Brendan Halpin's Blog, page 6

Unfair Harvard, or The Rich Have Sharp Elbows

Here's a thing that happened:

A young man who was in the high school improv troupe with my older daughter is in an improv troupe at Harvard.  Last night his troupe was having a free performance with special guest Keegan Michael Key.

I wound up being the unpaid transportation from another teen obligation miles away (I call my service "Unter"), so I went along to the event. We were told to get there early, as there was sure to be a crowd.

We arrived at 6:50 for an 8 o'clock show. We got in line--I'd say we were about 200 people back, and the auditorium holds 350. Great! 

We stood there as more and more people got in line behind us. The line wrapped around in a U shape until the people who arrived about 7:15 were standing just a few feet away from the beginning of the line.

When the doors to the auditorium opened at 7:20, the Harvard students ignored the line and rushed the doors in a chaotic mob.

To make a long story short, we stood crushed in a mob of rich kids for about half an hour and ultimately didn't get in. 

Now, this is far from a tragedy and not even an outrage. 

But it did disturb me. 

Here's why: I know not everybody who goes to Harvard is rich.  But I do know this: 35% of Harvard students receive no financial aid for the $64k tuition. Harvard has a 32 billion dollar endowment. The great majority of Harvard students have enjoyed lives of tremendous privilege. They are surrounded by the best facilities of any university and the top minds in their fields. In a few years, they will be running the country and the world.

And they nearly trampled me to get into a free show.

It shouldn't surprise me, given how the oligarchs in our country behave, that their children act the same way. But it was striking to get such a naked example of the values the wealthy in this country impart to their children: take what you can grab, and the hell with everybody else; and rules are for suckers.  

There's an implied social contract in a line, but screw that--come in late and shove your way past all the suckers who are dumb enough to follow the rules. Harvard students have clearly learned their parents' ethics well.

I'd say it was shameful, but you can't shame the shameless.

Authors vs. Bloggers IV: The Bloggening!

For a pair of symbiotic species, YA authors and book bloggers don't seem to get along very well.

I'm not going to recap all the recent controversies, but if you are curious, Google "Kathleen Hale" and then "Stacey Jay Kickstarter" and maybe "Amy Spalding Bingo."

All these things make me sad. Though I am an author, I also write occasionally very critical reviews on Goodreads. I review everything I read and am not always kind when I don't like a book. And I'm friendly with a lot of people in both camps. So it pains me to see people I've had pleasant conversations with firing subtweets at each other for days at a time.

I couldn't figure out why authors and bloggers seem to resent each other so much when they need each other so much, until I saw a blogger's reaction, I think to the Amy Spalding Bingo card, where they said she was "punching down," which is to say attacking those less powerful than she is.

This made me realize something: both authors and book bloggers see themselves as the less-powerful, stomped-on, justifiably-aggrieved party. Both are right, and both are full of shit. 

Authors:

You're right. pretty much everybody shits on authors online. Agents write snarky tweets about your queries and send you robo-rejections, editors snark about your mistakes, and readers shit on your books, some with fair criticisms, sometimes with idiotic ones. And you're just supposed to take it on all fronts because you need all of these people, and God forbid any of them think you're not a doormat. Sometimes an unfair review (by which I mean one that says, "yeah, this isn't the book I would have written. Now here are 25 reaction gifs" ) will dominate the Goodreads or Amazon page for your book. And if you ever dare to say anything about this in public, if you ever do anything other than lie down and silently take the abuse, you'll find a mob of caps-lock wielding angry tweeters telling you how WRONG you are and congratulating you for KILLING YOUR CAREER. Which is a funny word choice because your hourly wage as an author is most likely less than you could pull in by making lattes.

You're also full of shit: Your name is on a book. Lots of people dream of that shit, and you get to live it. When you meet people at parties and you tell them what you do, they are impressed by you.  You may get to go to events at libraries and bookstores and have people tell you how awesome you are. You probably have gotten at least one email from a reader telling you how much your work affected them. That shit is priceless.  And speaking of prices, you actually get paid to make up stories, which is pretty much the sweetest gig in the world.  So shut the fuck up.

