R.B. Lemberg's Blog, page 23

“Held Close…” is a finalist in BCS Readers poll

My queer Birdverse novelette “Held Close in Syllables of Light” is a finalist in the Beneath Ceaseless Skies readers’ poll. It is a story which is close to my heart and very important to me. The winning story will be included in The Best of BCS: Year Four.

If you feel so inclined, go vote for one of the finalists. The stories are:

“The Ivy-Smothered Palisade,” by Mike Allen

“One Ear Back,” by Tina Connolly

“Held Close in Syllables of Light,” Rose Lemberg

“Fox Bones. Many Uses.,” by Alex Dally MacFarlane

“Serkers and Sleep,” by Kenneth Schneyer

The voting closes on August 2nd.

Originally published at RoseLemberg.net. You can comment here or there.

Some Mel'nica

Tamerlane's Doors

for sovay



wanders the young crescent of the moon
with white mane down to his hooves,
with a gilded bridle.
the ringing of coins strung along
the Mongolian stirrups -
he is born of the winds
and spiced with the rains.

Over the pitcher's edge
milk is poured into the sky;
sleep, my love, fall asleep,
for tomorrow far we'll ride.

Seeking the dawn,
you left here unhurt,
but aren't you the one,
the only one who kissed me?

Oh, by Tamerlane's door
the new grass has grown;
am I not your arrow,
am I not your bowstring?
You are the fire's heart
and the song of the banners,
but you will leave me,
charmed by the steppes,
by the tents of the moons,
away - into the mist of the roads,
the heavenly horse-heard
and a heavy quiver.
Someone else's arrow,
the moon will break in half;
wormwood and ashes
for you, Tamerlane.

You shall stir the feathergrass
by the shores of others,
Your heat will cool like the gold
in a burial mound.

And I will embroider
the olive-colored linen,
and the ringing of my coin-necklaces
shall fall like tears;
forever faithful to the hoop of the fire,
I am not a sister to you,
I am not your wife.

Sociolinguistics panel follow-up (Readercon)

Our “Sociolinguistics and SFF” panel at Readercon went very well; the room was full, and some people had to stand. The panelists Anil Menon, Alex Dally MacFarlane, Sabrina Vourvoulias, and John Chu all had excellent things to say. We got great comments from the audience. Of course there wasn’t enough time, but overall I think the range of things discussed was just right for the first panel on the topic.

Some topics we covered:

-language and immigration; language shift in immigrant families

-linguistic hegemony; issues of prestige, literary vs. nonliterary dialects

-(briefly) language and colonialism

-language and gender

-SFF books that incorporate sociolinguistic issues, successfully or unsuccessfully

and during “Writing the Others 1: Theory” we talked about the following linguistic topics:

-incorporating languages other than English into fiction (who can do it; how to do it best)

-multilingual characters

-working with non-hegemonic English variants, including immigrant Englishes

-code-switching / code-mixing

I would like to propose a follow-up panel for Readercon 2014 on Sociolinguistics (and?) with a slightly different and if possible, narrower focus than this year’s. I am also toying with an idea of proposing a Sociolinguistics workshop. Regardless of whether you’ve attended this year’s Readercon and these panels, it would be excellent if you could comment and let me know what you’d like to discuss at the next year’s panel and workshop.

Please note that I want to keep discussing sociolinguistics, i.e. how language interacts with society. This is not an appropriate forum for constructed languages unless people want to discuss “constructed languages and society”, then I am game

Looking forward to your comments, and to next year!

Originally published at RoseLemberg.net. You can comment here or there.

Two short announcements

My flash length surrealist story, “Theories of Pain,” is up on Daily Science Fiction website today.

My prose poem “The Rotten Leaf Cantata” will appear in Strange Horizons later this year.

Originally published at RoseLemberg.net. You can comment here or there.

Readercon report

Readercon was wonderful. It was hands down the best con I have attended so far (out of a small sample, but I think it counts nonetheless).

