R.B. Lemberg's Blog, page 30

Kitchen gadgetry meme

This one has been going around.

Bold the ones you have and use at least once a year, italicize the ones you have and don’t use, strike through the ones you have had but got rid of.

I wonder how many pasta machines, breadmakers, juicers, blenders, deep fat fryers, egg boilers, melon ballers, sandwich makers, pastry brushes, cheese knives, electric woks, miniature salad spinners, griddle pans, jam funnels, meat thermometers, filleting knives, egg poachers, cake stands, garlic presses, margarita glasses, tea strainers, bamboo steamers, pizza stones, coffee grinders, milk frothers, piping bags, banana stands, fluted pastry wheels, tagine dishes, conical strainers, rice cookers, steam cookers, pressure cookers, slow cookers, spaetzle makers, cookie presses, gravy strainers, double boilers (bains marie), sukiyaki stoves, food processors, ice cream makers, takoyaki makers, and fondue sets languish dustily at the back of the nation’s cupboards.

Not sure what this exercise shows about me. I use tea strainers when I have no energy to brew a pot, more or less on most weekdays this semester. I have vintage margarita glasses I picked up for a song at an antique store, and serve lemon drop in them when people come over (I am justifiably famous for my lemon drop). I have a blender, which I use for blending things. 

Oh, yes, I cook everything from scratch. All I really need for cooking is a good pot, a good knife, and a spoon for stirring. A cutting board is nice to have, but I can go without. 

Oy gevalt!! Marginalized people are not letting non-marginalized people move on!

Yesterday I posted how I cannot deal with this Readercon shit anymore. But yeah, woke up at 3am-ish from pain (which sometimes happens to me, it's triggered by a combination of things) and lo and behold, a comment on my Aspie entry! A comment I needed so much!! The comment and my response are posted below. I am now beyond spoon bancruptsy on this, but those who want to comment please do so. Please don't hold back on the account of my spoon bancruptsy - because it is important to speak out, so those of you so inclined, please do. I may not be able to respond until spoons replenish.

Entry is Enough with the Aspie bit already. Written on July 29, not updated since, but people still link to it.

Comment, by adriennef :

All right. I'll throw myself on the fire.

I believe I was the first person to mention Asperger's on that thread. I had just read the article and the comments until that point. I was neither at Readercon nor did I know who Valentine was talking about at the time. Someone had recently described to me what Asperger's was so it was literally the first thing that came to my mind after I read her posting, which was well written. After learning that the masher was René Walling, any possibility that he was an Aspie was dismissed from my mind.

However, I'm at the point the point where I'm tired of hearing about this. Valentine has cited her case. The powers that be at Readercon eventually did the right thing and banned Walling from their convention for life. It's done. Can we move on?

My response: 

I have a few questions for you.

1. Why won't people leave Valentine alone, stop making victim-blaming, guilt-denying comments so that she can move on? When she can move on, I and others like me can move on.

2. Why won't people like you stop making casually hurtful, dehumanizing, dismissing, othering comments about neuroatypicals and people with cognitive disabilities, so that we can move on? Hint: it's up to you, not to me and people like me, to stop these comments. Hint number two: the comments are coming at us and our loved ones every single day.

3. You are neither Valentine, nor a person on the spectrum, nor a person with a cognitive disability, nor a person who is a primary caregiver to a person with such disability. I have made this entry on July 29th. I have not updated it since. People still keep coming and commenting. Those are the people who are in dire need of my message, who cannot move on, thanks to (2). As long as (2) is being perpetuated by people like you, they cannot move on. On the other hand, you are not affected. You can move on. So why won't you move on?

Cheers.

I am going back to sleep. Take care, all.

Poetry sale, and Readercon (not)

1. My poem FOXFOXFOX, dedicated to  alankria , will appear in the Fall 2012 issue of Goblin Fruit. 
1a. Yes, I really did send out a "submission: FOXFOXFOX" and received back a "We would be delighted to accept [FOXFOXFOX] for publication." (here's three cheers for the GF editorial team!)
1b. The poem's real title is "A body that is bold to come," which is a line from Ted Hughes' "Thought-Fox".