Bloggers: You're right. You work really hard reviewing an ass-ton of books, and when you love a book, nobody is a fiercer advocate than you. Your enthusiasm is critical to getting books to bigger audiences and makes money for both authors and publishers.And what kind of thanks do you get? Very little. The approval of a few fellow bloggers, maybe, but not really any significant money, and certainly not any prestige. When you tell people at parties that you maintain a blog, they are not impressed. Nobody invites you to speak at libraries and bookstores; in fact, you're usually the audience at those things! The entire YA industry depends on your free labor, and nobody is appropriately grateful. Indeed, you'll often find someone whose book you actually liked taking cheap shots at bloggers, which feels a lot like a kick in the teeth.

You're also full of shit: I know you buy books (a lot of books! Don't yell at me!), but you also get an ass-ton of books for free. Do you think you get 500 bucks worth of free books per year? Congratulations! Monetarily, you're doing better than 30% of authors do. Also, at the same time you claim to be powerless, you're pretty quick to threaten people's careers when you don't like something they've said, and you're very good at summoning an angry mob to flood people's Twitter and Facebook with disapproval.  That's power, folks. Also: authors depend on you to help publicize their books. John Green and Veronica Roth don't need you, but most of the rest of the sorry bunch of brokeass authors do, and I think you probably know this.

So here we are with two groups of awesome, flawed, passionate, petulant people who need each other and are frequently at odds, lashing out at each other resentfully.  What can we do to get past this?

Well, I have a suggestion: maybe both groups can realize the advantages that come from the path they've chosen.  And if it's sometimes very annoying to depend on other people with different interests than you, well, welcome to life as a social animal. This is pretty much how we do everything.  

And please remember: we're all in this because we love stories.  We are all passionate about stuff we like and about stuff we don't like. And we all need to chill the fuck out--none of this shit is life-or-death. If you're spending hours at a time sending angry tweets or composing the perfect takedown, go take a fucking walk or something and remind yourself that there are more important things than somebody online hurting your delicate feelings. 

Or here's an idea: every time you want to take to the internet to complain about a rogue blogger or author, go read a book instead. Or go write one. Or both. 

Snowed In? Don't Read!

You may have heard that a rather sizeable snowstorm is approaching the East Coast.   Those of you stuck in the house may be tempted to binge read a stack of books, but I'm hoping you will find some loftier pursuits: television.

Don't just entertain yourself; be virtuous!  Sure, books are endlessly entertaining, but television is good for you, like exercise and kale! That's why so many people sign up for "watching challenges," making a public promise to watch a certain amount of TV shows in a year.  Nobody needs a "challenge" to read books; we just do it, mindlessly. I mean, we've all been there, right? You pick up a book, and before you know it, you're four books in to a seven book series, wondering where your afternoon went.

 That's why we need challenges to remind us of the importance of television. And let's be clear: we need to stop judging each other's watching habits. If you're watching Two Broke Girls or Ancient Aliens, well, at least you're watching television. And that should be celebrated.

I know how tempting it might be to read some books over the next few days, but please, please, do what's good for you:  watch TV.

And if you can't watch TV, at least play a video game.  Thank you.

Important Movies Suck

Was thinking, a propos of my complete lack of interest in seeing Selma, about how "important" movies are usually terrible.

Typically released in the fall, "important" movies aim to make the audience feel good about itself for having seen the movie. Note that this is very different from actual entertainment. I suppose it is a pleasure that art can offer, but it's a fundamentally evanescent one.  

One of the sad things about the Oscars is that it's an annual reminder of Hollywood not having any idea what it's good at.  Hollywood at Oscar time is like Sting in the late 80's: "I write genius pop rock songs; lemme do some smooth jazz!"

Hollywood has always done comedies and action movies well, and used to do horror movies well, though that's mostly stopped. Dramas have typically not been very good. (caveat: unless they are really violent.) Interestingly, TV turns out to be a much better medium for actual drama. Most of the decent serious drama happening these days is on TV.  

So, anyway, I thought I'd go through the Best Picture Oscar winners for a few years when I paid close attention to movies and explain how these picks demonstrate my contention that important movies suck. 

1978: Annie Hall. Probably the best of Woody Allen's "Post-funny" comedies. But dude. Star Wars was eligible in this year. Come on. Also: Suspiria. Other than that, not a great year for movies.

