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Short Story Highlight: "The Crows Her Dragon's Gate" by Benjanun Sriduangkaew (Thailand)
Over at Beneath Ceaseless Skies, yet another story by this young author from Thailand, The Crows Her Dragon's Gate:
Before the end there would be love-songs to a passion so fierce that the offspring of my body turned into suns; tales of our courtship a wildfire that scorched the world.
The annals of heavens may not always be trusted. They were texts carefully edited, passed to chosen scholars; it did well to remind the warlords—and once empire dreams had come true, the monarchs calling themselves heaven's sons—that above them reigned paradise, and above paradise an everlasting emperor.
Much was elided and confused. But in the beginning, it was mostly that I was young.
The Huang He was new, freshly disgorged from a dragon's gullet, brimming with stomach-lizards and fish with scales thick as lamellar. The heat drew me, as it too must have drawn him. And so I found Dijun by the banks with knees drawn up like a boy, gazing into the waters. In his palms flame detonated into monsters that cavorted to the edge of his nails and spilled onto the grass, turning green to black-brown.
I measured and watched him through the frame of my hands. What did I know of him then? That he was an oddity, not unlike me; that he was without a place at court, without sworn brothers earned through blood and fire. A lack that left him wifeless, for all that women gazed upon him as they would on rare silverwork. They would glance at him, and sigh a little, and look away. Untitled and unpositioned, what husband could he make?
I did not think of positions or titles.
He noticed my approach, and his smile intrigued me, for aesthetically it was most pleasing. Being young I mistook this for something else; being young I thought beauty was all there was.
"Would you like to try?" He held out his hand, where many-eyed beasts spun through their deaths and rebirths, purer each time, finer with each cycle.
"How did you know?"
"Your shadow moves on its own even when heaven's light stands still. Like calls to like." Dijun hesitated. "And I find I cannot look away from your radiance."
I inclined my head. Men offered flattery; women accepted with poise. That was the way of things. – continue reading!
Short Story Highlight: "Annex" by Benjanun Sriduangkaew (Thailand)
The latest issue of Clarkesworld Magazine is headlined by new Thai author Benjanun Sriduangkaew, with "Annex":
On the eve of Samutthewi's entry into the Costeya Hegemony, Esithu was sloughing off the shell of their birth-body. There would be speculation afterward what Esithu was born as—someone's son, someone's daughter? To that Esithu would always say, "I was born as I am now," which became a stretch after Esithu obtained a second then a third body. A hardware upgrade, they liked to say. You can never have too many.
That was much later.
Esithu was a creature of solitude but, afflicted with being so new in a world so old, they found themselves craving company.
This close to the heels of conquest, sedition was a rife, busy game, and it drew Esithu as war drew soldiers. They came to it—or it came to them—in a little club on the outskirts of Vithansuthi, the city in which everything happened.
On the walls, flowers fought and devoured each other, mouth-tipped stamens tessellating in choral fury. Onstage a dancer moved in simpatico, mercury limbs shimmering silver, a body of animated liquid.
"It is said," Esithu's table companion began, a non-sequitur to follow a conversation they never started, "that the universe was sung into being by a divine androgyne."
At that point Esithu was not yet acquainted with quantum theories, though even further along in life they would find said theories little more than superstition. Blunt, they asked, "Are you some sort of evangelist?"
The woman's eyes glittered. Her sclera and irises were hidden behind compound lenses, all ruby facets. "Truth is always in need of evangelizing. Now more than ever, and I'm not talking about creation myths."
"This is a bad climate for demagogues."
"Indeed no; it's never been better."
"We lost, you realize." Their government bent so quickly to surrender there'd hardly been casualties. Esithu had bet on that, and reaped a tidy profit against friends more patriotic.
"Our defeat is opportune. It is now that we can subvert them from within."
Esithu snorted. Newly assimilated border planets subverted nothing except their own sense of self. Samutthewi would lap and swallow until it was as Hegemonic as the rest.
"But now is the time," the woman insisted. "Not five years from now when we've grown comfortable; not ten years from now when we think back and say, ah, it used to be untidy and now that we've the Hegemony breathing on our neck everything is better—faster—more beautiful. Then it will be nearly impossible."
They laughed in her face. "It is impossible now."
A second dancer vaulted over the first, feet and fingers full of fire. – continue reading!
Short Story Highlight: "Woman of the Sun, Woman of the Moon", by Benjanun Sriduangkaew (Thailand)
New author Benjanun Sriduangkaew, from Thailand, has a new story up at Giganotosaurus, Woman of the Sun, Woman of the Moon:
It is the aftermath of the world's end, and nine birds–nine suns–lie dead while Houyi cradles the curve of her bow, her fingers locking around the taut hardness of its string. The tenth sun, the last, has fled. Chastise them, Dijun said, a father's plea. But there is the land and the horror and the dryness, desiccated corpses in empty dust trenches that were rivers not long ago. There are dead dragons, too, and snake women with bright eyes–and is it not right to bring down the suns, is it not what Houyi is meant to do? She is a god who protects; she is a god given a duty.
The birds are dead. They no longer burn, but the places where they have fallen will long after be black scorch marks, indelible. There will be consequences. It does not matter that her first shot meant to warn: wing clipped, the eldest sun plunged and shattered on the earth. Seeing their brother fall they attacked, and she had to defend herself.
Behind her Chang'e is inhaling and exhaling shallow scraps of air. They will not let this pass. What will you do now? Where will we go?
And the archer whispers, I saved them all.
She knows, as she has known since she notched that first of nine arrows–even in the firestorm of their rage she was a peerless shot, one arrow per bird all she needed–that for her there will be no thanks. They have transgressed enough, wife and wife, and this shall be the final insult tolerated.
So Houyi only takes Chang'e's hand and says, I am sorry.
Night comes, and with it the first drops of rain. Somewhere a dragon king or queen serpent stirs and tastes the air with a forked tongue. The Sea Mother sifts sand out of her eyes, which have been so parched, so dry. Out of their bellies and mouths rivers will surge forth, tides will rise bright-green with brine, and the world can go on as it did before the convening of ten triple-legged suns. This is their duty, as the murder of sun-crows has been hers. – continue reading!
Short Story Highlight: "Courtship in the Country of Machine-Gods" by Benjanun Sriduangkaew (Thailand)
New Thai writer Benjanun Sriduangkaew has a new story in The Future Fire magazine: Courtship in the Country of Machine-Gods:
In the shadow of machine-gods I tell wayfarers of a time where my people was a nightmare the color of hemorrhage and glinting teeth.
There are other narratives, but this is one they want to hear most, the one they pay with their adoration and bright-eyed want, for they've never known us for anything but peace. Conflict juts out from the skein of Pojama's history, broken glass-shard, rupturing and ruptured.
I smile; I oblige. Though the story is for me there are parts that I share simply for the reality of speaking it out loud, for the virtue of being heard.
My mouth moves, output for one of my cranial chips. My fingers sketch, autopilot, the forms of our heroes and enemies from a continent whose name and life have now been lost. My voice murmurs the tragedies and sings the heroics of Kanrisa and Surada, rising for climax, falling soft for denouement. The visitors' district is machine-dead. What thrill it must be to hear the thunderclap notes of my gloves, behold the psychedelic fires that pour from my nails.
Once, they interrupt. The figures of our enemies do not seem real. They are right: with sagging eyes the hues of cheap jades and faces like skulls, even for villains they are too fantastical, too unhuman.
"My great-grandmother told of them so," I say and shrug. "Perhaps she was senile." With a motion I turn the figures into shapes more familiar, shapes more like ours.
Inside the vessel of my thought—a garden of sliding intelligences who whisper to me, childhood mates grown to adults next to my ventricles and lungs—a different story unfolds. – continue reading.
Short Story Highlight: "Chang'e Dashes from the Moon" by Benjanun Sriduangkaew (Thailand)
The latest issue of Expanded Horizons in now online, and contains a story from new Thai writer Benjanun Sriduangkaew – Chang'e Dashes from the Moon:
There's a lady on the moon and she has a rabbit; at mid-autumn we have mooncakes when her husband visits.
Long ago the moon grew a city on its skin like nacreous shell around a pearl, and in this barren city lives a goddess who was once a girl.
The goddess counts the years, at the beginning.
She folds gold paper and silver paper in the proper months, and burns them for her mother. She makes houses of glassy yellow windows and pale walls, double-storeyed, and burns those so that her mother will have a comfortable residence in her passage through death. She makes animals, companions, furniture. When she begins counting in decades instead of years she starts burning offerings for her niece. It is the wrong way around; she is the elder, and she should be the one waiting beyond for her niece's sendings.
But she is immortal, and her family is not. – continue reading.