PSA: If you have any pictures of me from Readercon, please do not post them online without my permission. Due to privacy issues, please do not put pictures of me on Facebook! Thanks.

Highlights of the con included:
-Seeing my terrific friends
-the awesome Alex Dally Macfarlane ( alankria ), who helped me navigate the con and made sure I was fed with Rose-appropriate foods and not lost.
-Meeting many online friends in the flesh for the first time! YAY
-Meeting so many wonderful new people, too many to list!
-panels, lovely wonderful panels, most of which I shared with Sabrina Vourvoulias, and this was a joy.
-Sociolinguistics panel in particular was a smashing success - it was packed (standing room only, and people could not get in). The panelists Anil Menon, Alex Dally MacFarlane, Sabrina Vourvoulias, and John Chu were outstanding. I am planning to do a follow-up panel next year.
-the con (to me) felt friendly to non-binary people; a few attendees asked me about my pronouns. This was lovely, and it was such a relief to drop my guard a little on that score.
-the con felt safe to me.
-the Mythic Poetry reading - I read "I will show you a single treasure from the treasures of Shah Niyaz," which, as I suspected, was extremely powerful - I am not saying this for the purposes of ego-boosting, because I was ever only a vehicle for this poem's power. By the end I could hardly stay upright, I was shaking so hard. It was very well received. At the same reading, I loved work by Sam Henderson, Lisa Bradley, and... well, everybody else :D IT was a terrific reading.
- At the open mic reading, I read "Baba Yaga tries to donate money" and people thought it was funny. I am glad, because I was blurry by that time.
- My Sunday reading at 9AM - I was sure I would have 1-2 people in the audience, but it was pretty full with people I knew and people I did not know (!!!) - I read from Bridgers. It seems to have gone well.
- readings by Greer Gilman ( nineweaving ), Sonya Taaffe ( sovay ), and C.S.E. Cooney ( csecooney ) were terrific. I wish I could attend more readings, but my aural processing was shot to hell.
- people seem to have read my "Care and Feeding" post, and though I ended up hugging a lot of people, I did not feel ambushed by touch as I so often do at cons. Between this and Alex's help, I was less disoriented/dizzy than usual at cons.
- Con organizers were very understanding of issues, and when I had to beg off one panel due to complete crash, there was no problem whatsoever. Thanks, rosefox !
-Breakfast buffet at Summer Winter - this was probably the best breakfast buffet I ever had.
-nobody ridiculed my accent

Lowlights:
-Travel to Boston was eventful; I was lucky to be only 8hrs delayed, not stranded altogether.
-Certain accessibility issues at the con that had to do mainly with food, and lack of a lobby (chairs were not always available in the corridor either). Overall most everything went smoothly for me because my friends took care of me. I ate Rose-appropriate foods and felt better than usual at cons.
-pain, dizziness, sensory issues - all better than during other cons, but I still had pain, dizziness, and sensory issues.
- was overbooked for panels, though I loved them all. I begged off the last panel (could not have been able to do it physically), but also I think that I should have begged off the Realism panel; I felt physically awful by that panel and not sure I made any sense beyond the Dostoyevsky line. This is something to remember for the future.
- Not enough time with Sonya Taaffe and so many other friends I was hoping to have tea/lunch/chats with.
-I was unable to attend any parties due to spoons and sensory overwhelm. This is normal.

Bottomline: I loved Readercon! It was a very well put together, worthwhile, satisfying con that was not perfect, but felt safe and welcoming. I plan to be back next year.

Care and Feeding of Rose at Readercon

Tomorrow I am leaving for Readercon, where I will be seeing many friends and new people - hurray! If we have never met IRL, please come by and introduce yourself.

Things you need to know about me if you would like to socialize with me.

I have a sensory integration dysfunction.
Loud, new environments are disorienting and confusing. I lose my way easily in new environments. I can get overwhelmed.