1979: The Deer Hunter. The baby boom generation spent years fellating itself with Vietnam movies, of which this is the absolute worst. A ponderous snoozefest with one iconic scene that doesn't redeem it. 1978 was actually a great year for movies, and featured one of the bare handful of perfect movies ever released.  That movie was Halloween, which time has shown to be the best movie of 1978; indeed, possibly the best movie of all time. Other 1978 movies better than The Deer Hunter include: Animal House. Cheech & Chong's Up in Smoke. Dawn of the Dead. Drunken Master. Foul Play. Heaven Can Wait. The Wiz.

1980: Kramer vs. Kramer. It was "important" because it took on the "controversial" issue of "divorce."   Honestly. That was the world we lived in. Meanwhile, this year brought another of the best horror movies of all time: Alien, which should have won. Other movies from 1979 actually worth watching today include: Apocalypse Now. Life of Brian. The Muppet Movie. The Warriors. The Jerk. Rock & Roll High School.

1981: Ordinary People. Some bullshit about a kid who fell out of a boat or something. Movies from the same year you might actually want to watch: The Empire Strikes Back, which should have won. Caddyshack. Airplane! Superman II.

1982: Chariots of Fire. Guys run on the beach in slow motion while music plays. So, basically, a gender-flipped Baywatch, but with British accents & the fetishization of both sports and religion, so you can see why it won. Movies from this year you might actually want to watch include Raiders of the Lost Ark, which obviously should have won; Stripes; The Howling; Escape From New York; Time Bandits.

1983: Ghandi: probably the blueprint for the Oscar bait biopic: if it's a 3-hour-long costume drama, it has to be good for you! Better movies from this year include: The Road Warrior, which should have won; Fast Times at Ridgemont High; Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan; Creepshow; 48 Hours; Poltergeist; Blade Runner.

1984: Terms of Endearment. Soap opera remarkable only in that it marked Jack Nicholson's transition from mannered, affected actor to leering self-parody. Better movies from this year include Vacation, which should have won; Return of the Jedi; Monty Python's Meaning of Life; The Man With Two Brains; Trading Places.

1985: Amadeus. Won because classical music is "important." Not horrible, but too long, and one of the weakest movies of an extraordinary year that included: This is Spinal Tap, which should have won; Ghostbusters; Gremlins; The Karate Kid; Beverly Hills Cop; A Nightmare on Elm Street; The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension; Star Trek III: The Search for Spock; Sixteen Candles.

1986: Out of Africa. It starred Meryl Streep and Robert Redford. It was "important" because it was about white people being affected by Africa. I guess. Literally no one saw this movie. I have no idea how it won anything. Movies that were better in this year included The Breakfast Club, which should have won; Pee Wee's Big Adventure; Real Genius; Return to Oz; Fright Night; The Sure Thing; Desperately Seeking Susan; Return of the Living Dead; After Hours; Better Off Dead.

1987: Platoon. See "baby boomers fellating themselves about Vietnam" above. Charlie Sheen, like America, loses his innocence, and Willem Defoe is Christlike. Nobody has watched this movie all the way through since 1990. Better movies from the same year include: Blue Velvet, which should have won; Aliens; Stand By Me; Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home; Big Trouble in Little China; Labyrinth; The Fly.

1988:The Last Emperor. Stultifying period piece about China. I actually sat through this and remember nothing about it except that it was quite possibly the longest movie ever made. Better ones from this year include: The Princess Bride, which should have won; Evil Dead II: Dead by Dawn; RoboCop; The Untouchables; Angel Heart.

1989: Rain Man. A movie that's actually entertaining that masqueraded as "important" due to autistic character. The least bad winner so far, but A Fish Called Wanda should have won. Other good movies from this year include Beetle Juice; Big; Who Framed Roger Rabbit?; Die Hard; The Naked Gun.

1990: Driving Miss Daisy. "Important" because it starred an old lady who hadn't won anything and also made white people feel better about being racist. Better movies from this year include Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, which should have won; Scenes From the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills, which is awesome and as close to a lost movie as anything released in the last 30 years can be in that it is currently unavailable to watch in any format other than VHS, and good luck finding that; Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure; Big; Heathers.

 1991: Dances With Wolves. Costume Drama. 3 Hours Long. Made white people feel better about being racist.  Really no way it couldn't win. Even up against Goodfellas, which should have won. Other movies better than the winner released in this year include Wild at Heart, Edward Scissorhands, Tremors, and Misery.

