Today in the Diversiverse, a round up of short pieces. Not all these authors are brand new to me, but many are, and they're all stories that I specifically came across thanks to the More Diverse Universe blogging event.
The Song of the Body Cartographer is by Rochita Loenen-Ruiz, who is participating in a round table at The Book Smugglers this week. (The link is to the story, free on the blog Philippine Genre Stories, which is seriously worth checking out.) A girl who is supposed to be able to fly--who should have been born compatible with a symbiotic windbeast--is inexplicably earthbound, and it's the job of Siren, the body cartographer, to figure out why. The story is very short, and there is a very sweet sadness to it.
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Creaciondelas Aves, Remedios Varo |
What I really want, though, is a bigger bite of this world. I want to know what the Matriarchy is up against in the political wranglings with the Patriarchy, and I really want to know the results of Siren's research. I hope and assume that Loenen-Ruiz is working on that for me.
I read my first Tananarive Due novel, My Soul to Keep, for Diversiverse two years ago, and when another blogger, Chrisbookarama, posted about her story "The Lake," I was excited to get a chance to squeeze another dose of her in this week.
A
short story is so different from a novel, and when you don't read many
of them, it can be surprising how efficiently a good author can present
their story. This one takes full advantage of a viewpoint character who
might be just a bit unreliable. She's a teacher who's left her life in
Boston for a new job and home and life on a swampy lake in northern
Florida. At first, some of Abbie's offhand comments might be a little sketchy--high school boys will help her out around the house. Then we get some hint that perhaps there is something more sinister in her past. But I think my favorite part is how she reacts when things start getting weird; the character and the setting blend together to form a perfect weird storm. A quick read; definitely worth it.
Finally, I read "The Sultana's Dream," by Rokheya Shekhawat Hossein (again, the link goes to the free online story, this time at UPenn Digital Library), another story I found through a Diversiverse post, this one from Based on a True Story. "The Sultana's Dream" was written in 1905 and was originally published in The Indian Ladies' Magazine, which I think tells you a lot about its intended audience.
The story reminded me of nothing so much as Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland,
a novel that is all about demonstrating how well an all-female society
would run without men. The Sultana falls asleep and tells how she was
taken by a friend to a country where men are cloistered and women
conduct all the trade; there are scientific advancements and no poverty
or crime. It's not a particularly profound story--the idea that all
society's ills are caused by men is quite simplistic. But if you think
of it from the point of view of a woman reading it from within the
hidden women's part of the house in 1905, you can imagine how strange
and promising and freeing even the idea would be. It's a fascinating
historical document.That's the round up for today! We're coming to the end of A More Diverse Universe, and my to-read pile has grown faster than I can keep up with it (as usual). I could use another week to review all the things I've started since this began!
1 comment:
Ohmigosh, I love that you were so pro-active in reading more diverse reads within the period of Diversiverse itself! All these authors sound fantastic, but I think Due is the one I'm most likely to try - Chris convinced me, too :-)
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