I saw The Eagle a few weeks ago — it’s a tragic exploration of manhood, honor, idealism, and loyalty using ancient Rome as a visual motif. Kinda like Gladiator. Kinda like Spartacus. Kinda like Conan. I got a little bitter, and also soundly mocked by my friends. The thing is, I looove sword and sorcery/sword and sandal fantasy. Spartacus: Blood and Sand made me a very happy girl… but not as happy as reading the adventures of Tiger and Del did. What can I say? I want the genre to do more than have use women as symbols. Here’s a list of my faves… and why I think they rock.
1. The Birthgrave/Quest for the White Witch/Vazkor, Son of Vazkor
What I love about this series: Look, you probably already know that Tanith Lee pushes psychosexual boundaries in glorious prose. What you might not have noticed is that she’s also a sharp critique of the mechanisms of conquest. Vazkor is especially interesting because it includes 1. colonized subjects 2. interacting with one another 3. and having varying experiences of colonization. Plus, the majority of the book is about women, their interactions with both men AND women, and their impact on Vazkor’s social status.
2. The Novels of Tiger and Del
This long-running series features my FAVORITE couple! Tiger and Del fall in love, explore each other’s histories of trauma (Del was raped in the same raid where her brother was taken as a slave, Tiger was himself a slave for a while), AND have evolving relationships with their bodies as a result of that trauma. For example: Del sacrifices her fertility as part of her mission of vengeance, and eventually reacquires it as she recovers psychologically from her experiences with sexual violence and the destruction of her family — her deity gives it back not because she’s “earned” it but because Del herself is ready to think of a future beyond her rape and its aftermath. Tiger himself is beginning to explore his wyrding ways and is beginning to age.
3. Rifkind
Rifkind acted as the basis of TV’s Xena. I enjoy this series because Rifkind ages believably during it. She’s never a precisely LIKABLE character, but she’s believably prickly. Also: healer with a sword. Also: telepathic horses. Also: she tells off gods and goddesses.
Look. Together, they fight crime. I actually first encountered these characters AND Tiger and Del in Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Sword and Sorceress anthology series. Oh my god. Such good, solid, feminist fantasy. If you’re new to this genre, I highly recommending picking up one of those anthologies and just immersing yourself in worlds where women ROCK, magic RULES, gender is AMBIGUOUS, and friends are TRUE. Anyways, back to Tarma and Kethry. Tarma’s clan has been wiped out and she’s sworn herself to regenerating it. Kethry has a sword named Need that’s bound to answer any woman’s need. I’m serious. Together, they fight crime. <3 Their repartee and honest-to-god friendship are truly fantastic. Plus, you know, they’re committed to helping ANY woman in need. <3
Remember Farfhrd and the Gray Mouser? And their occasional reference to Alyx the lock-pick? Yeah… This is that Alyx. She jokes about taking hairy Northmen to her bed, and secretly she’s an agent of Destiny or an everyday thief or the savior of her time. She’s an EPIC HEROINE like Elric is an EPIC HERO except unlike Elric she’s not a pissant, and when she falls in love it’s with causes and people. This is a short collection of stories, but it’s an amazing antidote to the “anti-hero” tendency in the genre. You can like Alyx because she’s a decent human being working in an indecent world.
6. Darkover
Okay, so! Earth colonizes a really tiny, cold planet and when that colony gets lost, all kinds of weird shit happens. Like, people develop telepathy, women’s rights take a backseat to political maneuvering, and then BAM there are Free Amazons offering a way out of conservative gender norms and a way INTO contact with the Terrans once the Terrans realize that they’ve lost contact with a colony. This intriguing mix of SF/F features magic, epic quests, politics, and makes women’s bodies and stories central to the conversation. HEART.
7. The Secret of the Unicorn Queen
This series was really one of my first fantasies. Sheila, a typical 1980s teen with a love on for Bon Jovi, gets swept away into an alternate universe where Illyria, a warrior princess, has been fomenting a revolution against an evil wizard, who’s not only been oppressing the country’s citizens, but has also turned Illyria’s lover (and the brothers/lovers/fathers of her women) into eagles. So, yeah, she’s fighting to knock down an oppressive government AND to free her boyfriend. Now! SPOILERS TIME. They totally kick the wizard’s ass in book three, and Sheila gets sent back to the “real world” … where girls who’ve taken down evil, know how to throw a punch, shoot an arrow, and know there’s more to true love than kissing aren’t exactly out about their awesomeness. So… Sheila sneaks back. The next three books feature Sheila learning about magic, loyalty, and real courage, AND growing into the kind of woman who can be confident in ANY world because she knows her own worth. I FUCKING LOVE THESE BOOKS, but sadly don’t own a copy. They’re now available in omnibus editions and that makes me THRILLED.