In 1992, The Silence of the Lambs won Best Picture, which actually seemed like the right pick at the time, even though 22 years later the assumption that the serial killer is driven to kill because transgender seems hateful and embarrassing. History will judge us harshly for this one, and we deserve it.  But still, there's no denying that in this case, they picked a movie that was iconic and that has lines that still resonate in popular culture. (Mostly "it puts the lotion on its skin," for some reason.) Other good movies from this year include Cape Fear, Terminator 2, The Addams Family, and Ernest Scared Stupid.  Just kidding about that last one.  

All of which is to say I'm not seeing Selma, which, given the year in race relations and the whole "makes white people feel better about being racist" factor, is probably a shoo-in for Best Picture. And in ten years, nobody else will be watching it either.

Stuff I Liked in 2014

I'm  not doing a "best of," because, as tempting as it is to insist that my opinions constitute the definitive guide to what's best, well...I dunno. Maybe it's getting old or something, but I've really come to appreciate that what I like is not what everyone likes.  So here's the stuff I liked this year. As always, it's not necessarily the stuff that came out this year, but this year is the time when I enjoyed it. 

Books:

I read more books this year than I have in a long time.  Not sure why, but I'll take it.  Here are the ones I liked best this year, with links to my Goodreads reviews.  They're listed in chronological order of when I read them.

Scott Lynch--Red Seas Under Red Skies

James Oswald--Natural Causes

Lawrence Wright--Going Clear

Michael G. Munz--Zeus is Dead: A Monstrously Inconvenient Adventure

Holly Black--The Coldest Girl in Coldtown

Kelly Link--Get in Trouble

Jill MacLean--The Hidden Agenda of Sigrid Sugden

Frank Portman--King Dork,  Approximately

Alisa Libby--The Blood Confession

I read a lot more books that I liked, some that I was meh about, and one or two that I hated.  If you wanna check out the full list of stuff I read in 2014, you can find it here.

 

TV and Movies:

I saw hardly any new movies this year.  Which is weird; I used to go to the movies on a weekly basis.  Now I'm pretty out of touch with movies. And most TV, to be honest.  Most of the movies I watch are old horror movies that aren't very good, which seem to be the comfort food I crave the most.  And  while the TV is on in my house fairly frequently, it's usually showing something that someone else has chosen.  Still, I have these:

American Horror Story: Freakshow. Not as good as Coven or Murder House, but better than Asylum, but here's the thing: even when AHS is not firing on all cylinders, it's still better and weirder than most stuff on TV.  And the cast is absolutely fantastic. Special props to Ryan Murphy for giving Jessica Lange and Kathy Bates the kind of big meaty roles that women that age rarely get.  I love the way the ensemble pops up in different roles in each season, and I love how dark and odd it is. Whoever decided to go all Baz Luhrman this season and throw in some anachronistic musical numbers was horribly horribly misguided.

Guardians of the Galaxy: I think this is the only movie I saw in theaters this year.  Saw it in IMAX. Totally worth it.  Fantastic movie.

The Twilight Zone: The whole original series is on Netflix. I've seen a lot of them before, but I've been watching a lot recently. It's stunning how good they are.  Even the bad episodes are pretty good--the writing and acting are always good.  And it's amazing, once you start watching, how you recognize the show's colossal influence on popular culture in the last 50 years. I'm not just talking about Simpsons Treehouse of Horror episodes--I'm talking, books, comics, tv,  and even that thing Dr. Evil did with his pinky.  I don't think it's overstating to say Rod Serling is one of the most influential figures in 20th century art of any kind.

Quincy, M.E.--Yes, the Jack Klugman vehicle.  The fashion is, of course, awesome, and Jack Klugman's yelling is awesome, but what is interesting and surprising about the show  is how non-formulaic it is.  One of the reasons I like crime dramas like Law & Order (I'm a Criminal Intent man, myself) or  Criminal Minds is because the formulaic predictability is comforting and not challenging.  Quincy, though, isn't just corpse-of-the-week. Well, there is a corpse of the week, but the story goes in all kinds of different directions from there.  I don't know if this would be compelling to watch if  you didn't have fond memories of watching it as a kid, but I like it.  Also, you can thank Jack Klugman and Quincy M.E. for publicly shaming Orrin Hatch and getting the orphan drug law passed.  (read all about it here.) My mom takes a drug whose manufacture was made possible by this law in order to stay alive.  So, thanks  Jack Klugman! 