Original Content: Non-Western SF Roundtable (Part 2)
Part 2 of our roundtable on Non-Western SF. Part 1 is here.
Participating: Aliette de Bodard (France), Joyce Chng (Singapore), Requires Hate(Thailand), Rochita Loenen-Ruiz (Philippines/The Netherlands),Ekaterina Sedia (Russian/USA), Rachel Swirsky (USA).
Aliette: We talk about colonisation, which is mostly a phenomenon of the past (but which has left marks and scars everywhere that will take a long time to fade); but I think we need to bring up globalisation. It's often lauded as a way which makes the world smaller so that cultures can meet. In reality, it's immensely problematic, because what it has mostly done is homogenise everything to a common US/European framework and deny the values and identities of the people from outside that framework in, I think, a more insidious way than colonisation. Many people (especially in the West) suffer from the illusion that colonisation is dead; but it's not. It lives on in its new incarnation; and it means we can talk about "universal stories" and "universal tropes" with such glibness–and forget that a large chunk of the world follows very different values and mindsets from the "default", Western Anglophone one. Like requireshate says, there's a really pernicious assumption that everyone is part of the mass and subscribing to the same "core" values, whereas nothing could be further from the truth. And there remains a fundamental power imbalance between the Western, English-speaking world and the non-Western countries–an imbalance that notably gets expressed in literature, and in the one-way street that means books get translated from English into pretty much every country in the world, but 0.3% of books published in the US are actually translated into English.
Joyce: Oh yes, globalization is insidious. Everyone is equal. Shrinking world. Blah blah blah. Everyone holds hands and we are friends. No. The scars of colonization are still there. Many former colonies are left with the issues to deal with. 😦
requireshate: When I go to a bookstore, there are veritable shelves of translated fiction–a fair bit from Japanese and Chinese, but vastly dominated by English-language fiction in translation. It's what a lot of kids grow up reading, and it's pretty awful to see so many covers featuring white girls (localized YA fiction and paranormal romance: Vampire Academy, Sherilyn Kenyon, and so on). The same holds true for advertisements in cosmetics/hairstylist/etc sections in any shopping mall–chock-full of white women on display, even some black women, but starkly few Asian women! And then, only from brands that are Asian in origin anyway. Christian Dior, Lancome, whatever? All white ladies. And, again, clothes brands, lingerie, all white bodies. These western corporations didn't even think of localizing their advertising materials. Why would they? White signals opulence, beauty, and desirability. White is good, attractive, and an ideal we should aspire to. All this without Thailand having ever been colonized.
Joyce: Ditto in Singapore. A lot of white girls. Sooo… what does it say about the effects of colonization/colonialism? That Singaporeans have colonized minds?
Aliette: it's the same in Vietnam, at least in those few bookstores I went to: the bookshelves for fiction translated from Western English were larger than the ones for Vietnamese and Chinese fiction put together, and that's not even counting Young Adult…
(and also the same, sadly, for beauty products displaying white models)
Rochita: I think you can say the same about The Philippines. When I went home last year, I was struck once again by the plethora of fiction in English. They dominated the shelves. I was hard put to find books written by Filipino writers. True, there were some I hadn't read before, but the imbalance was mind-boggling.
What worries me about globalisation is how easy it is to buy into that mantra of a universal narrative. Argh. Just as well say people all look alike.
Addressing the question of Western people writing about or of a borrowed culture (I think I prefer that term), I believe it is possible to avoid the pitfall of exotization. It will probably take a good deal of reading and a good deal of time and energy investment, but I believe it will be well worth it to the reader and to the author. It's not enough to visit a country (the tourist writer who goes "oh shiny, I wanna write about that because it's so cool and different"). I think, as Requires Hate has pointed out, it's important to at least engage the literature of the country. It may be difficult but I think a lot of the heart of a culture is revealed in the work written by the people themselves.
Let me tell you what an American person established in the publishing industry told me: I should buy a thick book of American poetry and read these poems everyday until I get the nuance of the language. When told this to visiting poet, JT Stewart, she said to me: No. You don't need to do that because you write the language as you hear it in your ears. As you grew up hearing it and speaking it. Not as Americans do.
Aliette: Yes, there's a very deep-seated assumption that Westerners are the reference for the English language–whereas the largest Anglophone country in the world is India, and there are plenty more non-Western countries where English is an official language. That's not even getting into the mechanics that mean most of the world has to learn English as a second or third language just to get by, whereas most English speakers can afford to remain monolingual.
Coming back to the subject of writing in another culture: I, too, think it's possible to do it well (if not perfectly, and probably not as insider narrative). I'd add talking to actual people from the culture and visiting (with locals, not expats!) to reading the books.
Rochita: I agree.
Joyce: Ditto.
Aliette: Paraphrasing a 101 I gave to someone else about writing other cultures:
I think that, especially if you're a Westerner doing another culture, you have responsibilities to do the best darn research you can (and not just appropriate the cool bits). You must take care not to promote harmful stereotypes ; especially since, as a Western writer (especially, but not only, if you live in the West), you must be aware that your narrative is going to be privileged over that of locals. That gives you extra responsibility to get it as right as you can.
You have to accept that your narrative will always be that of an outsider. Sometimes a privileged or particularly well-documented outsider; but it won't be 100% accurate. It doesn't mean it's worthless, it doesn't mean it can't be good; but it does mean you have to be aware of the issues in writing outsider narrative (mostly that a lot of other people have been doing it badly, badly wrong over decades); and thus be very careful of what you put on the page.
You might get called on what you wrote; you might be accused of getting things wrong. This is the frustrating part, because there really isn't any other answer that you can give but "sorry, will do better", even if you think the other person's experience isn't "representative" (whatever that hoary term means). You basically aren't speaking in a position of authority about the culture, even if you researched it to death. (that's the bit I struggle most with, incidentally. But I totally understand where it's coming from).
But, honestly, when I see the mistakes that piss off people like requireshate, it starts with very basic stuff like getting names wrong, or over-exoticising the everyday. When I read a story about Vietnam or France, most of the stuff that makes me want to throw it at the wall is on the same basic level of wrong names, followed by wrong mindsets (I once read a story in which a 17th-Century Vietnamese struck his father and didn't feel remorse about it. Not likely unless we're talking psychopath). The mindset is a surprisingly faily one: people from a different culture are going to have vastly different values and assumptions, and you just can't transplant, say, a modern British person and pass them off as a Vietnamese just through a little change of costumes! You have to understand what makes a culture's bedrock, what is likely to make people tick, what they're likely to value and hate–different cultures have radically different axes. To take just one example, the quintessential Confucian male is the scholar with great literary talent, wearing his hair long (because cutting one's hair was a Barbarian thing), and not hesitating to weep tears when parting from friends. This is a far cry from the male ideal in, say, mainstream US society, where weeping is seen as a very girly thing, and there is deep-seated suspicion of people who are too smart.
And, finally, when you're done writing your short story or book, get someone from said culture to read it; several someones if you can, that you can trust to give you an honest opinion of where you might have screwed up (always useful to not only have several pairs of eyeballs, but several people from different points of view within the culture can help identify issues).
Ekaterina: Also, something Western writers often overlook or are not terribly concerned about: even though you are not speaking from the position of the authority, as Aliette said, you WILL be perceived as an expert and an authority of a foreign culture you write about. And that's a serious risk.
Joyce: I would like to follow up on Aliette's point: Do ask people from that culture to have a look through/critique/beta-read the story. Please, please, please, do it.
Rochita: Excellent pointers. And take note of the pointer where Aliette says that if someone says you're doing it wrong from the reference point of their own experience, then you as an outsider writer just have to accept it and apologize or determine to try better/fail better. It bewilders me when people get defensive about criticisms leveled at their outsider work because isn't that to be expected? I mean, as writers we already know that when we put something out there, not everyone is going to love it. That is just asking for the impossible. And that someone bothers to point out the fail is a sign that they wanted you to try harder or at least there was/is an expectation that you can do better than that.
Ekaterina: Another point is that the insiders will disagree. Some will like it, some won't, and some will hate it because it is by an outsider. And the lesson for the writer there is not to say "Well, screw it, haters gonna hate, I'll just write whatever because you cannot please anyone". You're still responsible for doing as good a job as you can. And accepting that your best might not be good enough for some people, and their opinions are also valid. Don't trot out the natives who loved your work, don't tell people who dislike it that they're wrong because another person from the same culture liked it. So really, if you want approval, stay out of other people's cultures. Nations won't get together to sign waivers that say that you are free to appropriate whatever and no one can say anything about it ever. People will be angry, and they will be right to be angry. If it upsets you, reconsider your motivation.