Established friends, you can help by hanging out with me and assuming I would appreciate a "native guide" to get places. If you told me you'd help, don't leave me, please. New people, you are welcome to hang out with me, but please do not offer to be a native guide unless I ask you to; it is disorienting.

Listening to my ipod helps with my SID/overwhelm. I might need put on my headphones (I usually tell people I need to do this). This is not because I am ignoring you/you are boring/I hate you. I am dealing with my SID.

I am often in pain
I have a back injury, shoulder and arm pain, and many other types of pain. I am in pain now, and flights exacerbate it. Which means that pain will be with me this Readercon.

How you can help: If you see me sitting down, acting catatonic, or attempting painfully to stretch - tea helps. Hot tea, the hotter the better, green or black is best, but any tea will do. I might not be able to answer your question on whether I need tea. Trying to engage me in conversation is not an effective strategy. Tea + staying with me until I say I'm better is very good. It usually does get better after 1-2 cups of tea have been ingested.

Touch
I do not engage in socially motivated touch with people I have never met. This means that if you are new and you want to give me a hug, you need to ask "Is it OK to give you a hug?" or similar, and not be offended if I say "maybe later." Please do not come at me with arms wide open. Established friends, you are very welcome to come to me with arms wide open. However, if we have not been huggy in the past, asking "Hug?" is good, makes me feel safe.

I am not anti-hugs. Hugs are awesome. But with the above caveats.

Please note I do not initiate touch unless it is with friends with whom touch is established. Even then, initiating touch is very difficult. With the exception of hugs and handshakes, I view touching to be an activity reserved for intimate partners. If you are a good friend I will accept touch, but I will not initiate it.

Food
I think things are mostly worked out? But just in case: I keep a variety of kashrut. It is not Orthodox strict, but I do not deviate from it. When outside my home, I eat vegetarian and kosher fish. I do not eat meat, poultry, or seafood. In addition, I react badly to gluten, tomatoes, and many types of dairy (especially in a stressful situations like a con). Sugary foods and processed foods are not my friends . I do love hot meals. Please do not offer me cakes, cookies, processed foods, cheese, etc. If you want to offer something, fruit is a yay. Not offering is also a yay.

Gender
I am genderqueer. I feel masculine more often than feminine. I am going through a femme period. I will be in skirts, dresses, and jewelry. I may be in jeans for a day or so, but I am not sure. Please do not assume that I am feeling female if I am in femme getups. Those are separate things. Please do assume that I am still genderqueer and queer when I am in femme getups.

I am also compelled to cover slightly more than my baseline. I am usually compelled to cover, but I sometimes wear short sleeved shirts. I have lately been wearing 3/4 and long sleeves. You may also see me wear a large shawl. "Aren't you hot in this?" is not an appropriate question.

Note re: observance, I am not observing shabbat at this juncture as a part of my "shabbaton from observance." (it is not a complete shabbaton, as can be seen from above).

My pronoun of choise is "she/her", but "they" is not unwelcome.

Personal status.
At this juncture in my life I am single. However, I am not looking for dates/partners because I am in conversations with someone. Unlike my ex-marriage, this is not a monogamous juncture in my life, which is to say I am more available than I have ever been as an adult. I am open to gentle discussions with friends at least in principle, but I am not open to anything more and may never be, depending on how things develop with my person down the road.

Looking forward to seeing you at Readercon!

harassers defending harassers

Apparently, F.J. Bergmann is now defending Jim Frenkel (on jimhines ' blog)

I am finally coming out to say that F.J. Bergmann harassed me during Wiscon36 for being a Russian and an immigrant. I have not spoken about this for the same reasons people are not speaking about harassment. I am speaking about it now because it is time. Time to expose harassers. Time to say that our spaces should make an effort to be safe from all kinds of harassment, not just sexual harassment.

I am going to be brief and to the point. This still hurts.