Music

I don't have a lot of albums to recommend because I  didn't listen  to too many whole albums this year. But here  are some songs I liked:

"Milwaukee" and "Volunteers of America"--The Both. As a big Ted Leo fan, I was pretty excited about this project, which is Ted Leo and Aimee Mann. I thought it would be like a Ted Leo album with great harmonies; instead it's more like an Aimee Mann album with some impressive guitar work.  But still, these two songs are great,  and exactly what I wanted from this collaboration.

"Avant Gardener"--Courtney Barnett. Because the world needed a song about anaphalaxis. 

"Shake it Off"-- Taylor Swift. I  know. I know. But this is a ridiculously catchy, nearly perfect pop song.  And my coworkers really appreciate it when I sing this in the office.

"Gotta Get Away"--The Black Keys. I think this is the first reference to San Berdoo in popular music since Creedence's "Sinister Purpose."

"I'm Not the Only One"--Sam Smith. Just an incredible old-school soul song with an amazing chorus. 

Comics:

(I'm mostly reading comics acquired through the Humble Bundle because the price is unbeatable. I also go and read graphic novels in the library sometimes.)

Pretty much anything written by Gail Simone, especially Batgirl and Red Sonja.

Dynamite's Pathfinder comics are tons of fun--not meta at all, just a really great adventure story featuring a party comprised of Pathfinder's iconic class  characters.  

Games:

On my tablet, I play Marvel pinball kind of obsessively.  I briefly held a world top-5  score on the Blade table. 

I was dangerously addicted to Marvel Puzzle Quest for a while.

I also bought Shadowrun Returns and found it a pretty absorbing game that's probably more fun if you're familiar with the tabletop version.

Speaking of which, I'm still playing Shadowrun regularly, though my superhero group has switched from Mutants & Masterminds to Icons: Assembled, which is probably the best, and simplest superhero RPG I've played.

I'm running D&D 5e for teens in an afterschool library program--I love the new books and the new rules.  Using the Hoard of the Dragon Queen campaign for my group, and it's a good story with a nice mix of investigation and hacking and slashing, though it has to be said my teen group leans heavily on the hacking.

If you didn't order Timewatch by my friend Kevin Kulp on his Kickstarter, you should totally buy it when it comes out. I've had the opportunity to play several times, and it is ridiculously fun.

 

 

 

Why Social Justice is Losing the Internet, Part 1

I've devoted a pretty significant part of my adult life to working for social justice. I'm not going to slap a label on it, but I believe that everybody deserves to be treated fairly and compassionately, and I believe factors you can't control should not determine your destiny.

So I'm sad because of all the ways that social justice is losing the internet.  

 

1. Recto-crainial inversion, or thinking justice means never getting your feelings hurt.

This is the most common failing of "social justice" activism on the internet. 

In a time when economic inequality is increasing and the very rich are looting the country, people spend a lot of time on the internet complaining about jokes they don't like. 

People should not say dumb shit that hurts your feelings.  But you shouldn't confuse getting your feelings hurt with being oppressed.

Here's an example: when I was young and broke, (well, I should probably say "even more broke") I looked into sperm bank donation as a possible supplement to my income. I did not get very far because I am 5'5". Sperm banks deem my height to be a defect so significant as to render my DNA worthless.  This is dumb, and even a little hurtful, but as a straight, white, college-educated cisgender man, it would also be dumb for me to make a career complaining about how society is out to get me because I'm short. I have plenty of other advantages.

Similarly, if you, no matter how you identify, are an adult in the US with a bachelor's degree, congratulations: more than two-thirds of Americans do not have one. Given how strongly education correlates to income, and given that our economic system is built on oppressing the poor, if you have a bachelor's degree, you are the oppressor in this country.  

And I suspect that a lot of the "activism" coming from people in the oppressor class stems from a desire to avoid confronting your complicity in oppression. If you keep pointing at other people as the ones who create problems, you don't have to look at the problems you are creating, or at the systems of oppression you are benefiting from.  