Joyce: I agree with Ekaterina's points here as well.
Rochita: Ditto.
Aliette: Yup, definitely agree!
Rachel: As the token westerner… 😉
It's interesting to me that outsiders get so frustrated with the idea that insiders will disagree with each other about what constitutes a good representation. (In my experience, the same dynamic occurs along other axes of privilege as well.) Writers understand that when they are writing, for instance, a character, not all of their readers are going to agree with each other. Readers aren't a monolith. If you can understand that two American white dudes can disagree on whether a character is well-written, then theoretically you can understand that two people from a non-Western culture can disagree on how well the representation is done.
Writers are also–well, I hope they're also–prepared for the idea that no matter how much energy they put into making a piece of work as beautiful and wonderful as they can, people are still going to criticize it. For some reason, that understanding gets churned under as soon as the issues in question carry sociological weight; there seems to be a feeling that research or good intent should insulate the writer from criticism.
Most writers I know have prepared themselves for being critiqued about character, etc. When privileged people take on writing about people from non-privileged populations, they need to be prepared for that level of critique, too. It may be more heated, but the stakes are also higher.
I hope that writers who ask other people to beta-read their stories do so with care and concern for the people on whom they are imposing. Nisi Shawl recommends in Writing the Other that one should offer a meal or at least a drink. If you're in a reciprocal critique relationship with someone, or hope to establish one, that's one thing. If you're talking to someone with whom you have a prior relationship, that's another. If you are approaching someone you don't know, it's vital to bear in mind that you are asking for a favor, and to remember reciprocity.
Speaking as a western writer, and as someone who has attempted to engage in writing with other kinds of privilege, I am inclined to agree that it's inescapable that a privileged person will write a narrative that is rooted in their privilege. One can minimize exoticism, I hope, but I don't think it's possible to erase it.
As a writer of science fiction, particularly, though, I see myself as having an obligation to present a future that is, as Joyce says, for everyone. As I should have said in the other roundtable, despite the American propensity (including mine) toward tunnel vision, reality is global, and (barring certain speculative scenarios), the future should be global or globally influenced as well. I think there's an obligation for Western writers who work within science fiction to engage with both western and non-western cultures. Otherwise, we do end up with white-washed (western-washed) futures and I think that the effect of this on the cultural imagination is wholly negative; the future isn't just for white westerners. I think it's a particularly pernicious form of erasure.
Obviously, the tunnel vision problem can, to some extent, be fixed by providing more works in translation, and by providing greater publishing access to non-western writers, both those who write in English and those who don't, but I also think that the western imagination of the future itself needs to be adjusted.
Honestly, I think part of the problem with Americans writing about non-western cultures-or reading about them, or engaging with work written within those contexts–is that we hardly talk about colonialism at all; it's a tabooed subject, but I don't think one can really understand the global political context without an understanding of colonialism.
Aliette: I agree… to some extent. That's another point I wanted to bring up: we've been focusing on narratives exclusively or quasi-exclusively set in other countries so far, but SF has a habit of large-scale narratives set all over the world. Well. All over the Western world. It is very problematic when the future space stations are manned only by white people, the future of the world decided jointly by America and Europe, and the non-Western countries are presented as hell-holes of poverty only fit to escape from. (though we can argue about the very notion of having a large-scale and global setting and deciding the future of the world, which feels a tad imperialistic to me…).
That said, for me, it rejoins some of the comments we've been making on different types of narratives: it would definitely be better to have visions of the future coming out of the Western Anglophone tradition that are genuinely multicultural, but having other narrations from non-Western countries would, I think, present radically different pictures of the future, and alleviate the issue of tunnel vision sometimes found in (Western, American) SF books. The best cure for tunnel vision is openness of mind 🙂
There is also a big problem with colonialism here in France. It is pretty much never talked about in polite society, and glossed over in school by saying "we did some morally reprehensible things, but it's OK because we brought the gift of civilisation to the colonised countries". The extent of the reprehensible things (destruction of said local civilisation, widespread repression, imposition of foreign ways of living and inferiority complexes) is just never brought up at all. I once started to talk about how France broke Vietnam by colonising it and separating it into three entities just as it was becoming a country, and other French people told me to stop–I can stop, sure, but it's still true! (and don't get me started on the "gift of civilisation" thing…)
From comparing notes with the UK (where I lived for a while), I suspect there's a big tendency in the Western world to say that colonialism is over and done with, and that there is thus no need to talk about it or address it. Which is… disingenuous, annoying, and harmful because it perpetuates colonialist myths about the past and the present.
Joyce: Why is colonialism a taboo subject? Is it because as Aliette has said, nobody wanted to talk about the "reprehensible things"? Westerners have to confront this particular demon if they want to really understand what's going on. To say that it's "over and done with" is just ignorance and damaging.
Aliette: speaking only for France, I think we're very bad at dealing with our demons. There's been a lot of self-examination going on in the wake of WWII (and over the fact a lot of French people were collaborators), but I highly suspect this is because the faction that came out ahead in France fought collaborators–so we don't have to admit, per se, that the *official* government sanctioned anything that was going on during WWII. Same thing applies to colonisation and its legacy; there's no examination of the fact that the French government and the French people were arrogant enough to carve out huge chunks of countries and mostly ignore the people who were there in the first place; and are responsible for a lot of the current problems plaguing the developing world.
Rachel: In the United States, we pretend that colonialism is something that other countries did and do not acknowledge the ways in which it influenced our global positioning.
Aliette: bringing up another subject… Should we discuss the issues associated with genre definition and genre narratives? I have the feeling that "this story isn't SFF" is very often used as an argument to dismiss non-Western SF on the grounds that it doesn't adhere to a mostly Western definition of SFF–like having no novum, not being "realistic", not having enough "science" or "defined rules of magic". (it's also used to dismiss women writers from SF, but that's another kettle of fish altogether!)
There is a twin issue, which is the other problem Rochita raised: different cultures have different values and different narratives, and there is thus a tendency for the field to tell non-Western writers that their writing is flawed; that their narratives don't deliver a satisfying ending, their characters are too passive; their story structures are weak (or too convoluted): in other words, to hold everyone to a narrow definition of story, very largely elaborated in the US/Western Anglophone world.
What do people think?
Joyce: I think it all ties in with that mindset of the non-Western writer being 'inferior'. That's one dangerous (colonized) mindset.
Aliette: Yes, colonisation v2.0.
Rochita: Yes. I remember a conversation I had with Chris Beckett at my first Eastercon where Chris was asking me if there were any SF narratives in The Philippines. I had been doing a lot of reading into native folktales and native myths, and I told Chris about certain stories that struck me as having a particular SF flavor. For instance, there is a story where a woman is carried away to the Skyworld in a basket. I could see the basket as a metaphor for flying saucer and the visitors from the Skyworld as possible aliens or future beings from the same world. But because these stories are not told in what we define or recognize as SF language, a reader used to the Western narrative would probably not identify it as SF.
I believe that we, as writers in the act of decolonizing, seek to break the expectations that are placed on our SF as we try to reconcile history and heritage and the way we look at SF. I read Aliette's stories and I can see how this is a story that is uniquely Aliette and uniquely SF because it does not always conform to the SF narrative. The expectations of Western SF are very particular so much so that if we bring stuff to the table that just doesn't compute with that expectation, the work we produce is shunted off as "oh it's fantasy in space" or some such thing.
For me, the beauty of being a non-western writer is this: I don't feel constricted by the demands of existing SF, because I do not see the body of Western SF as being the only true SF. My input into the great SF conversation is to say: look, I know you think of SF that way, but just put yourself in my shoes and try to see through my eyes because I am trying to show you what SF looks like from my point of view.
There was a time that I did feel pressured to conform, but I soon realized my inability to be truly creative inside those strictures. I believe SF as a genre is one that means for its inhabitants to be constantly trying the boundaries, shaking up conventions, and turning expectation on its head. So, to me the unexpected narrative is more beautiful because it expresses this spirit of openness. It's frustrating when we get told that our characters aren't proactive enough of they aren't saving themselves or that things just happen. It's like the colonizers telling the village people: Look, your Mumbaki, he doesn't fit in with our model of what Christianized people should be like.
If we were equal, we wouldn't have to be worried about our stories not conforming to narrative or fitting into the set paradigm.
requireshate: With regards to being sellable and marketable–that requires playing to the western gaze, making your culture accessible to western readers, giving them a channel for literary tourism. Another tool of imperialism, frankly.
Rochita: True. In a sense that's like selling your soul. <g> I don't think it's sustainable and in the end, I don't believe it makes for good fiction.
Joyce: Ditto on "tool of imperialism". It hurts the non-Western writer in the end.