It happened during the launch of the Moment of Change anthology, an anthology of intersectional feminist poetry featuring work of Ursula K. Le Guin, Amal El-Mohtar, Nisi Shawl, JT Stewart, Sofia Samatar, Sonya Taaffe, and other brilliant established and upcoming feminist poets. F.J.Bergmann came in with a group of people. Background to this is that Bergmann hates me because of my opposition to this racist poem (as described by Amal) and other perceived offenses.

After some poems were read, Bergmann got up. She then proceeded to read, while looking at me, from her laptop, a poem. It was about a Russian mail-order bride who tricks her poor American husband; she is secretly a Baba Yaga, also a Ph.D. Birds were mentioned. The mail-order Baba Yaga's Russian accent was mocked.

The delivery was very clearly aimed at me. It was about me as a deceitful Baba Yaga with a Russian accent who has a PhD and loves birds. (I do not know if she wrote it specifically with me in mind or not; I know only what I heard).

Saira Ali ( sairaali ), who was in the audience, summarizes her reaction thusly: " The way I heard that poem it was both anti-immigrant and anti-rose-in-particular *and* anti-semitic." (on twitter, see Storify).

The storify of my tweets on this matter is here, with additional tweets from allies and clarifying comments from editor and writer Alex Dally MacFarlane.

My witnesses are Sofia Samatar, Saira Ali, Lisa M. Bradley, Shira Lipkin, Alex Dally MacFarlane, Gwynne Garfinkle, Emily Jiang, and a whole room full of other people. Witnesses, if you are comfortable, I will appreciate comments here corroborating my story and/or adding/correcting it.

Weasels, monkeys, fish, oh my

Disclaimer: this is not prescriptive. This is about my boundaries. I am not telling you what to do.

My mother's pet name for my father is ryba, which means fish. Sometimes she uses diminutives - rybka, rybochka - but most usually it is just ryba. They've been married for 41 years, through immigration and stroke and my father's disability. My dad cannot speak now, so ryba could potentially acquire negative connotations, but in her mouth it does not, because she's lovingly called him ryba for 41 years. However, if a stranger - in fact, anyone else but my mother - would suddenly call him ryba, especially now that he cannot talk, well, that would not end well.

Last year, we had a falling-out with one of my son's therapists. She was wonderful in oh so many ways, and Mati loved her, but she was also deeply problematic in other ways (she had a history of neglecting children under her care while left unsupervised, and other issues we were not aware of). She has taken to calling my minimally verbal child a "monkey." When I asked her not to do this anymore, she said she did so lovingly. My son will be seven in a few weeks. He can say "what will be on your plate?" when he is hungry and "are you done?" when he is full, but he is still having trouble telling me when something hurts. Recently he correctly, if hesitantly, answered "yes" to "Did you swim in the pool today?" which is more than he was able to ever tell me about his day. Yet he is very smart, loves snacks, and likes to run around, climb into things, and jump. So what does it mean when a therapist "lovingly" calls this child a monkey, a word with many negative connotations that has historically been directed at people with mental illness, foreigners, people of color? I found it extremely dehumanizing. She also called him "crazy."

I often compare my child to a kitten or a cat. I do not call him a kitten, but I sometimes say "Mati is like a kitten, because..." - he likes to be left alone, not chased after. He likes to lounge and play on his own. But if you leave him alone companionably, he will eventually come to you and investigate. If you're not in his face, he will find it easier to like you. He often likes to be hugged and kissed on his terms, but does not like it when others initiate affection. He also LOVES, LOVES, LOVES cats, to which he is unfortunately allergic. "Cat" or "kitten" also does not (to me) have the negative connotations that "monkey" has, so saying "Mati is like a kitten" does not upset me. But I do not say this often, because this too is not unproblematic. He is a person, a human being whose personhood is often not fully recognized because he is so different from other people in his cognitive development. I want to be careful.

Not all comparisons to animals are dehumanizing. In relation to Mati, I often view myself as the Mama Bear. I also love birds, and the firebird is my bird, so if you call me a firebird I will not view this as problematic, but rather as wonderful. But if you call me a cow because I am fat, well, that would be dehumanizing.

