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A review by dinosaursatwork
Five Ways to Forgiveness by Ursula K. Le Guin
2.0
Did you know that slavery is bad and that discrimination against women is not cool? Great, you already know the message of the book.
We could have long discussions about whether a white author should write about white people being enslaved by black people. Just in terms of enjoyment, I can say that this book was not for me - not because reading about slavery is not not enjoyable but because I thought that Le Guin didn't have much to offer besides the obvious.
Five Ways to Forgiveness comprises five stories, all of them too long in my opinion (it took me 20 days to read 250 pages) and all of them left me wondering why we needed this story.
<b>Betrayals</b> tells the story of an old woman taking care of a disgraced freedom fighter in a liberated slave planet (Yeowe). They become a couple.
<b>Forgiveness Day</b> tells the story of an Envoy and a warrior caste man who fought the liberation on the slave colony planet (now back on the "original" planet (Werel) where slavery is still in full force). They don't seem to get along but then get abducted by freedom fighters. They fall in love.
<A Man of the People</b> gives us new insight into how Hainish are living. We follow a countryside Hanish man who becomes an envoy on Yeowe. He gets into touch with women who want to fight discrimination since the liberation only freed men. He goes to a village where he watches how a couple of girls (one of them 6 years old) get raped in a ceremony of becoming an adult. 30 years later all is good and there is no sexism anymore. :) Also, he is married now.
<A Woman's Liberation</b> tells the story of an enslaved girl on Werel who is taught by her owner's son (and coincidental brother) what liberation is. The son fucks up liberating his slaves big time and almost all slaves die or end up in worse circumstances. Our main character is freed after two years of sex slavery and goes to the city where she becomes an intellectual. She insists that women should have rights and has to flee to Yeowe to avoid assassination. There, she is exploited as a worker but manages to get some support. She goes to the city where she meets the Hanish man from the previous story. She joins the university to publish about liberating women. More importantly, she also starts dating the Hanish man.
<Old Music and the Slave Women</b> tells us how Old Music, another Hanish man on Werel, gets abducted and befriends his captor's slave women. They try to survive days of political struggles and fighting.
Of these studies, I perhaps liked Betrayals best because it told the story of an old woman mostly alone in the marshes. However, I struggled with all of these stories. A constant question that came up was: Why is this story being told? Why are we focussing on these characters? How long do you have to keep a man and a woman in the same space until they start making out?
The stories gave me a lot of backstories of characters and, unfortunately, I didn't really care about them or the story. There was a spark missing. A deeper message apart from "oppression is bad" was lacking. On top of that, I don't think that writing about dark-skinned people enslaving lighter-skinned people is very subversive or clever.
Perhaps the deeper message here is to never meet your heroes: I was curious why we had so many Hainish protagonists in the Hanish circle. The answer is that they aren't more interesting than other alien races despite their millennia long history. And they also ritualize having sex for the first time when a child is 15, isn't that fun?
Likewise, this story made me dislike the Ekumen who is always "neutral". "Neutral" here means they don't pick sides in times of violence and oppression. Whose really to say that slave owners are bad? Surely there are good and bad people among slave owners and among slaves.
We could have long discussions about whether a white author should write about white people being enslaved by black people. Just in terms of enjoyment, I can say that this book was not for me - not because reading about slavery is not not enjoyable but because I thought that Le Guin didn't have much to offer besides the obvious.
Five Ways to Forgiveness comprises five stories, all of them too long in my opinion (it took me 20 days to read 250 pages) and all of them left me wondering why we needed this story.
<b>Betrayals</b> tells the story of an old woman taking care of a disgraced freedom fighter in a liberated slave planet (Yeowe). They become a couple.
<b>Forgiveness Day</b> tells the story of an Envoy and a warrior caste man who fought the liberation on the slave colony planet (now back on the "original" planet (Werel) where slavery is still in full force). They don't seem to get along but then get abducted by freedom fighters. They fall in love.
<A Man of the People</b> gives us new insight into how Hainish are living. We follow a countryside Hanish man who becomes an envoy on Yeowe. He gets into touch with women who want to fight discrimination since the liberation only freed men. He goes to a village where he watches how a couple of girls (one of them 6 years old) get raped in a ceremony of becoming an adult. 30 years later all is good and there is no sexism anymore. :) Also, he is married now.
<A Woman's Liberation</b> tells the story of an enslaved girl on Werel who is taught by her owner's son (and coincidental brother) what liberation is. The son fucks up liberating his slaves big time and almost all slaves die or end up in worse circumstances. Our main character is freed after two years of sex slavery and goes to the city where she becomes an intellectual. She insists that women should have rights and has to flee to Yeowe to avoid assassination. There, she is exploited as a worker but manages to get some support. She goes to the city where she meets the Hanish man from the previous story. She joins the university to publish about liberating women. More importantly, she also starts dating the Hanish man.
<Old Music and the Slave Women</b> tells us how Old Music, another Hanish man on Werel, gets abducted and befriends his captor's slave women. They try to survive days of political struggles and fighting.
Of these studies, I perhaps liked Betrayals best because it told the story of an old woman mostly alone in the marshes. However, I struggled with all of these stories. A constant question that came up was: Why is this story being told? Why are we focussing on these characters? How long do you have to keep a man and a woman in the same space until they start making out?
The stories gave me a lot of backstories of characters and, unfortunately, I didn't really care about them or the story. There was a spark missing. A deeper message apart from "oppression is bad" was lacking. On top of that, I don't think that writing about dark-skinned people enslaving lighter-skinned people is very subversive or clever.
Perhaps the deeper message here is to never meet your heroes: I was curious why we had so many Hainish protagonists in the Hanish circle. The answer is that they aren't more interesting than other alien races despite their millennia long history. And they also ritualize having sex for the first time when a child is 15, isn't that fun?
Likewise, this story made me dislike the Ekumen who is always "neutral". "Neutral" here means they don't pick sides in times of violence and oppression. Whose really to say that slave owners are bad? Surely there are good and bad people among slave owners and among slaves.