Ekaterina: Cultural colonialism, again — only certain kinds of narratives are acceptable. And Western readers and writers often forget that this is not a symmetrical situation! American culture as filtered through Hollywood/major book releases is so ubiquitous everywhere, they shape narratives all over the world. So it's not only non-Western writers not being translated into English but also a form of cultural genocide where intrusions of Western narratives everywhere reshape stories as well. It's such a self-perpetuating machine that feels very powerful. I mean, I have no idea how to deal with something so huge.
Aliette: *nods* I agree with pretty much everything; and I wish I had a solution, but like Ekaterina I find the whole issue a bit daunting. Very huge and very pervasive–and so very insidious.
Rochita: I'd like to share something from the Babaylan Files. Conversations-signs and symptoms of the decolonized Filipina in the US. My observation of American/European culture is how there is a very strong "I" orientation. Societies are individualistic and this also shows in the narratives that we get from the West. In returning to the indigenous, there is a stronger focus on community: we have the narratives of extended families, the strength of women bonded together, the role of culture bearers and the consciousness of history, which not all western writers are aware of, but which I believe the non-western writer is more keenly aware of. I'm sorry that I can't point to a specific article as I didn't realize we'd be having this conversation when I read it, but I remember this article that said reading history and getting very angry are the first steps towards decolonization. <g>
Monday Original Content: Non-Western SF Roundtable (Part 1)
SF is the literature of the imaginary. How can the imaginations of writers from outside the Western narrative contribute new perspectives to this literature? – Fabio Fernandes
Fabio Fernandes has recently given Locus a prompt for a round table, above. The resultant round table discussion was notable for a near complete absence of non-Westerners – which is, in itself, a telling comment. Fabio is currently fund-raising for a new anthology of post-colonial science fiction.
With the lack of non-Westerners involved in the Locus roundtable, we've decided to run our own. The resultant conversation is fascinating and far-ranging. We are posting the first part today, with the second due tomorrow.
Participating: Aliette de Bodard (France), Joyce Chng (Singapore), the controversial blogger known as Requires Hate (Thailand), Rochita Loenen-Ruiz (Philippines/The Netherlands), and Ekaterina Sedia (Russian/USA).
Joining them in Part 2 will be Rachel Swirsky (USA).
We asked them: How do you feel about this idea of "Western narratives" and the problems of inclusion within the sf "field"? for that matter, what are the problematics of some Western writers tackling non-Western settings for their novels, and do they result in exoticism? Fabio is currently raising funds for a fiction project on science fiction and colonialism. How do you see the two intersecting – both in fiction and in the world of publishing today?
Joyce: That is a lot to cover. I am sure others would chip in regarding the problematics of Western writers writing non-Western settings for their novels. Exoticism, cultural appropriation… are the mine-fields they have to tackle.
I encountered such an issue when I wrote "The Basics of Flight", a steampunk novella featuring a white protagonist. I was told that my writing seemed forced and unnatural, the white characters stilted – and I felt the implicit assumption that an Asian like me shouldn't be writing white characters. Therein lies the problem. Am I supposed to write solely Asian characters? And given my postcolonial background (Singapore was a British colony), am I supposed to write about a) angst regarding my neither-or-there or b) mother-daughter relationships (ala Joy Luck Club)?
Being a postcolonial writer both labels and pigeonholes me in that category. But I cannot deny the fact that I was born in Singapore and schooled in an education system left behind by the British. I am also the descendant of immigrants from China. I grew up thinking that I spoke fluent English and bam! the harsh reality hit when I ventured out into the real world. I am still identified by my skin color and that the assumption that I should be speaking English as a second or third language.
I support Fabio's project and even wrote a blog post for it. It is difficult – sometimes, most of the time – to discuss about me being a Southeast Asian/Chinese SFF writer. People in the West tend to have fixed ideas of how and what we should look like or behave. The East is exotic. The East is mysterious. The East is hot jasmine tea/white rice/chopsticks and stir-fries. The East is martial arts and kung fu. The East is the Yellow Peril. The East is scary, but exhilarating.
We are not all of these. To us, they are commonplace, part of our lives. To us, it's how we grew up and will continue teaching our children about our cultures and traditions. These "Western narratives" hurt us at the end and have damaged perspectives regarding non-Western narratives. The dominance of Western narratives has silenced non-Western voices, reducing us to nothing else but something out of a travel guide. Unfortunately, Western publishing continues to perpetuate such misconceptions and have created problem after problem for people outside the (white) fence.
I have always feel that SF is universal, kind of like Star Trek's philosophy of IDIC. Oh I am proven so wrong at times. What I have encountered are clear instances where only a select type (white, male, but mostly white) is allowed to write SF. Only that select type is allowed to publish.
My question: Is diversity only lip service?
And as for postcolonial SF – I have written – and am writing – worlds where humankind has colonized and terraformed planets. Yet my roots weave their way in. Instead of fighting the indigenous/alien race, the characters form an alliance. However, the alliance is often fraught with concerns, because as colonizers, something will be lost in translation, no matter how well-meaning or well-intentioned they are. How about the voices of the colonized? I am learning about that myself, about the deep-seated issues within me. Have I internalized the colonizer's point of view? Why am I behaving and reacting like this? What space does the colonized occupy? Is the space freely given or is it a privilege?
I recognize my ability to write as a privilege and that my Anglo-Saxon education has given me that opportunity to write. For that, I am grateful and humbled and terrified. I think about class issues. I worry about gender issues. What kind of legacy has my postcolonialness given me? What am I giving my daughters at the end?
requireshate: Here's something knee-jerky (but, I think, not unjustified): I don't think it's possible for white westerners to write about any non-dominant cultures–and this includes, for example, Eastern Europe–without being exotifying, appropriative, and perpetuating western/first-world supremacy. Ekaterina Sedia articulated it fantastically here: https://worldsf.wordpress.com/2011/02/03/guest-post-seeing-through-foreign-eyes-by-ekaterina-sedia-author-week-1/ Specifically that an outsider looking in will seize on elements an insider takes for granted. Something that's everyday to me will be shiny, exotic, and unusual to a westerner: and it is this thing that they will grab and run away with, hooting that it's beautiful and awesome and so weird, as one might do over an alien artifact. And that's what it will be to such a person–alien. I've seen this over and over even from writers who mean well, who have lived in Thailand, but who nevertheless continue to write and think in the western outsider mode, in short owing their allegiance to their culture, readers who think and consume and behave as they do.
Another particular I've to deal with is: there are very few Thai writers working in the Anglosphere, and as far as I'm aware, none at all working in western SFF particularly (apart from maybe Somtow, of whom the less is said the better). Due to this lack, it's a challenge to be asked "which Thai writer would you recommend?" (often with an implied "so I can fact-check authenticity against this project about Thailand I've got"): I very simply am unable to point to many writers. My culture is presented to the western hegemony almost entirely through the eyes of tourists, the eyes of outsiders. This is why I don't believe that a love of my culture can be expressed by writing about it in your fantasy or SF or whatever–that way lies appropriation; a genuine love can only be expressed by learning my language and translating existing Thai works. As Joyce says, our voices have been silenced, drowned out. More outsiders writing about Thailand? Not the thing we need, and far likelier to contribute to the problem than helping to alleviate it.
I want to respond to a few things Joyce brought up–the expectations for people like us to be exotic. I'm often questioned as to the authenticity of my identity, because to westerners I appear to be writing "just like them," steeped in "North American culture" (when in truth I know almost nothing about North America!). This assumption comes about because the hegemony is so huge and pervasive that it becomes, itself, an invisible mass and the default assumption. Mostly, if you write in English and aren't breaking into malapropisms or broken syntax constantly, you're immediately assumed to be "one of them," part of the western paradigm.
Aliette: I wouldn't be quite as radical as requireshate, but I definitely think we need to differentiate between insider and outsider narratives–two modes of narration that come from vastly different backgrounds and vastly different concerns. I do think that, at the moment, the field a distinct tendency to laud outsider narratives as "authentic" (a fraught word I'll come back to!) and to enshrine them as more valuable and valid than the insider ones.
I'm not saying that outsider narratives have no worth, or that it's impossible to do them well (see below!); but I do think the current development is problematic on several levels.
There are lots of factors at play that explain why outsider narratives are more popular; but one of the main reasons is one of audience: as Ekaterina mentions in her blog post: at this junction in time, the dominant audience in the field is Western (of US/European culture), and outsider narratives have a better grasp of how to present (ie exotify) elements of a setting in a digestible manner for the mainstream (White) audience. This is very much regrettable, and I really do wish that people would stop using the word authenticity altogether, as it's either used as an exclusionary factor, to police who within a community has the right to write about the culture (something I find utterly fraught with problems); or as a well-meaning but somewhat hollow reassurance that the writer's world feels real (the only ones equipped to judge authenticity of, say, a story set in Brazil are Brazilian people, and I certainly would never dream of qualifying someone's story set there with that word!).