The problem with calling your opponents dogs, monkeys, rats, weasels, cows, or any other pejorative animal term is denial of personhood. You did this terrible thing? Oh you animal! But no. People do these terrible things. People perfectly capable of speech, of moral action, of knowing right from wrong. When I hear an animal pejorative term, I hear not only dehumanization, I hear "a real person would never do this." But people do. Not animals. People.

I fully respect your right to use whatever words you want to use. These are your words, not mine. I am not telling you what to do. I am not admonishing you. I am telling you what I find personally offputting, so that you can respect my boundaries. I abhor the actions of the SFWA "old guard" and oppose everything they stand for. But the word "weasels" does not amuse me. So for chrissakes - for the sakes of Moses and Miriam the Prophetess if you must - stop pointing out articles about "SFWA weasels" to me. I don't like it. Thanks.

Note: people who will come here to tell me I am overreacting shall be malleted. People who come here to tell me I do not know how to use the English language will be malleted and banned. Thanks.

SFWA

Reposting two tweets from yesterday, because I want you to know about this:

Rose Lemberg ‏@RoseLemberg
I have just sent my resignation from SFWA to Mr. Gould. I feel it is unethical for me (not to mention extremely draining) to remain.


Rose Lemberg ‏@RoseLemberg
I do not want to discuss my decision, nor do I want any fuss over it. I am a spoonie. Please respect my spoons. Thanks.


Comments are closed.

My Readercon schedule

Hurray! I have a Readercon schedule. In fact, it feels like I am on All the Panels… Those are some awesome panels!

If you can only make one, please come to the Socioling panel. It will be fabulous, and it is a useful thing for writers. I would also be happy if you came to my reading. Birdverse is cool and full of linguistics.

Friday July 12

12:00 PM G Writing Others I: Theory. Michael J. DeLuca, Andrea Hairston, Rose Lemberg, Maureen F. McHugh, Daniel José Older, Joan Slonczewski (leader), Sabrina Vourvoulias. Authors who want to write outside their own experiences of race, ethnicity, culture, gender, and sexuality face a multitude of challenges. How do we present each character’s unique perspective while celebrating their distinctive identity and avoiding stereotypes and appropriation? How is the research and writing process affected by differences between the author’s and the character’s levels of societal privilege? Is it possible to write about future diversity without oppression, or does today’s reality require us to write in today’s frame? Which authors have handled this well, and what form does “handling this well” take?

1:00 PM G Writing Others II: Practice. Michael J. DeLuca, Rose Lemberg, Daniel José Older, Joan Slonczewski, Sarah Smith. This practical discussion, led by Joan Slonczewski and Michael J. DeLuca, is for writers who have read Writing the Other, or otherwise carefully studied the pitfalls of cultural appropriation, and decided to take the plunge of writing about people whose experiences differ significantly from the author’s. How does one go about acquiring sufficient understanding of another culture, gender, or sexuality to write about it respectfully, productively, and effectively? We’ll discuss research techniques and writing methods used by successful writers of the other, as well as problems and solutions we’ve encountered in our own work. Attending “Writing Others I: Theory” is recommended.

5:00 PM F Agency and Gender. Eileen Gunn, Maria Dahvana Headley (leader), Rose Lemberg, Maureen F. McHugh, Paul Park. When we talk about women’s agency in literature we’re often talking about violence: fighting off a would-be rapist or choosing to risk her life in battle, for instance. Men’s agency is frequently demonstrated in a wider variety of ways. The notion of agency itself varies from one culture to another. How do cultural perspectives on gender and cultural concepts of agency inform characters’ choices and the results of those choices? How are decisions related to cultural assumptions of gender (whom to sleep with, what to wear) portrayed differently from decisions unrelated to cultural gender?