Everyone deserves physical safety, but the fact that somebody hurt your feelings by saying something stupid to you at Harvard doesn't really count as a social justice issue, because you go to Harvard and will for the rest of your life be complicit in oppressing the poor of the United States and possibly the world.  

Rainbow Rowell recently tweeted this: "You're sick of "feminism"? Well, I'm sick of making less money, feeling like my body is community property, and feeling shamed & harassed."  

Rainbow Rowell has two bestselling novels and a movie deal. She makes a lot of money.  More money than at least 99% of people in this, the richest nation on earth.  Her complaint about making less money is so out of touch as to be actually offensive.

As for the rest of it--I think her choice of words is telling.  Feminism isn't about women having the same chance as men to control their own bodies and destinies--nope. It's about feelings.

So let's not talk about how the apparel industry is built on the exploitation of poor women (but actually read this, because it's awesome); let's not talk about the choices that low-wage single mothers have to make between being physically present for their children and making enough money to actually feed them; hell, let's not even talk about some poor girl in a rural county who's pregnant and can't afford the five-hour bus ride to a place where she can get an abortion. Because what's really important is a rich woman's feelings.

Is your vision of a just society one in which nobody gets their feelings hurt?  Because mine is more about people having enough to eat and a roof over their head and physical safety.

Not at all coincidentally, if your feelings being hurt is the same as being oppressed, everyone is always oppressed and nobody has to admit that they're part of the problem.

Next time: being an asshole to everybody online!

 

 

 

We Need Diverse Books: In Which I Take Myself To Task

As promised, I'm going to look through my YA offerings and see how I've done, diversity-wise.

Donorboy:

Well, it's a story about a girl whose two moms die, and the family she had with her two moms is definitely the normal, healthy family that she misses. So good on me for that.

Having said that, this book does kind of suffer from "white is the default person" syndrome.  Everybody in the book is white and middle class. 

How Ya Like Me Now:

Probably the most diverse cast of any of my books, and the one where issues of race and class are foregrounded. Since part of the plot deals with Eddie, a suburban white kid, coming to live with his city mouse cousin, a lot of the book deals with Eddie getting over his preconceptions about urban life and urban residents. The secondary characters are black, white, Vietnamese, and Cape Verdean.  All of the characters present as straight, though Alex is shown to know a gay couple.

I wrote the main characters as white primarily because I was going to be spending a lot of time inside their heads, and I wasn't yet confident enough to spend time in the heads of characters who aren't white. But overall I think I did a decent job with diversity on this one. 

It's also my worst-selling YA novel, for what it's worth.

Forever Changes: 

Everyone is white and heterosexual in this book. I did, though, make a conscious effort to include class in this book.  So Brianna's dad has a horrible job he hates as an assistant manager at Megamart, but he has to keep the job because of the health insurance.  Brianna's family doesn't have a lot of money, and many characters refer to the class divide between West Blackpool and East Blackpool.

Shutout: 

Amanda lives in a blended family, and this is not the issue of the book; it's just the way things are in her family.  No discussion of anybody being anything other than straight, which, let's face it, is probably an oversight in a book about girls' athletics. Amanda makes friends with a black student, and their dads bond over a shared love of comic books.  

The Half-Life of Planets

Hank is diagnosed with Aspergers' syndrome, and much of the book deals with the particular challenges someone who can't read social cues faces when falling in love. So that's cool. But everyone is white and straight and middle class.

Notes from the Blender

Neilly's dad is marrying a dude, and Neilly is completely accepting and unfazed. (This was Trish's part, so I can't really take credit for it.)  Declan is a metalhead who goes vegan. I think both of those subcultures get a bad rap, and I'm pleased with how I presented him. He asks out a black girl, Chantelle, who drops him like a hot potato when she sees him get violent with someone else. Actually pretty proud of that, though I think I probably leaned a little heavy on the "oh, you're black, so you're an outcast in suburbia too" element. To be honest, I did that a little bit in Shutout too.

Jenna and Jonah's Fauxmance

Aaron is part of a posse of male actors that serves as cover for a gay male actor pretending to be straight. The scenes in the theater company involve a pretty diverse company, racially, sexual orientationally, and age-wise, and one of them checks Aaron about his class privilege. The hardass director is a little person. Not too bad.