The problem with this whole state of things, as has already been pointed out, is that if outsider narratives are enshrined and taken as gospel truth, then this not only drowns out insider narratives, but also makes them lose value when their writers are criticised for not adhering to the (sometimes harmful) clichés or exoticism perpetuated by the outsider narratives. Like Joyce and requireshate say, non-Western writers easily become accused of not being exotic enough–Vietnamese writers get accused of, say, not getting across the feel of Ho Chi Minh City because it doesn't jibe with the exoticised description of the city some Westerner made. Indian people are told their stories set in Bangalore are not "authentic" enough because they don't feature enough description and "sights and smells"–but really, when you've lived in a city your whole life, are you really going to pause and describe in minute detail every single fruit on the fruit-sellers' stand?
Rochita: Oh, I have to laugh reading what Aliette is writing because I had to think of one instance where I critted a work of someone I was in a workshop with and being told that my insight couldn't be right because history and reference books said it was so. This was on crit about a story which makes use of Chinese culture. Now, I am no expert in Chinese culture, but I did have a number of extended family (this is a very Filipino concept) who were part of the Chinese community and what was written just didn't compute with what I knew or what I had absorbed of it. I shut up at that point because my immersion was more tribal and I found myself doubting my own experience of the culture.
Aliette: ha ha ha. I once had someone (non-Vietnamese) argue with me about how I'd got Vietnamese history all wrong because it was in the (American) history books. I'm much less pacifist than you, and I basically fought an urge to strangle the person at that point…
(the extended family is also a Vietnamese concept, I think–and one that is very lacking from a lot of genre books. I really should do stats on which protagonists have living parents and/or siblings, and move from there to uncles and aunts and parents' friends…)
Ekaterina: Thank you guys for linking and mentioning my article. And yes, same experience with books about Russia by Westerners being lauded and preferred over Russian narratives. Russia does have a well-developed SF/F tradition, and it creates an interesting situation: when something DOES get translated into English (not too frequently, I may add), they are often chastised for not being rooted in their own culture enough — which is, not being exotic enough. Heck, I read reviews of my work when readers expressed disappointment that I missed a chance to teach Western audience about my culture. Because apparently it is my job to make Russia-based narratives as surface-alien as possible (inside, of course, they should speak to Western sensibility). Also, when Western writers choose Russia as their setting, they more often than not are unfamiliar with the existing Russian-language literature — that is, they write into the tradition they are not familiar with. They are writing into American/Western tradition, which presents its own narratives of Russia, and THIS is what feels authentic (I hate that word too) to the Western reader.
Rochita: For many writers coming from colonized nations, the act of putting words on paper is fraught with certain matters. In this, I speak from my own experience of Filipino literature, how it was taught to me and how I absorbed what Filipino literature means to the Filipino.
When I write SF, I am fully aware of the history of my people and our history of colonization. I carry this sensibility with me into my work and I see this as continuing on in a conversation with the poets and writers and activists who struggle against the impositions of colonization. At the same time, I hope to contribute to the ongoing conversation which leads to understanding between cultures.
I think that the non-western writer brings something different to the field of SF not just because of the insider perspective, but I also think it's difficult to say that this is a true story of the culture without having been immersed in it yourself. But as Requires said, these things have been exoticised and appropriated so that the reader comes to expect the exotic and doesn't understand why our stories don't match preconceived ideas of how our stories should look like.
I admit to being automatically suspicious of work that is set in a non-dominant setting using non-dominant culture when the work is written by a writer from the dominant culture. I question the motivation of the work in the first place and until I find evidence of sincerity (it's not just being used because it's pretty but because it really is integral to the story) I tend to carry on being suspicious. I guess, this is my anti-colonialist bias setting in.
I have mentioned this to Aliette before and it is a concern that still plagues me because I do write mostly in the context of my own culture: I don't want to play tourist guide to the reader and yet I also want to write about what is most beautiful and most precious to me. And that is my culture.
Regarding narratives: I want to point to Aliette's post http://aliettedebodard.com/2011/08/31/on-the-prevalence-of-us-tropes-in-storytelling/
I think it's very clear that a person coming from a colonized nation would have a very different perspective of story as compared to a person coming from a nation that has been the colonizer.
Rochita: I want to address something that was raised during the Locus Roundtable with regards to the effects of colonialism and how learning to write and to think in English has affected/influence the cultural narrative. There was also a comment made about the true narrative being only that which is translated from the original language into English.
I have issues with these statements because it negates the work of poets, writers, activists and artists who have struggled in order to reclaim culture. I was reading a book by Manuel Dulawan, probably the most prominent of Ifugao culturebearers, and he writes about how the imposition of the English language was part of the campaign to suppress/erase indigenous culture. In practice, the culture bearers have often been demonized (their rituals are anti-christian). That the rituals and the narratives of the original culture have been preserved speaks of the resilience of these culture bearers and of the people around them.
If we sat down and talked about colonialism and the resistance to colonialism, I could go on and on. <g>
Ekaterina: That English-language comment gave me pause too: in a general sense, we live in the world of cultural dominance of Anglophone cultures, English is the international language, and many people HAVE to speak it, and write in it. It's a remarkable move, really: write in your own language, and we'll ignore you; write in English and we'll doubt your authenticity. Failure to acknowledge the cultural hegemony of the English language and WHY many non-Anglophone writers might choose to write in English is disingenuous. Not to mention, are we saying that only monolingual folks have a grasp of their own culture?
Joyce: Ironically, when I added in dialect or Mandarin Chinese as a form of pidgin in my SFF, I got comments stating they didn't understand or that something was lost in translation.
By the way, a lot of postcolonial writers are able to code-switch. I do that a lot myself. I use English for communication but when I am at my parents', I use Mandarin Chinese or Cantonese (for my mum – when I want to describe something, but only Cantonese could express it better).
Aliette: I code switch a lot too, but I wonder if it's not a multilingual thing rather than a post-Colonial one ? (I do it between English and French at my parents', with the odd smattering of Vietnamese for food items)
Rochita: I had to think about a comment my brother made when he my work. How reading the story and then coming across a word or a phrase that is so obviously Filipino to the Filipino reader gave him that jolt of recognition. And I think this is something people forget. Readers from non-western places read SF too. It's not something that's confined to the West.
requireshate: Aliette sez: "but really, when you've lived in a city your whole life, are you really going to pause and describe in minute detail every single fruit on the fruit-sellers' stand?"
Yes, this very much. I become very impatient with this kind of writing by outsiders, and one particular book begins on this very note: at a fruit-seller's stall! The description is of course of reeking durians. As well, white western writers are rarely charged with inauthenticity: outside of a charge from peculiar national-supremacist groups, no one's likely to say a book is not "American enough" or "British enough" (unless perhaps it's an American writing about the UK). There's no obligation pressed upon a white westerner to pander, no expectation that what they write will be representative of so-and-so. There is no "single story" for them, as Chimamanda Adichie pointed out. They are under no pressure to sell their culture, and if they write something negative about say the white middle-class American life (or, indeed, a white American serial killer) it won't be used against them or against their culture: nobody will say "Oh, what a shame it is that all young US men are serial killers!" to again paraphrase Adichie. They don't have to think of what they write, or even how they conduct themselves, will shape outsiders' view of all white westerners.
Joyce: THIS. I have folks remarking that Wolf At The Door isn't Singaporean enough and that the descriptions of the city could well describe other cities in Asia, like Taipei. In other words, not authentic! I am not your travel guide, white reader. I do not want to educate you. I am not obligated to turn my novels into tourist attractions.
Rochita: Yes. This. You say it so very well. I had to think of how for most writers from the dominant (white/european) culture, commerciality of the work becomes a primary concern. Whereas for the non-white/non-western writer, there is a consciousness of expectation as well as awareness of the baggage you carry with you. Not that we aren't thinking about the commercial aspect, but there are other things that supercede that concern.
To be continued in Part 2 Tomorrow!
Dead Girls: The Graphic Novel
Of the new comics artists working today, it is Leonardo M. Giron who's been making a fast impression. The filipino artist has been getting much attention for his work illustrating short strips in British magazine Murky Depths – and now he has joined forces with cult author Richard Calder to illustrate the graphic novel adaptation of Calder's first novel, the notorious Dead Girls. Calder's novel was written, and is partially set in, Thailand – particularly Bangkok and the small town of Nong Khai on the Lao border.