7:00 PM ME Sociolinguistics and SF/F. John Chu, Rose Lemberg (leader), Alex Dally MacFarlane, Anil Menon, Sabrina Vourvoulias. Sociolinguistics studies the ways in which language intersects with society. It looks at issues such as interactions of language with power, prestige, gender, hegemony, and literacy, bilingualism and multilingualism, translation, language birth, and language death to name but a few. We will look specifically at the kinds of tensions that are created in societies where people speak different languages or dialects depending on social and racial/ethnic status. We will also discuss genre books in which those topics have been explored, and consider sociolinguistics tools and concepts that may be useful to writers.

Saturday July 13

12:00 PM G Friendship Is Magic. E.C. Ambrose, Rose Lemberg, Kathryn Morrow (leader), JoSelle Vanderhooft, Sabrina Vourvoulias. Heroes have friends and companions, while villains only have minions. Stern protagonists can be softened by romantic attachments that draw them back into the community, but the plot also requires that they be special, isolated by some terrible burden of privilege or unshareable secret. Loner stories are episodic (the gunslinger rides off to the next town, the gumshoe slouches off to the next case) while going from solitude to connection is perhaps the most common character development. This panel will examine how cultural narratives and values around heroism, personal development, sex and gender, class, family, and community affect the ways we write and read about being alone and being connected.

3:00 PM NH Mythic Poetry Group Reading. Mike Allen, Leah Bobet, C.S.E. Cooney, Gemma Files, Gwynne Garfinkle, Andrea Hairston, Samantha Henderson, Nicole Kornher-Stace, Rose Lemberg, Shira Lipkin, Alex Dally MacFarlane, Dominik Parisien, Caitlyn Paxson, Julia Rios, Romie Stott, Sonya Taaffe, JoSelle Vanderhooft. Over the past decade, speculative poetry has increasingly turned toward the mythic in subject matter, with venues such as Strange Horizons, Goblin Fruit, Mythic Delirium, Stone Telling, Cabinet des Fées, Jabberwocky, and the now-defunct Journal of the Mythic Arts showcasing a new generation of poets who’ve redefined what this type of writing can do. This reading will feature new and classic works from speculative poetry’s trend-setters.

6:00 PM F Readercon Blog Club: “The Uses and Value of Realism in Speculative Fiction”. Elizabeth Bear (leader), John Crowley, Rose Lemberg, Scott Lynch. In response to the Readercon 23 panel “Why Is Realistic Fiction Useful?”, Chris Gerwel wrote a blog post exploring the aesthetic uses of realism in spec fic and other literature. He says, “To be effective, fiction must communicate or reveal something true…. That truth is not necessarily factual (such-and-such happened), but is rather more nebulous and insightful (such-and-such could have happened).” Gerwel goes on to argue that “realistic” descriptions of fantastic things can be a way to help the audience to deal with these concepts, giving them better access to the underlying metaphors of a dragon or a spaceship. He closes by saying, “I believe that quotidian speculative fiction has its place in the genre. And that is precisely because it speaks to different truths than most speculative fiction: it speaks to the little heroisms of daily life, and to the practical challenges that arise from our human and social natures” an idea that echoes discussions of early science fiction stories written by women, and offers an alternative to the conflation of “realistic” and “gritty.” We’ll discuss the place of the quotidian in speculative fiction and other aspects of Gerwel’s complex and intriguing essay, which resides at http://elflands2ndcousin.com/2012/07/....

Sunday July 14

9:00 AM VT Reading: Rose Lemberg. Rose Lemberg. Rose Lemberg reads excerpt from the secondary-world fantasy novel Bridgers, as well as a few poems set in the same universe.

10:00 AM RI Gender and Power in Literature and Life. E.C. Ambrose, Cathy Butler, Eileen Gunn, Rose Lemberg, Daniel José Older (leader), Sabrina Vourvoulias. This workshop, led by Daniel José Older, is a critical look at different ways that gender and power shape our realities and experiences of the world. With examples from the writing process and fantastical literature in particular, we will deconstruct dynamics of power and privilege on the gender spectrum.

Originally published at RoseLemberg.net. You can comment here or there.