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Reviews tagging 'Antisemitism'
The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction by Ursula K. Le Guin
1 review
novella42's review
challenging
funny
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
4.75
Fascinating, passionate, and engaging. I love her humor, her stubborn streak, her hint of pettiness, and above all her belief in the capacity of writers to really, truly, create art. There are many quotable moments here, and many thoughts to ponder. The self-censorship of capitalism is going to stay with me. I'm not sure anyone else on the planet could have convinced me to try Yevegeny Zamyatin, but here I am, adding We to my library hold list on the strength of her admiration for him.
I find myself inspired as a writer, slightly disappointed as a feminist — though grateful to her and other second wave feminists for their groundbreaking work, her 1975/1989 visions of gender were very much a white, middle-class, able-bodied feminism.
I still admire her and plan to quote her. I took so many photos of the pages I practically scanned half the book.
But I'd be lying if I said her cavalier use of "ghetto" (does this count as antisemitism? racist? I cringe but cannot articulate why at the moment) and multiple uses of the word "cripple" as a devastating and shaming insult didn't break my heart a little. Took the wind right out of my sails, to go from imagining sitting by her side at the Clarion workshops she describes with such wit and hilarity, to imagine the way she might look right through me as a cripple in a wheelchair. I think my own lived experience and insight as a disabled person gives me a unique perspective on her ruminations on escapism. And honestly? I think she's wrong in some ways and right in others. If I have energy maybe I'll come back and argue for the human nervous system's very reasonable evolved strategy to dissociate beyond suffering and trauma. But that's an essay for another day.
It makes me want to read some of her later essays to see if she'd grown any, from those earlier views. She seems a person who thought deeply and seriously about ethics.
It's good to see she wasn't the perfect role model I believed she was, when I taped a photo of her above my computer as a teenager. Maybe that means there's hope for all the rest of us humans, too.
I find myself inspired as a writer, slightly disappointed as a feminist — though grateful to her and other second wave feminists for their groundbreaking work, her 1975/1989 visions of gender were very much a white, middle-class, able-bodied feminism.
I still admire her and plan to quote her. I took so many photos of the pages I practically scanned half the book.
But I'd be lying if I said her cavalier use of "ghetto" (does this count as antisemitism? racist? I cringe but cannot articulate why at the moment) and multiple uses of the word "cripple" as a devastating and shaming insult didn't break my heart a little. Took the wind right out of my sails, to go from imagining sitting by her side at the Clarion workshops she describes with such wit and hilarity, to imagine the way she might look right through me as a cripple in a wheelchair. I think my own lived experience and insight as a disabled person gives me a unique perspective on her ruminations on escapism. And honestly? I think she's wrong in some ways and right in others. If I have energy maybe I'll come back and argue for the human nervous system's very reasonable evolved strategy to dissociate beyond suffering and trauma. But that's an essay for another day.
It makes me want to read some of her later essays to see if she'd grown any, from those earlier views. She seems a person who thought deeply and seriously about ethics.
It's good to see she wasn't the perfect role model I believed she was, when I taped a photo of her above my computer as a teenager. Maybe that means there's hope for all the rest of us humans, too.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Ableism
Minor: Antisemitism
More...