Here is what Locus said of the original novel:
'Calder, who lives in Thailand, seems to have a clear notion of the scope "pornocracy" has reached in the Far East, and his dazzling evocation of the brutally corrupt 21st-century Bangkok and Nongkhai is perhaps the greatest strength of this disturbing novel. Described through prose that is alternately breakneck and overripe, the cities seem as convincing and terrifying as the Calcutta of Dan Simmon's 'Song of Kali' – and what we learn of a depopulated London seems even worse … What helps to make the novel disturbing is that – for a tale which revolves around carnality and desire – there are virtually no human women anywhere in sight. The few grown women are automata, nanoengineered through "fractal programming" down to the quantum level; the girls are "lilim" – born normal, but infected by a nanotech plague, transmitted through their fathers, which gradually transforms them into mechanical nymphets facing an early death, but already biologically "dead." If one believes that the sex industries dehumanize women, Calder offers the most dramatic metaphor yet to show just how this works: his lilim partake of every aspect of the woman-as-alien from Lolita to dominatrix to vampire. The protagonist, Ignatz Zwakh, has been infatuated with one of them, Primavera, since he met her in school while she was still human. Now he has escaped with her from a plague-quarantined London and works as a decoy to set up her targets for murder. Captured by American intelligence agents who want to know how they escaped quarantined London, they become pawns in an international game whose stakes seem to be the survival of humanity as a biological species …'
And here is Richard Calder talking to SFX Magazine about the graphic novel adaptation and working with Giron:
I wrote Dead Girls, the novel, in 1990, soon after taking up residence in Thailand. I was living in Nongkhai, a small town on the Mekong River, overlooking Laos, but making frequent trips to Bangkok. Nongkhai and Bangkok (along with London) are the story's most important locales – and Bangkok is of special importance: it's where the story really takes off. Leonardo lives in Manila, but his indigenous grasp of the ambience that Manila shares with Bangkok, and his ability to translate this into a unique, manga-like idiom, makes him perfect for delineating the cyberpunk exuberance and sheer down-and-dirty exoticism of Dead Girls. Leonardo is a mangaka, but one who uses manga techniques in a very original way. His work is, in my opinion, far more detailed, far more crafted and instilled with personal vision, than the manga most people will be familiar with. He weds an intricate attention to line and the kind of stylisations one normally associates with manga to something sketchier, looser, more expressive, as if the spirit-guides of, say, Shirow Masamune and Jesús Blasco, were simultaneously inspiring his hand. It's a style rich in mood. He's simply wonderful at rendering the atmospherics of Dead Girls in his depictions of the urban decay of a future, abandoned London, and – most especially – a mad, frenetic, hyper-real, future Bangkok. – Read the rest of the interview.
The graphic novel will be serialised in Murky Depths before being released as a full-colour stand-alone book. To see more of Giron's art, go to his DeviantArt page, or check out Murky Depths for more of his published work.
S.P. Somtow new Fantasy series
Apex Book of World SF contributor S.P. Somtow is launching a new fantasy series, The Dragonstones, with the first chapters of new novel, Jade, available online.
S.P. Somtow opens the Apex Book of World SF with his World Fantasy Award winning story, "The Bird Catcher".
And here is the opening of Jade:
One day a tall old man stands in the doorway and says he has come for me. He says we shall go on a journey. And when I ask him why, he tells me this: "So that one day you shall stand in a doorway, and you shall tell a boy that you have come to take him on a journey. And when he shall ask why, you shall tell him, 'So that one day you shall stand in a doorway such as this, and say these words to a child such as yourself.'"
My journey has been long. And yet I have not reached the time when I shall stand in a stranger's doorway and call out to an unknown youth. It all unfolds in a continuous long present, yesterday and today all jumbled up like a basket of silk scraps in the fabric market.
Back then, to the twenty-first century. The breath of the Dragon Jade had not yet warmed the world. It was a time when children on street corners cried out that the world was ending, little knowing it had already ended. – read the rest of the chapter.
2022 Tsunami
Thailand has its own special effects-laden disaster movie in the works – 2022 Tsunami, the trailer for which is currently playing every cinema in Bangkok, and due to be released next month.
In a new one for the World SF blog, we are happy to present – the trailer!
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I think the brotherhood is over. Your son will be fine with that. What's important is that he's protected and knows why he's protected. You don't want him feeling too brotherly towards his older brother when older brother ends up in a mess as an adult anyway.
Are you in a financial position to get some kind of vacation place? My mother has a trailer near a lake that they go to for weeks at a time and it was not very expensive. Maybe your husband could get something like that and do visitations there?
I don't think it's fair to your children to have to leave when A comes to visit. I didn't notice how old A is, but maybe it's in the thread somewhere. How often does A visit? Why were the phone calls to his mother a secret? Were the police ever informed of the sexual abuse? Who's watching A while he visits (assuming your husband works outside the home)? How often does he visit? Do you have inlaws near? Maybe your husband can take A and go stay with his parents during visits?
Your stepson seems to try to find out how to hurt people to see what happens. There was an 8yo boy here a few years ago that was killed when another kid wanted to see what happened if he injected the 8yo with insulin. As big of a deal as you think it is, it's probably even bigger of a deal. Your stepson seems to be very interested in experimenting with his ideas on your son. Just thinking of anyone doing that to any of my kids sends chills down my spine.
Our children make a study of us in a way no one else ever will. If we don't act according to our values, they will know.~Starhawk New User Agreement! http://www.mothering.com/articles/user-agreement
I did happen to my DS (now 16) by his older - by ONE year - stepbrother. It took two years of fighting, reams of graphic photos and journals/logs, trips to the hospital with strange bites/burns and scratches after mandatory court ordered visits and then a wreched trip to emerg with my DS who's penis had been bitten so badly by the stepbrother during (again) a court ordered visit that it required stitches. Two years before my DS was safe again. Physically safe anyway, he was majorly messed up for the next few years.
Yes it was the end of the brotherhood.
No he hasn't seen him since - almost 10 years.
My DS's father and I were separated at the time but he had weekend visits with both boys, we were trying to reconcile but after this happened I knew it wasn't worth it.
My DS has seen his father 5 or 6 times in almost 10 years. He hasn't wanted to. In fact the whole bunch of them, the father, the mother and her boyfriend were investigated by CPS.
OP- I wouldn't feel the slightest shred of guilt cutting that child out of your lives. Your DH is probably torn though and perhaps 'can't ' make the calls/appts. that he KNOWS he should be making. I'd do it for him. Call CPS, take your kids to your family doc, then call CPS again and again. ANY incident, take your kids to the hospital, tell them how and who, and write everything down.
Good luck to you and your kids, this is such a horrible situation because nobody wants to believe a kid can be the abuser right?
While I understand wanting to do everything you can to avoid CPS, I do agree with others that I think you need to call them. Your children need protection, and potentially more than you can provide (for example, you need government documentation in case there is a change to court ordered visitation for any reason.) You stepson needs protection and help, and obviously more than your DH and his ex have been willing or able to provide. Is your DH's ex dating or married? Given the stepson's behavior, I would want a legal authority to look into what his situation is at his mom's house. Especially if she has been notified of the behavior and is ignoring it. It makes me wonder what she is ignoring at home too. And your stepson needs someone to force his parents to recognize that this stuff is happening and that he needs help. I can't even imagine how difficult this is for your DH, find out that his child has these issues and has done these things. And to then realize that the child's own mother, who has him much more, doesn't seem to think he needs help or see a problem, I imagine it's easy to doubt, because you WANT to, that there's a real problem. I would suggest that you simply refuse to allow your stepson into your house, at all, whether you and the younger kids are there or not, until something is done to help him. I don't think it's unreasonable at all to not want an abusive person near your property, even if that abusive person is family.
As to the three year old and the abuse he has undergone....I don't know to be honest. It's hard, given that he's so young and has limited verbal abilities (I have a nearly two year old with close to no words, so I assume you just mean that he is simply not very expressive, not that he is actually developmentally delayed or has any other disabilities of his own) He probably doesn't understand much of any of it, what happened, or why, or why it was such a big deal. I think some sort of therapy is probably in order, regardless of what ultimately happens with the stepson, but I don't know how that would play out. With your child being only three...I just can't help but wonder if therapy might not make it worse rather than better. I would suggest being EXTREAMLY careful when choosing a therapist...and working with CPS might actually help in that regard. They may or may not be able to point you towards someone who is best for a child so young. Your ped might be another resource to check into.
The whole situation just sucks and I am sorry you are dealing with this.
He Doesn't Come Over Here Anymore When My Kids Are Home.
There's a lot of questions dangling, and I'm going to bed soon, but I'll try to fill some blanks (I honestly didn't think anyone would want all this info, but here goes).