Tessa Masterson Will Go to Prom

More good stuff about class in this one, as Lucas has no money and lives in a tiny apartment above an abandoned drug store. And Tessa, of course, is a lesbian.  And everybody is white, which is what the Indiana town I was basing Brookfield on was like. 

A Really Awesome Mess

A decently diverse cast, though I guess there's really no diversity of sexuality presented, now that I think of it. All the characters suffer from some sort of mood disorder or other mental illness, and I think we handled that well.  Pretty much no class diversity at all. 

 

Conclusions:

I've got some stuff I'm proud of here, but all of my protagonists are white and straight and able-bodied. (Well, I think Rosalind's probably bisexual, but I chickened out on that in the way I wrote about it.) There's essentially no representation of disability in my YA fiction. (I don't consider Asperger's a disability, and I don't think CF is classified that way either, though I'm not sure.) 

I've done a decent job with portraying diversity of sexual orientation, and I don't feel that my characters who aren't white are too stereotypical, though I suppose I'm not the best judge of this.  Asians are kinda underrepresented in my work. I think Hanh from How Ya Like Me Now is the only Asian character I've ever written.  (Well, the only one I've written that's been published up to now.)

I'm proud of my work with social class because I think that gets neglected a lot, but I'm a little surprised and chagrined at how few of my characters live in cities. I've lived in cities my whole life, and yet only one of my YA novels is set in the city.  What the hell's up with that?

Well, I think I may be guilty of thinking, at least on a subconscious level, of diversity as a "problem."  What I mean is this: urban life necessarily involves confronting many facets of diversity, and I think in some cases I may have ducked this because I was writing about something else: grief, or death, or soccer, or whatever. And so I'm wondering if I just figured it simplified things to set my stories in a virtually all-white milieu so that they can be about only one "problem" at a time and they won't have "too much going on." Obviously this is dumb.  I'm not crazy about how my black characters show up in these stories. I'm glad they are there, and they're not there only to teach the white characters a lesson, but there's something about the "one black kid in an all-white environment" that doesn't sit well with me, though I'm not sure exactly what it is.  

Overall, I guess I'm doing better than a lot of people, but not as well as I'd like.

 

 

 

We Need Diverse Books. And Some Soul Searching

If you follow anything having to do with books for young people, you're doubtless aware of the We Need Diverse Books phenomenon.  What began as a hashtag has now turned into a full-blown Indiegogo campaign aiming to do something I'm not exactly clear on. 

I wish the campaign well, but I'm skeptical of its ability to do much of anything, largely because of the tone of the whole thing, which is overwhelmingly self-congratulatory. Not that I'm against a little self-congratulation, but let's be clear: the lack of diversity in literature for young people isn't some agenda pushed on us by some evil other entity; it's something all of us involved in this field did. 

When the hashtag was just about some dumb panel at a dumb convention, you could realistically say okay, we're demanding of the convention organizers that they use their heads. But now that it's about literature in general, we're never going to get more diversity in young people's literature unless we examine our parts in creating the current situation.

I'm not optimistic. The indiegogo page features a video from John Green, a white guy, who mouths some platitudes about "the other" or something rather than saying, "wow, maybe I should stop writing about the same white boy over and over."

Now yes, John Green's a big star and the leader of a creepy cult of personality, so I understand why you'd use him to try to squeeze some cash out of people.  

But come on.  

People who are not straight white men and women didn't just start writing books.  So who are we making this demand of? Publishers?  Fair enough, but riddle me this: publishers gave you great stuff by Coe Booth, Mitali Perkins, and Padma Venkatraman, just to name three off the top of my head that I read and liked, and you didn't make them big hits.  Why is that? Publishers' number one agenda is to make money, and I guarantee if a book like Coe Booth's Tyrell had made stacks of cash, you'd see at least twelve books featuring guys with braids on the cover on the shelves at your local bookstore.

So here we go with some questions for lots of people:

1.) Agents and Publishers: Do you use unpaid internships? These ensure that the young people who get to build networks in publishing are the kind of people who have enough money that they can afford to work, even part-time, for free.  To give you an idea of how limiting this is, I am a white guy who attended an Ivy League university and at no point did I have the option to work for free, especially in a city as expensive as New York. You'll get a better mix of perspectives if you find other ways to get young people into the industry.

