nervous sensitivity and hysteria were exactly the kinds of traits that made for good mediums. In an age when male-dominated religious and medical institutions were working overtime to contain, train, diagnose, and treat all women who didn't fit an established mold, the Spiritualists, Stanton, Anthony, and Gage noted, "have always assumed that woman may be a medium of communication from heaven to earth, [and] that the spirits of the universe may breathe through her lips." Spiritualism offered a radical inversion, according empowerment and respect precisely to those who refused or were unable to toe the line.
I'm invested in "asylumpunk" because it's a framework I use for my crazy; spiritualism doesn't have any personal resonance, so on that level isn't as productive. But what a fertile concept for stories!
I'm familiar with asylum narratives about these anxieties (like Sucker Punch, like Emilie Autumn's music), but hadn't considered that spiritualist narratives could do similar work—Waters's Affinity is the only example I can think of, which is a lack worth remedy. I imagine gaslamp fantasy engages this, given the focus on the supernatural/fantastic and Victorian/Edwardian-era setting. I wonder how asylum narratives and spiritualist narratives could be overlapped; a few seconds of googling indicates a historical basis for it, spiritualist women committed (or arrested) in order to punish or control their behavior, ex. Louisa Lowe, Georgina Weldon. It's something worth my further thought and consumption.
What Emilie Autumn does in most all her music, but especially Fight Like a Girl; My Brightest Diamond's Something of an End; Sucker Punch; Caitlín R. Kiernan's Drowning Girl. Can we call this asylumpunk (like steampunk, like cyberpunk, like mythpunk) without entirely undermining it? The combined romanticization and anxiety and criticism of (depictions of) mental illness in women.
So we took you to the doctor
He said yeah it's a bad one
And there's such a shame about it
'Cause she's so pretty
The romanticization and fetishization and objectification comes from without, because that's how society views women—and mental illness echoes both what society views as valuable (weakness) and terrifying (acting out) in us. And we internalize it, so we use it to talk about ourselves. We reclaim it, even take comfort in it (that saving grace of our illness: that it is, in some way, beautiful). But we also engage with it in order to tear it down, because there's nothing beautiful or desirable or pale-waif-on-a-fainting-couch lovely about being crazy. We use it to criticize the way that society's hate for our gender and bodies and minds creates and aids our illness. We criticize the fact that illness becomes an excuse for even more dehumanization, for making the illness worse. We criticize both sweeping it (us) away, out of care, out of sight, and romanticizing the illness as something profound, while giving voice to how formative it can be.
It was beautiful and terrible
So beautiful and terrible
See also: Fight Like A Girl: thoughts on mental health, female sexuality, and Emilie Autumn.