A was 4 when my relationship with his dad became serious. He has a very charming outer personality that he puts on for most people and my biggest problem with him at the time was getting him to only eat white snow. If you were to meet him in public, he might be off the wall, but it's more likely that he would dazzle you. When we're in a store, he might say, "Look at that flower. Isn't it beautiful? But you know what, it's not as pretty as you." He is a sociopath (according to me, the daughter and granddaughter of three psychologists).
When I was pregnant with my 1st, I started to notice many things that made me believe that he had been sexually abused. I'm pretty certain of this. Was it one of his mother's boyfriends, some of whom were physically violent or in and out of jail? Was it his cousin who is in his mid 20s, lives with his mother, has never had a job, and taught A how to play Grand Theft Auto? My husband has a lot of older bachelor friends, and whenever we'd have any of them over, it was always less than 10 minutes before A would waltz by whichever guy it was with no pants on. Why did he take his pants off every time an older man was over? This was true at age 5, 6, 7, 8- It's not like he had a thing about taking his clothes off like some littler kids do, it was very specific. I mean, I could go on and on with examples. Some one messed with this kid, and no one cares. We actually got him set up to see a school counselor, and instead of allowing that to happen his mother removed him from school. In February. And when fall rolled around (after the school cut all counseling from the budget), she just thought he should repeat the grade.
In the beginning we had him every other weekend, which was hell. Then (was it 2 or 3 years ago?) his mother met a man over the internet who lives in Kansas, so off they went. We protested, but the judge said, "This will make the mother happy, and the child will benifit if she is happy." So off they went. That man had three young children of his own full time, and I just can't imagine why it didn't work out. But anyway, that's when we got on the every-other holiday and 8 weeks in the summer program. I liked that at first thought because I felt like we could make real progress with his behavior over eight weeks. I also thought we could have him see a therapist, but you can't do that without the mother's approval. (interesting side note- The reason that is is that parents were coaching children to claim abuse in order to gain full custody. I told everyone I spoke with "The last thing in the whole world that I want is custody." But they wouldn't budge. Even my own father, a practicing psychologist, said he wouldn't see someone in that situation.)
He was supposed to get therapy in KS, but his mom refused to bring him to his appointments (will this happen again?) saying that she didn't want him to think that there's something wrong with him. Ironic that last year she decided unilaterally to put him on ritalin. To which his dad said, "He's angry, he doesn't have attention deficit. He can sit and do one thing for a long time. Especially if that thing is a destructive thing."
She has pulled him from school to school- he's never completed a year at less than 3 schools- but I have to assume that records follow. He's been into all kinds of trouble (multiple suspensions and two expulsions) so I have to believe that lots of people know. I resonate with what Bella99 said as I keep getting the feeling that Arizona being broke and useless just got the calls and didn't react. I was told that it would be up to CPS to decide whether or not to report to law enforcement after an investigation was done. As far as I know, there was no investigation.
As for my son, I really am hesitating to discuss him at all here as I'm still reeling in defensiveness from some of the earlier posts. I really am liking the idea of cutting the ties forever between those two. I would have no problem with that whatsoever. I just think that they Would, and their dad would. I just don't know, but I don't suppose I have to make a statement about it now. My husband wanted us to all go down there this week and take A out for dinner; it was really important to him that we do that for A. I thought about it for a couple of days, then said no.
Sending out a thank you for the support in sending A off with his dad instead of having him here. He stole some money from me while I was gone, and took screws to my car and completely carved it up over the summer. Who knows what else. None of it surprised me because I'm so used to him by now. I was more surprised at the reactions of others when I told them; I too start to forget that this stuff is a big deal. The thing that did get to me tho was how hurt H was to find some of his toys destroyed. We went thru the house before we left and packed everything we could think of away in a travel trailer. There were several toys that he asked me to leave out for A to play with. I told him no, that A would just smash them. He said so sweetly with smile, "No, not these toys. A will be happy that I left them for him to play with. He won't destroy them." But of course he did. And of everything that A has done to him, that upset H the most. If you were to meet H at the park and talk to him for more than two sentences, he'd tell you, "A smashed my motorcycle. He broke my car into little pieces. He broke my helicopter, he broke my guys..." and he'll give you the whole list.
Time to go, but one bit of pseudo-humor. When H heard about the oil spill, he thought about it with deep concern for a few moments, then said, "I know! We'll tell A that some bad guys are hurting the animals. Let's call A, and then we'll go find the bad guys."
Actually one more thing. I have not personally talked to A about this at all. We call him on Wednesdays, and I've spoken to him about the usual stuff a few times. I really want to tell him how his actions have affected me and the family, but I hold back since he's only 10. If I were being truly authentic, I would tell him. He asked me, "Do I get to go to your mom's with you next year?" I just told him no.
I am very very sorry for whatever happened to this little boy to make him so unhappy and destructive and it sounds like it may have robbed him of a normal life, but not so sorry that I would throw other children in with him. I know you're asking about the possibilities of a sibling relationship and I want to say - your instincts are right. There doesn't need to be one. It worries me that your husband doesn't see that for himself. If someday when your children are adults they decide to try to establish some kind of relationship with their brother, that's up to them. Until then, I would do everything possible to keep them apart.
"Call " is almost never my first response, but you and your husband CAN'T make decisions for this child and his mother apparently won't. I don't know that anything will come of it, but it starts a paper trail if nothing else. I understand - or at least I can imagine - how hard it would be to go against your husband in this, to have to have these conversations and hide them from your kids. It's a big deal. People are going to be angry. It's going to be uncomfortable and tense to say the least, but he needs help and the adult who can get it for him, his mother, seems to just be blocking the way.
As for my son, I really am hesitating to discuss him at all here as I'm still reeling in defensiveness from some of the earlier posts. I really am liking the idea of cutting the ties forever between those two. I would have no problem with that whatsoever. I just think that they Would, and their dad would. I just don't know, but I don't suppose I have to make a statement about it now.
I am from a family of well-protected child predators. I do not have contact with them and do not allow my children contact. Other cousins who were abused do have contact in various ways because that feels better to them than having no family. Your son's personality & your ss's progress will determine that later.
We have, but it was my ds doing the abuse against my s-children and younger (half) siblings.
It was a long road (still is) and the outcome has been him being removed from our home. It was our choice (well, not really when you have no other choice).
We fought thru the system - therapists (family and single), psychologists, psychiatrists, meds, no meds, diet change, support groups, etc. Cfs was the only ones who gave us access to *real* support. They suggested treatment centres that no one else did. Sadly, by the time we got to that point he was "too old" for it to do any good. Had we made the call years before........who knows? Maybe he'd still be home? Maybe I'd have all my kids under my roof? I try not to beat myself up over it. Whats done is done. He's currently in a group home/treatment centre. Its seems to be a good fit for now.
We continue to work on our relationships with him. He's still "getting into trouble" but I dont believe he's being violent to others anymore. I feel better about that. B/c as much as my kids were my first priority, I couldnt help but feel that it would be *my* fault had he killed someone. (and yes, he was heading in that direction)
Sorry, this is all choppy and all over the place, I'm dealing with a crappy headache at the moment. I just wanted to say that someone has been thru it, and it just sucks all the way around. But, so far, my kids and (society) seem to be safe.
I wish you luck, peach and healing on this journey.
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Anyway, from your most recent post, I will say that due to the mother's reluctance to get him counseling, and her actions and unstable parenting, I would say that yes, it is likely that he was abused, and that she knows about it.
If you're husband is willing, I would talk to him about modifying their court order to mandate counseling for your step-son, which would require you to document for the court, the things his son has done and also the mother's refusal to provide him with counseling outside of a court order. Stress to your husband how serious this is, and that it may affect the stability of your marriage.
4. Lastly, if you decide to make the call, you can do so anonymously, and even if you don't, it's ALWAYS confidential. For all anyone needs to know, the doctor called or the school called or a neighbor or extended family member, etc. I work in foster care and when calls are made on the foster parents and/or biological parents, even if we aren't involved in the particular situation or are the ones that made the call, we CAN NOT tell the parents who made the call.
OP - I'm really sorry about the situation you're in, I wish there was an easy way out but I don't think there will be. Stay strong for your babies, you're doing a great job so far.
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CPS calls are meant to be confidential. I've been to numerous trainings about them (as I am a mandated reporter), and they stress that over and over again. As a mandated reporter, I (and your doctor), can not make an anonymous call, because we have to make the call specifically as a mandated reported, and provide our information. In fact, when non-CPS caseworkers document information, we aren't even allowed to mention any kind of CPS call/involvement. But even when we call, although our information is taken down, it can not be provided to the
A lawyer should not be giving that information to their clients AT ALL, whether the report is indicated or unfounded. Your entitled to the report, but not the identity of the source and not anyone who may have provided assistance or information for the actual investigation. That information is supposed to be redacted from the copy of the reports provided to you and your attorney. What your attorney did was illegal and obviously the State Central Registry screwed up in not removing the identifying information. You can find the exact procedural information at the OCFS website.