I know Marion Zimmer Bradley’s on this list twice, but come on! I wouldn’t know about SOAPWORT without her. Seriously, she wrote historically detailed fantasy that challenged readers to think about canonical mythologies in new ways. I was lucky enough to read Firebrand, Antigone, Wonder Woman, and The Gate to Women’s Country all about the same time. Sooooo yeah. My first taste of Greek myth placed women and their experiences front and center. Much, much more satisfying than Dan Simmon’s Illium
9. The Gate to Women’s Country
I just mentioned The Gate to Women’s Country when talking about Firebrand. All I can say is that this is both postapocalyptic AND sword and sandal. Basically, women live in women’s country and men live in men’s country, except for those few men who live inside with the women. Unbeknown to the women of Marthatown, Stavia and Chernon have a forbidden relationship: she smuggles him books, something forbidden to the men outside the walls. Their friendship will have a profound effect on both Marthatown and their lives. It’s SO HARD not to be spoilery with this novel — like all Sheri S. Tepper stuff this critiques gender, biology, and destiny while at the same time refusing to offer any easy answers.
OH MY GOD. Sun Wolf and Starhawk are mercenaries. Sun Wolf likes his women pretty, soft, and pliant. He has NO IDEA Starhawk, his fierce second-in-command, loves him. So much so, that when he’s kidnapped to train the ladies of Mandrigyn into a fighting force able to defend their town against the world’s last wizard, Starhawk rushes to the rescue. What follows is a novel analyzing love (professional, romantic, fraternal, and familial) as Starhawk, Sun Wolf, and the ladies of Mandrigyn marshal their resources to protect those people and things most dear to their heart.
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Maria,
The city can definitely be a character but can’t you use that trope in any genre? From sci fi where cities can be literal characters (The Ship Who series) to realistic fic like Scarface (“this city is a…”).
I wasn’t aware that film noir was any more centered on the White experience than the rest of the time period (1920′s – 50′s). And I’m not sure why a POC wouldn’t be able to follow in the traditions both of yesteryear’s genre and of the modern genre that builds on it. That’s not defensiveness – I am genuinely ignorant.
That’s a definition I hadn’t heard before. It’s a more complete version of what I have heard, it being about individuals and their personal issues.
Sylvia Sybil(Quote) (Reply)
Sylvia Sybil,
I don’t see why you couldn’t use it in any genre — like there are some mystery novels like, say, the Cat Who series that don’t really “depend” on a particular city to work, but then the Inspector Monk series wouldn’t quite work if it wasn’t London during a particular time… or like Barbara Hambly’s Benjamin January mystery series or even mafia novels. Or are all those just generically mysteries?
Re film noir: From what I understand about film noir, POC are always used to symbolize immorality and excess, and sometimes tragedy brought about by hubris.
http://books.google.com/books?id=LXYNUyz50v8C&pg=PA162&lpg=PA162&dq=film+noir+people+of+color%22&source=bl&ots=jiSq6yTv4V&sig=xCmpYmLVO-IwT58eAMk4T5oo4Hg&hl=en&ei=Y2WuTa7ZLMzdgQef-PyaDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&sqi=2&ved=0CCsQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=film%20noir%20people%20of%20color%22&f=false
http://books.google.com/books?id=fNamF1Wi2cIC&printsec=frontcover&dq=film+noir+%22people+of+color%22&source=bl&ots=PdDBhPEktg&sig=0U7Rn6lZPEThxg-Rx5Jocwcfk88&hl=en&ei=8GWuTfTBLtS5tgfo_9XbAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CBwQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=film%20noir%20%22people%20of%20color%22&f=false
(look at pg 29)
In neither analysis is there much space for POC to be main characters without some heavy baggage
Maria(Quote) (Reply)
Maria,
(Your second link doesn’t have a page 29 so I’m not sure what you were pointing to specifically.)
Thank you for the links. Those are insightful analyses. I was aware of the way film noir used light and shadow to symbolize good and evil but I wasn’t aware they extended that pattern to skin tone. From the 2nd article:
“Leave it to white folk to turn chiaroscuro into a racially coded metaphor for the ‘dark’ places of the white self.” -Eric Lott
Which is really depressing because I’m fond of other film noir characteristics and I had no idea how problematic it was.
Sylvia Sybil(Quote) (Reply)
Re film noir: From what I understand about film noir, POC are always used to symbolize immorality and excess, and sometimes tragedy brought about by hubris.