2. The current iteration of Readercon discussions is triggering me like whoa. I can no longer deal with it 100%, though I still read some entries (many I have had to stop reading in the middle). So if I am not commenting and/or writing, this is not because I do not care - it's the opposite - but because I have exausted my ability deal with this without breaking down. Apologies. 

A sudden increase in awesomeness

Yesterday I mentioned that my big fear is illustrated by this Tragedy Series episode, except that instead of the mysterious gentleman with a pistol, I have Mr. Cockroach (my inner critic) with his monocle.



This inspired selidor to produce this incredible work of art, titled "Don't disturb me, I'm writing." I have already pinned it above my desk!




Does selidor rock, or what?

On liminal identities, exclusion, and othering

The general writerly wisdom is that one should never respond to a bad critique. Yet I want to use this one, which is not a critique of my work, to highlight casual othering and exclusion in our communities.

Amal El-Mohtar, who is known to some of you as the editor of Goblin Fruit, Rhysling Award winner, Nebula nominee, and the author of the Honey Month, sometimes volunteers to read for PodCastle. I have a lot of respect for PodCastle, even though I am not much of an audiobook person due to aural processing difficulties. I read for pleasure, but listening to stories is work. So what I am about to say is not a critique of PodCastle.

Enough disclaimers.

Amal has recently recorded Daniel Abraham’s “A Hunter in Arin-Qin” for PodCastle. At the PodCastle forums discussion thread for this story,  one of the comments read: ”I’m not a fan of feigned ‘accents’ and this just felt so forced.”

The problem is, of course, that this is Amal’s real accent. Amal is Lebanese-Canadian living in the UK. Her accent is composite. This is how she speaks all the time.

This is, of course, of direct relevance to me: I am yet another person whose accent is composite; people have trouble placing me. It is also of direct relevance to Shweta Narayan, and to a number of other people here.

So yes, all you people with identifiable accents, please think about those of us with those composite, hyphenated identities, those who moved around, absorbed things, maybe lost their language(s) along the way to better fit into a world hostile to liminalities – please think about how it makes us feel to hear our accents – the very voices with which we speak – are feigned, are forced. Are not genuine. Are fake.

Are not real.

Our voices are not real enough, not recognizable enough to be ratified as real. Our voices do not exist. We do not exist.

You think I am taking this to far? Unfortunately I am not, as this not the only example of othering in this thread.

In the very next comment Amal comes in and says, “I’m sorry my reading didn’t hold your attention, but I’m not feigning an accent. That is how I speak.” At this moment, Amal is officially in the thread, present in the conversation.

Yet, a few comments below, she is referred to in the third person. Please peruse the conversation data yourself and see. One of the commenters says, “She is “A Canadian-born child of the Mediterranean….”" (emphasis mine, RL)

Referring to a person who is present in the conversation by the third person (especially the third person pronoun) during any conflict discourse is an exclusionary tactic. I have even written about this in my academic capacity. What it is doing, in sociolinguistic terms, is marking the person (in this case, Amal) as not a ratified participant in the conversation.

Amal herself calls the speakers out on this: “To everyone speculating about my accent — please, guys, stop. I’m right here! It’s weird to read about you trying to figure out my accent’s origins based on my bio as if I’m not participating in this conversation.”

Why does Amal even need to call people out on this? Why must a person’s native, composite accent be accused of falseness, fakery, forcedness? After the speaker comes in and corrects the accuser, why must the exact nature of her accent be questioned and discussed – between the ratified participants, as if Amal herself is not even here?

If you think this is the only occurrence of this, please think again. I have been on the receiving end of such questioning numerous times.  I have been on the receiving end of harassment because of my accent, in this community. We are not the only ones.

We are people. Just like you. Please think about this.

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

Stone Telling 8 is here!!

Stone Telling 8 ('Together, Apart') is an issue that we are especially proud of. It comes out at a personally difficult time for both of us, and it comes after three very focused themed issues. Frankly, I was apprehensive about having an open-themed issue follow these, but we feel that it works powerfully, building upon and elaborating on themes that are at the core of Stone Telling. I hope you enjoy this issue; please leave comments on poems and articles in the stonetellingmag community.