And in NY, calls made to the hotline that are not accepted for investigation are deleted from the system, there's no record of them kept at all. Calls that WERE accepted for investigation, but were determined unfounded are recorded in the system with some information, but are primarily treated as if they don't exist.
CPS calls are meant to be confidential. I've been to numerous trainings about them (as I am a mandated reporter), and they stress that over and over again. As a mandated reporter, I (and your doctor), can not make an anonymous call, because we have to make the call specifically as a mandated reported, and provide our information. In fact, when non-CPS caseworkers document information, we aren't even allowed to mention any kind of CPS call/involvement. But even when we call, although our information is taken down, it can not be provided to the
A lawyer should not be giving that information to their clients AT ALL, whether the report is indicated or unfounded. Your entitled to the report, but not the identity of the source and not anyone who may have provided assistance or information for the actual investigation. That information is supposed to be redacted from the copy of the reports provided to you and your attorney. What your attorney did was illegal and obviously the State Central Registry screwed up in not removing the identifying information. You can find the exact procedural information at the OCFS website.
And in NY, calls made to the hotline that are not accepted for investigation are deleted from the system, there's no record of them kept at all. Calls that WERE accepted for investigation, but were determined unfounded are recorded in the system with some information, but are primarily treated as if they don't exist.
And, my lawyer didn't do anything illegal - the person who failed to redact the information did. My lawyer was authorized to share with me everything in the report by the judge - she did as she was told.
The two things that really suck are that they insist on wanting to interview H (using bodily terminology), and they still haven't given me any clear picture of what the process of getting A into counseling is. So that's where I'm at.
I hope that you are able to wade through the bureaucracy quickly and start healing your family as best as you can. Have you considered couples counseling for you and your husband to help sort out any issues between the 2 of you that may have come up due to what has happened with your step-son? I can't imagine how hard this must be for you.
Good luck with everything.
I don't know if anyone's still looking at this, but clearly I have a lot of thank yous to send out. I'm sorry that I'm too exhausted to refer back and thank you individually- please know that I have appreciated the support and candor. I thought you all might like to give yourselves a pat on the back for the following: There is no CPS listed in my phone book. White pages say to check the gov't section, and that one says nothing. So I called the sheriff's dept to ask who I should call (the mother has now explicitly refused to comply with any counseling). So a report was filed and deputies have been dispatched and the whole deal. What I was feeling here in the beginning (judged) was actually a good preparation for what I encountered with the Man. When I told them that I Had called when it happened, they checked into it and said they found a CPS report that was filed a few days later under my name but that the report was empty.
The two things that really suck are that they insist on wanting to interview H (using bodily terminology), and they still haven't given me any clear picture of what the process of getting A into counseling is. So that's where I'm at.
Just so you know what this has the potential to turn into, I had some similar issues with my stepson and son. The age gap is similar with my stepson being 10 at the time, and my son being 7 at the end of a 3 yr. stretch of abuse. We have not had to deal with the sexual abuse in our home, though my stepson did sexually assault his 8yr. old sister in his mother's home. This child was endlessly physically abusive to my own son. He had done things like kick him in the face hard enough to knock his two front teeth loose, threw him on the ground outside and was kicking him as hard as he could in his ribs, endlessly lie to get my 3 children in trouble. With my youngest son, when he was only 9 months old my stepson would call him to his room down the hallway. When my son would crawl to the end of the hall and grab the door frame to try and stand up, my stepson would slam the door on his fingers, suprisingly never braking them. My daughter who was about 18months old started having bruises all over her body which when asked we found out that he had been beating on her whenever they were alone. I tried multiple times to involve the police, which by the way is useless because there is no law protecting children from other children. Whenever we would address his aggressive ways with his mother she would tell him what he was doing was ok and we had no right to punish him for what he was doing. We had him hospitalized when he started threatening to tie us all up in our sleep and light the house on fire so he could watch us burn to death. His mother managed to get him out of that and convince him yet again that his behavior was ok and somehow we were wrong for trying to get him help. Initially he had lived with us, and once we had him hospitalized child protective services stepped in and threatened to remove my three kids from the house because we were unable to protect them from him. He was sent to live with his mom (in another state) who of course never addressed his behavior. About a year later we moved to the same state my husband's ex lived in, and in time were convinced (somehow) that things were getting better. This is when the majority of the abuse happened with my oldest son. We had the child again hospitalized for threatening to kill us all, by way of the sheriff's office (because you can not have a child put in the hospital without the permission of the custodial parent without law enforcement). There was a hold placed on him due to the statements he was making to the doctors and officers about his intent. After this hold was up, the hospital had convinced us that he had been stabilized on meds and was doing much better. The night he was released, it was during my husband's visitation, that day we watched him closely with the kids, and he seemed to be doing much better. That night however, after we put everyone to bed, he climbed up on my son's bed while he was sleeping, got on top of him and held a pillow over his face. My son woke up and managed to fight him off. My stepson rushed back into his bed, and my son being too scared to get up layed there and came to tell no one. The next day we had no clue what had happened, and continued on like normal. Around midafternoon, we caught him wrapping a hose around my son's neck and trying to strangle him. At this point my husband immediately caught what was going on and stopped the situation. We called the hospital and were told to bring him back. With no appologies, the hospital readmitted him. His mother refusing still to admit he had problems took him from the hospital against medical advice and managed to have us investigated for abuse for having him placed there initially. This of course resulted in nothing, and we were told that we were not to allow the child in our home again by both CPS and the sheriffs office both. We decided to have a short visit with my stepson to find out what was going on after he was released, at which point he looked me in the eyes and told me with a grin that the only thing he was sorry for was not successfully killing my child. We tried desperately to understand what was going on with him to no avail. He did however go home to his mother's and convince her that we had "interogated" him, at which point she again got CPS to investigate my husband and I, again finding NOTHING!! This is really just a quick brief run down of what we have endured as a result of this child, but please beware if your stepchild is really intent on hurting your child, no matter how hard you try, you can't be everywhere. When it comes to your own child, your best bet may be to keep your stepchild away at all cost (even your marriage). My oldest child now has PTSD and extreme anxiety and insomnia as a result of his stepbrother's doing. If I had it all to do again, I would have done everything in my power to keep my stepson away from my children before he had the chance to hurt them. Even with all that he did, as a child under the law, he can not commit a crime and therefore was never punished in anyway for what he has done to my family.
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The Linden Grove
Below you will find Special Events and a calendar of The Linden Grove's entertainment. Click on any event to reveal more information. If you have trouble reading the calendar, click on the link at the bottom of the page to see the calendar in a new window.
If you would like to make a dinner reservation for any of the listed events please call us at 412-882-8687.


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Personett, Beilstein, Teike Win Weekly Gymnastics Accolades
Feb. 22, 2010
Gymnast of the Week
Personett wins her 14th career Big Ten Gymnast of the Week award and fifth this season after winning three individual events and the all-around title in the No. 13 Nittany Lions' 195.950-194.925 weekend victory over West Virginia. The senior finished first on the vault (9.950), in floor exercise (9.950) and on balance beam (9.925) and was second on the uneven bars (9.875). Her win in floor exercise was her seventh of the season and she's won vault and the all-around competition five times this season.
Last Penn State Gymnast of the Week: Brandi Personett (Feb. 15, 2010)
Co-Freshmen of the Week
Beilstein wins her fifth Freshman of the Week honor, having done so this time after helping Michigan to a win against No. 5 Utah over the weekend. On vault, Beilstein placed third with a 9.875, her second-best score of the season, and was fourth in floor exercise, also with her second-highest score of the season - 9.875. The win was Michigan's first over Utah since 2004 as the Wolverines now ride a nine-meet home winning streak.
Last Michigan Freshman of the Week: Natalie Beilstein (Feb. 8, 2010)
Shanthi Teike
Teike wins her second Big Ten Freshman of the Week accolade after placing first in the all-around in Michigan State's win over New Hampshire last weekend. Teike finished the competition with an all-around score of 39.100, which included a first-place effort on the balance beam (9.825) and a second-place performance on floor exercise (9.850). The freshman also posted scores of 9.725 on uneven bars and 9.700 on vault as the Spartans earned a 194.175-192.400 victory.
Last Michigan State Freshman of the Week: Shanthi Teiki (Jan. 18, 2010)
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