Links: How we tell (marginalized) stories

[sonia]

Who Is Baba Yaga? by Kris Spisak. "Trickster, mentor, probable goddess—Slavic folklore’s most famous villain is so much more than a witch." Excerpted and adapted from Becoming Baba Yaga: Trickster, Feminist, and Witch of the Woods.

The Ghost of Workshops Past: How Communism, Conservatism, and the Cold War Still Mold Our Paths Into SFF Writing by S.L. Huang.

As part of tracing out why these types of workshops can be so detrimental to minority writers, both authors delved into the history of writing workshops. And both argued that the traditional workshop in which the author is enforced to silence will not only suppress minority voices—but that its domination across education happened not by accident, but by design.

We Are the Mountain: A Look at the Inactive Protagonist by Vida Cruz.

Now let’s flip the script. Let me take you through the anatomy of characters who are commonly labelled “inactive protagonist.”

They are marginalized in some way, via race or class or gender or sex or ability. They will most certainly have suffered some kind of trauma (or three, or more), whether physical, emotional, psychological, or sexual. These two things have inevitably and inextricably colored not only how they perceive and navigate the world they live in, but how gods, natural or supernatural phenomena, technology, society, or other people react to them.

Comments

[sabotabby]

The mountain one is so good *skips off to read the other two*

[sonia]

Glad you enjoyed!

[altamira16]

When that first piece was illustrated by that dim sum example, I was flabbergasted that anyone would allow a workshop to be derailed like that.

[sonia]

You've had workshops run by skillful, strong moderators. I watched a small group for massage therapists be entirely derailed by the one guy in attendance after I requested that we not call each other "you guys" as part of the ground rules. The therapist running the group didn't seem to be able to cut off the conversation.

[radiantfracture]

Hey I love this ("We are the Mountain") !

I have felt extremely grumpy about the demand for active protagonists for a long time, but this is a much clearer formulation of why.

[sonia]

Glad it's useful! If more of our stories were about how to be in community, and fewer about a solo hero, maybe we wouldn't be in quite the mess we're in now.

[radiantfracture]

Now that reminds me of the game The Quiet Year.

[viggorlijah]

Ahhh that book is being bought now - my wish for the year is to be baba yaga’s babushka friend

[sonia]

<3 I liked the final story in the essay, even if it was added on to the folklore. May you have many strong powerful women in your life!

[silveradept]

Excellent. I like the way that all of these pieces move us toward telling different kinds of stories, instead of insisting that only a single narrative style is the way to go, or that only one type of protagonist is worthwhile.

[sonia]

Yay! One of the benefits of having stockpiled a whole lot of links is that some of them grouped nicely like this. As I'm sure you know, with your big link posts.