Also, women are generally used to represent madonna/whore dichotomies and the destructive force of sexuality, but that does not make it less awesome to read a film noir-style story where the hard-boiled detective is a woman and the sexy person who comes into her office with a need to hire her is a man.
POC can absolutely be centered in “film noir”-style novels (since “film noir” is, in fact, a movie genre, no novel is technically film noir.) All you *really* need is: most people are corrupt; humans aren’t generally good people; sex can be a weapon; the main character is cynical and hard-boiled, but often has a hidden core of idealism and compassion, which the storyline often does its best to crush out of them… there’s absolutely no reason the tropes that define something as film noir can’t be about a POC, even if the actual originating movies that made the trope always treated POC as immoral or something.
I mean, you can write a story about the Exotic Other in which your main character is Japanese and the Inscrutable Exotic Others are Americans. (The Japanese do this a lot, actually.) Just because the way a trope is usually handled tends to treat people of a certain race or gender in a bad way, doesn’t mean it always needs to do it that way.
Film noir isn’t about being white, but it’s *not* about being a person of color (or any kind of minority)… because the philosophy is that everyone’s corrupt, you can’t set up a dynamic where it’s Type A People, which the main character belongs to, are being shat upon by Type B People via a systemic oppressive hierarchy; the main character has to be suspicious of *everybody*. So you could do it in a story where you just plain ignored race, or you could do it in a story where everyone was black, but it would be kind of hard to pull off with a black main character in a historically accurate American milieu because the theme of “everyone is corrupt” doesn’t interact well with the theme of “the main character is oppressed because of his or her nature.” However, I *have* seen it pulled off with white women, so it should be quite possible to do with POC.
Alara Rogers(Quote) (Reply)
OMG!!! Someone else reads the Inspector Monk books! *GLOMPS* I thought I was all alone!
Chai Latte(Quote) (Reply)
I’ve only seen it pulled off with white women when POC were used to symbolize excess and immorality — like Anita Blake’s bad Mexican side (http://thehathorlegacy.com/the-laughing-corpse-laurell-k-hamilton/ and http://thehathorlegacy.com/obsidian-butterfly-lkh/). The only time I’ve seen the trademarks of noir you’re describing as genre tropes pulled off effectively with a POC would be Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosley (which is awesome, but mixed race women there are the ultimate deceits). I understand that the other books in the series push more against those tropes, but haven’t read them.
Maria(Quote) (Reply)
Heh, the downer of using Google Books, is that it randomizes what pages who can see when.
Maria(Quote) (Reply)
Haha. thanks for writing this. If I had a list like this when I was younger I’d be into a lot more fantasy. Ciao!
denimqueen(Quote) (Reply)
@Alara — Do you think those tropes are necessary components of urban fantasy?
Maria(Quote) (Reply)
@DQ I’m not sure the world can handle you being more into fantasy!
Maria(Quote) (Reply)
These books are basically the reading interest of my childhood and why I got SO CONFUSED when watching the old school Conan flicks, because the women didn’t seem to be the main characters. (Grace Jones, though, oh, Grace Jones in Conan the Destroyer, so amazing.) It also explains why Red Sonja was the sword and sorcery flick that I always watched when it aired. (Yes, I understand the problematic bits and the feminist critiques of Red Sonja, but, hey, it was the eighties and I was a kid. I took what I could get.)
havocthecat(Quote) (Reply)
Sylvia Sybil,
The ruler himself was not a particularly good leader–he was pretty clearly marshaling the forces of the nation to march to his own drum and was violating old religious practices that literally affected the health of the kingdom. The land had had numerous other male rulers, but they were disfavored against female rulers because that was the tradition and ancient prophecy predicted the return of a legendary queen, who is of course the series lead.
The usurper-male also sought to enforce very narrow gender roles on a culture that had not previously had such. He was portrayed as pretty much a narcissistic strongman thug, but this was not essential to his gender–there were many men in the series who opposed him. His son was even worse, a coward and weak-willed, though a large part of this came from the manipulations of an evil wizard who worked for years to destroy the boy’s will and sanity.
Lindsey(Quote) (Reply)
I just read Queen Sonja, one of the trades in the Red Sonja series. Despite the lingerie-y drawing, it wasn’t half bad.
Maria(Quote) (Reply)
Maria,
Not at all. They’re necessary components of film noir, but urban fantasy doesn’t *always* intersect film noir.