Special thanks, as always, go to our tireless assistant editor Jennifer Smith ( dormouse_in_tea ), and our indomitable interviewer Julia Rios ( skogkatt ), whom we also congratulate on her new role as a Strange Horizons fiction co-editor.

Voice and representation

This is important; and not because it mentions me. 

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Originally posted by ada_hoffmann at postI know, I know, the Internet is a neverending dramapile. But this weekend was the first time in a long time that I found myself actually in the thick of some (minor) public drama (not the Weird Tales one, just a discussion that went to a place I didn't like) and interacting with it. It was... strange. It made me think. A lot. And it made me go, "Holy crap I have no idea how to handle this."

What really made me stop and think was something rose_lemberg said to me afterwards. She said, "We are writers, and writers have a power to effect change."

Haters gonna hate. Wilfully clueless people gonna be wilfully clueless, whether you say nice things to them or mean things. The only classy thing to do is what Shimmer just did. To keep working on something that isn't hate.

Rose reminded me of this. And my eye went around 180 degrees, off of the drama, back on to myself. I didn't "get" social justice until a couple of years ago, if then. I've learned a lot. I know how to detect and point out fail, at least. But do I know how to work on something that isn't hate?

Do I believe I have a power to effect change?

"Movement" is on the Hugo ballot and it's still bugging me. (If you are new here and not sure why I would have a problem with "Movement", click here right now.) Answering by pointing out the problems is not enough. Where is the rest of my answer? Where is my authentic neuroatypical voice? How come I've sold nine full-length short stories and only two of them have a character with a brain like mine (and one of those is so subtle that I wasn't sure if she was autistic when I was writing it)?

Do I believe I can do almost anything an NT woman can do? Do I get frustrated with people who act like all we can do is go around angsting about our sensory sensitivities and worrying about "cures"? Do I have 24 years of my own authentic experiences to draw on plus a boatload of Aspie family and friends? Then why do I feel like coming up with stories "for autistic people" is HARD?

And where is my voice as a queer woman? Do I believe people like me deserve to have relationships? Then how come I still can't write a believable relationship (gay or straight) that doesn't end up going down in epically large flames?

No one is going to represent me properly if I won't do it myself.

Weird Fiction - we love it, and not just when the internets explode

So you have probably heard about the Weird Tales blowup regarding Marvin Kaye's vehement support of Save the Pearls (the entry is now deleted, but screenshots are available. Under pressure, the publisher issued an apology, which sounds sincere enough but is called out as bullshit by Jeff and Ann Vandermeer.

There is little I can say about this that has not been said already. My stance on Save the Pearls, and on WT's endorsement of it, will suprise none of my readers. WT was briliant, inspiring, and beautiful under Ann Vandermeer's editorship. Good-bye, you weird and wonderful magazine you.

If we as readers want odd, daring and yes, non-faily weird fiction to prosper, then let's support the venues that remain.

Weird fiction venues to consider endorsing:

Weird Fiction Review and various anthologies by the Vandermeers.

Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, and Small Beer Press in general.

Shimmer Magazine (who just went pro!)

Clockwork Phoenix edited by Mike Allen (we have just endorsed this so yay for us).

Innsmouth Free Press.

Dagan Books.

Please feel free to add recommendation in the comments.

Poetry, and Sofia Samatar

My Birdverse poem, “I will show you a single treasure from the treasures of Shah Niyaz,” will appear in the Summer 2013 issue of Goblin Fruit.

In other news, “The Moment of Change has been reviewed by Belle DiMonté at Cabinet des Fées: “This anthology is, quite simply, beautiful and transcendent in every sense.” Hurray for us!

A highlight of four pieces by Sofia Samatar: Burnt Lyric, at Goblin Fruit; Honey Bear at Clarkesworld; A Brief History of Nonduality Studies at Expanded Horizons; and The Hunchback’s Mother, at inkscrawl 4. Sofia has also revealed the wonderful cover of her forthcoming book, A Stranger in Olondria, at her blog; to say that I am waiting for it is an understatement.

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

FOXFOXFOX Lives!

Yesterday I received this postcard from alankria








This might be an in-joke, but I thought it might entertain some of you anyway. FOXFOXFOX lives!!