2.) Middle- and upper-class white authors:  Are your white characters aware of being white, or do they think of themselves as "just people?"  Do you know that only white people get to think like that? Similarly, do your characters or anyone in their families ever worry about money? Did you know only people with lots of money get to think like that? Do you have any characters in your books who are different from you in some significant way? (Hint: you're going to have to meet and hang out with some people from different backgrounds and experiences if you're going to be able to write them credibly.)

3.)Librarians, booksellers, readers, bloggers, buyers, etc.: Are you considering diversity in your buying, reading, and reviewing decisions? Are you actively trying to get books about people who are not middle class white, straight, neurotypical able-bodied people into the hands of your readers, patrons, and friends?Would you consider a book with a gay protagonist "A good LBTQ book" or just "a good book?" (Substitute any other group for gay in there too.)

Also: Are you helping to create the climate of fear that keeps many writers from even attempting to write about people who are not them? There's a particularly pernicious idea afoot that artists only have permission to write about things they've experienced personally, and that it's a terrible affront if they do otherwise. I guess the people who propagate this philosophy might mean well, but they are really stifling diversity in literature even as they seek to promote it.  Something to think about.  A lot of writers just stay away from writing about anyone who isn't them for fear of mobs of angry commenters.  I'm not saying you shouldn't challenge people who do things badly or who reinforce bad ideas, but maybe dial back the vitriol a little bit so that people will feel more free to take chances. 

If you are a person involved in literature for young people and you have been asking yourself some tough questions about your part in making things the way they are, then good for you.  And, I mean, throw some money at the crowdfunding campaign, I guess, but please recognize that the solution to this problem won't come from a campaign or a hashtag: it's got to come from you.

Next time: I'll examine my own YA books under this lens and share the results with you.

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Investigative Report! Indie Authors Wasting Their Money!

The other day, someone wrote a bad review of one of my books.  Not the first time. Won't be the last.  I saw it because I have a tweetdeck column devoted to searching for my name.  Because I'm brand conscious, okay? Not because I'm vain and insecure! Jeez!

So, okay, this lady tweets the bad review of The Half-Life of Planets.  No big deal.

But then the retweets start piling up. This seems to be a little bit odd for a review of a four-year-old book that's out of print.  (but soon coming back as an ebook!)

As of this writing, a day and change after the original review was posted, the tweet with the link to the review has been retweeted forty-six times.

I'll bet this looks awesome on Twitter analytics. But here's the thing. I looked at the accounts retweeting the review. And they're all the same: indie authors tweeting nothing but hashtag-stuffed tweets with links. 

Not one of the accounts that has retweeted Susan Helene Gottfried's review of The Half Life of Planets has a single interaction when you click on "Tweets and replies." Nobody's replying to their tweets, and they are not replying to anybody's tweets. 

This, I suspect, is because the authors whose names are on these accounts are paying someone real money to "maintain their social media presence" or "build their brand" or "engage in effective book promotion" or some shit. 

But here's the thing. All these accounts are so similar that they are clearly being maintained by the same entity. I haven't investigated all the followers, but I would not be at all surprised if these sock puppet accounts are all being followed only by other sock puppet accounts.

What this means for too-trusting indie authors is that they are giving someone their money to do absolutely nothing for them.  So you've got an account you don't maintain that broadcasts your tweets to other lights-are-on-but-nobody's-home accounts who automatically retweet your tweets, and if you look at the twitter analytics, it probably looks like your content is reaching a lot of people.  (Leaving aside the question of whether all the retweets are coming from accounts that touch any part of your audience: the review of my young adult novel was retweeted by accounts purporting to represent authors of adult erotic spanking fiction,(which is evidently a thing) for example.) But you are actually paying someone money for nothing. 

Whoever is getting your social media cash is essentially taking your money to have bots talk to other bots, and whatever part of your twitter feed consists of actual stuff you wrote that you hope will reach other people is just being retweeted by bots followed by bots in some kind of Twitter inception thing.

The downside of the awesome independent publishing boom is that it has been a boon not only for writers, but also for unscrupulous assholes trying to prey on people's dreams by taking their money and giving them nothing in return. 

If your name is attached to an account that tweeted yesterday's review of The Half-Life of Planets, I'd like to suggest that you end your agreement with whatever huckster is taking your cash right away.