Marie Brennan - Half Assed Is NOT Good Enough

Author of Doppleganger (republished as Warrior) and Witch, plunges herself whole heartedly into fucking up IBARW and joining the realms of authors asshowing in Racefail 2009 (all 12 months long!) by deciding a personal list keeping track of books that use other than European culture (without discussion, context, links that explain cultural discrepancies and more) is a good enough post for a week meant to be dedicated to less white privilege and more antiracism.

Adding in some new titles last night, it occurred to me that oh yeah, I have something on my website that could be useful as a racial-diversity resource. Of course, I've read only a fraction of the books listed there, so I can't say they're all worth reading; some of them may in fact be head-'splodingly bad. But if you've got a hankering for fantasy novels that acknowledge the existence of a world outside of the usual feudal-Celtic-Norse triangle, well, there's a starting point.
-- [not linking to her list]

But if you've got a hankering for fantasy novels that acknowledge the existence of a world outside of the usual feudal-Celtic-Norse triangle... apparently it doesn't matter if you start off falling into pits of racist tropes and thinking you might not even recognize are racist.

I wonder, would she have put up a long indiscriminate list of "And these are books that have female protagonists, if you're interested in reading books where all the characters aren't men." - I seriously doubt so.

It would only be too obvious the harm that could come if someone picked up, say, the Gor Novels first, instead of Oh... Marion Zimmer Bradley's Avalon Series or Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu's Zahrah the Windseeker. Or why they might need reference to understand the sarcasm behind a title like Chicks In Chainmail.

But a half-assed post and a half-assed effort are good enough when it comes to thinking about racism.

I am sick and tired of being disappointed in white people, specifically white women, more specifically white, female authors.

A Half Assed Effort IS NOT WELCOME. See reference: Elizabeth Bear. And seriously, Brennan's ghost of a cough of a post is 100 rungs below Bear's academic whitewash of post colonial narrative within a work (intended or not).

Antiracism efforts don't need your guilt, or your fumbling, negligent and harmful attempts at cookie collecting. So just don't say a damn thing anymore. It's better when you don't confirm yourself solidly not just a non-ally, but an enemy.