Some examples of urban fantasy that are *not* aligned with film noir include Patricia Briggs’ Mercy series, in which the main character is a mechanic who believes that people, in general, are usually pretty decent; Rachel Caine’s Weather Warden series, which frankly tracks closer to superhero fiction than film noir, and has a main character who presents as a stereotypically feminine woman in a kind of Sex and the City model (obsessed with fashion and romance); or, in the same universe by the same author, the Outcast series, where the main character is, in essence, a fallen angel in human form who is a very cool, aloof woman with no concept of things like fashion (but also a heroic character, who has fallen because she refused to destroy humanity… actually she is one of my favorites.) or Kate Griffin’s Matthew Swift series, which is much more literally urban fantasy (it’s actually about the bizarre, modern magic of cities, where the main character does things like disperse garbage monsters by invoking the names of garbage collection companies, or keeps a monster from following him into the subway by an incantation consisting of the subway rules that say you have to have a ticket.) That one is a touch closer to film noir in that the lines between the good guys and the bad guys might get blurry, and the hero is sort of a traditional guy in trenchcoat who helps people, but the utter weirdness of it all keeps it from having any component of the cynicism of film noir.
Actually, I ought to point out that though the Matthew Swift series is about a white guy, nearly *all* the important supporting cast in it are POCs… the antagonist that the hero has reluctant romantic/friendship tension with but who is ideologically opposed to him is a black woman, the person he ends up taking on as his apprentice is a black woman, the guy who used to be the magical mayor of London was a black man… his former apprentice and lover has a name that suggests she’s Japanese-British, although I can’t recall if we are ever told what she looks like. But I don’t know of any language group but Japanese that contains the last name Mikeda. Another very important supporting cast member (at least in the second and third books of the series) is a white woman. (And the third book passes the Bechdel test in a big way by having one of the central relationships to the plot be a woman and her sister, and one of the major tensions of the book be between the white female assistant and the black female apprentice, because the apprentice once almost destroyed London and the assistant has a lot of good reasons to resent her and fear her for that.)
Alara Rogers(Quote) (Reply)
I haven’t reread it for some time, but I remember only one blink-and-you’ll-miss-it reference in Mists with Igraine having a dream or something…
M.C.(Quote) (Reply)
I think the connection got more explicit in the later books — like Priestess/Forest House/ etc.
Maria(Quote) (Reply)
Chai Latte,
Haha no, I really like them — particularly Hester!
Maria(Quote) (Reply)
Yay! I was looking for some more feminist fantasy to read. Thanks everyone, this will give me a bit to get through, depending of course on what I can get at the library.
Katherine(Quote) (Reply)
Korva,
Hambly’s early stuff has just come out in e-book format! So now you can find them again. All of her SFF stuff seems to be really good on the feminist angles. Her Darwath trilogy has a female academic and a male biker/artist drawn into a world of magic. Guess who becomes the fighter and who becomes the mage? The Windrose books have as heroine a computer programmer. I haven’t read Those Who Hunt the Night yet, but I hear it mentioned a lot as a vampire book for people who don’t like vampire books.
ninjapenguin(Quote) (Reply)
Just seconding recs for Hambly. She features protagonists and love interests who are – gasp! – not beautiful! In a fantasy setting! Seriously, it makes you realize how thoroughly the genre, for the most part, marginalizes non-beautiful people. Or am I the only one who gets the sense from fantasy that I’m being told, “Because you are not conventionally gorgeous, your life will be boring and unremarkable. We present this fantasy so you can pretend for a few minutes you are not such a huge loser, you sad thing” ?
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
And what I loike the most about that is that it’s not a “secret pretty” kinda thing, like where the description of the character is actually conventionally attractive, but where you’re supposed to believe that she’s socially really ugly. That comes in LKH’s work a LOT (both Anita and Merry are thin and busty… in a world where thin and busty = hot) and in a lot of romance books.
Maria(Quote) (Reply)
For those getting interested in Hambly, note that there are more novels about Starhawk and Sun Wolf than Ladies of Mandrigyn. The sequels are The Witches of Wenshar and The Dark Hand of Magic. And they are great.
Jane(Quote) (Reply)
Jane,
And if you’re really into Hambly’s stuff, check out the deal she has on her website where you can buy new short stories in her various universes (including the Sunwolf and Starhawk one) for $5 each. Liz Williams does something similar as well with her Inspector Chen books as well. I think it’s a really neat idea.
ninjapenguin(Quote) (Reply)
Black Gate Magazine is currently doing a Women Warriors issue. I haven’t read it, but I found it interesting that they chose this theme, and it has some interesting-looking pieces.
http://www.blackgate.com/2011/04/26/black-gate-15-complete-table-of-contents/
Lindsey(Quote) (Reply)
WHOA. Are all the authors listed in that men??
Maria(Quote) (Reply)
Maria,
MY B. I see now that I read the large paragraphs, and not the small one at the top where it’s just names and not story/article descriptors.
Maria(Quote) (Reply)
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