Monthly Archives: January 2011

Rating Historical Fiction for the Classroom

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I’ve been reading a lot of novels set in ancient times.   It’s a way to maintain the mood and sensibility of my work-in-progress, and  Ancient Greece and Rome were my favorite eras in Western Civ, way back in the day.

Writer Anne Bedichek Braden has launched an excellent website for teachers looking for good historical fiction to incorporate into their classrooms.   I met Anne over at Absolute Write.   She’s a former middle school teacher and currently a stay-at-home mom.   She says the website is one of her writerly projects during “nap time.”    She just completed a novel  1790: ON THE EDGE, which is a young adult mystery that takes place during a turbulent year when colonial Vermonters were deciding whether or not to join a fledgling country:   the United States.

Anne’s inspiration for Rating Historical Fiction came from her experience in the classroom.   She explains:

“When I was a social studies teacher, I loved using historical fiction in my classroom, but I rarely had time to branch out from the books I already knew.   I could find lists of titles and reviews of books online, but what I really needed to know was whether a book would engage my reluctant students and if it would spark meaningful discussions in my classroom.   Now that I’m a stay-at-home mom I have more time (amazing, eh?), so I started this blog to make it easier for busy teachers to find books that will work with their students.   Also, it’s good for me because as a writer of historical fiction I’m intent on reading as much as I can in the genre, and since the blog collects reviews of others’ favorite books, I’ve already gotten some excellent recommendations.”

For me, historical fiction assignments in middle and high school were hits and misses.   I loved Charles Dickens’ A TALE OF TWO CITIES, hated Stephen Crane’s THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE (as I recall, my book report was based on Cliff Notes), and was fairly apathetic about social studies staple INHERIT THE WIND (though it was the source of many witty fart jokes).   Promoting more recent, ‘relatable’ books is part of the plan for Anne’s site.

“Most teachers are familiar with the classics, but not as many know about the great books that are being published today.  I’m hoping I can collect reviews from teachers who are using recently published books and couple it with an interview of the author. ”

So far, Rating Historical Fiction has reviews of Howard Bahr’s Civil War-story THE JUDAS FIELD; Mildred Taylor’s Depression era/African American coming-of-age ROLL OF THUNDER, HEAR ME CRY; and Laurie Halse Anderson’s FEVER 1793 about the 18th century Yellow Fever epidemic in Philadelphia, just to name a few.   There are also first person accounts of the Holocaust, the Korean War, and the Cambodian Genocide.

Current titles lean toward U.S. history, and the 20th century particularly, but when I was given the opportunity to contribute, I quickly submitted a review of Annabel Lyon’s THE GOLDEN MEAN.   This is an absolutely fantastic book narrated by Aristotle during the period when he tutored the young Alexander the Great.  While highly sophisticated in language and content, I thought it was a great resource for advanced high school students and certainly those in college.  You can check out my review here.

Turning Japanese

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I came up with this post title, realized it was a masturbation reference (from the Vapors’ 80’s hit of the same name)–which I’ve been doing a lot lately, using onanism puns on my blog that is,  but I couldn’t think of a better title so there it is.

This week, I decided to write a little poetry on the train.  The Notes app on my iPhone lends itself to short form verse, so it’s all Haiku–a 17th century Japanese poetry style.

I believe the thing with Haiku is visual imagery.   Traditionally, the poems are written vertically with an ink pen and sometimes accompanied by a painting, or, they can be inscribed on monuments.   I tried to stick to imagery but took some liberties.

Train Haiku

A morning train,

Chirpy chatter, Nooks, and texts,

And I, cocooned.

~

When I was younger,

I thought you’d burn your eyeballs,

Staring at the sun.

~

Little cat pounces,

Tail licks the air, fore-paws clamp,

She’s caught a house fly.

~

When he’s listening,

He nods fast like he agrees,

But inside, he doesn’t.

~

I dreamt of Tokyo,

Where you can leave your bike out,

And no one steals it.

~

January snow,

The sky is clotted with gray,

A frozen footprint.

~

Waiting for the train,

Bundled in coat, scarf and hat,

Her ears whisper songs.

Good and Bad LGBT portrayals

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I’ve been participating in a discussion board on the topic of what makes an LGBT portrayal good or bad.

The question was posed by an LGBT writer and got several of us sharing our favorite characters.  But the discussion soon drew in non-LGBT writers who were worried about their own depictions and not wanting to offend.

There’s a history of villainizing gay men in lit, playing to a conscious or subconscious fear of effeminacy and our “strange” proclivities.   Likely, this trend was a lot more prevalent prior to the civil rights movement.   Think about the many fey villains in Ian Fleming’s James Bond series, their apathy toward women the perfect foil to Bond’s rather active heterosexuality.   Or—from Frank Herbert’s Dune—the gluttonous, deranged Baron Vladimir Harkonnen who can barely keep a handle on his lust for his young nephews.

Another popular trope is sometimes called ‘Bury your Gays.’    How many LGBT’s in mainstream novels make it to the end of the story alive?   (especially if they are non-gender conforming and/or open about their sexuality?).   Somehow, gay tragic heroes bother me more than gay villains.    Jack Twist in Annie Proulx’s Brokeback Mountain, for example.   Practically all the “classics” have LGBT’s killing themselves or at least ending off badly:   James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room, Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness, D.H. Lawrence’s The Fox, among others.

Representations have certainly gotten better, but if you believe in the concept of a collective unconscious—as I do—archetypes never really die, they go through derivations, softening perhaps, but persisting as something we believe to be true about the world.

I notice this is some of the historical fiction I read:   Turnus, the petulant prince-suitor who is mocked for his homosexual-leanings, in Ursula LeGuin’s Lavinia.   Ay, the ruthless puppet-master behind ancient Egypt’s dynastic political workings, in Nick Drake’s Nefertiti.  (He’s mentioned to be gay for no apparent reason other than to set him apart as the only gay character in the novel).

In some recent stories, LGBT villains have become less evil and more absurd.   I haven’t seen the movie, but there’s quite a fracas over the glam rock-inspired bad guy in the new Tron:   Legacy.   You can check the discussion out on AfterElton.

I know I’m veering away from literary examples (which elude me now), but there’s Dr. Evil from Mike Myers’ Austin Powers’ films and scores of queeny villains in TV’s South Park and you bet you’ll find at least a couple ridiculous or tragic (or ridiculous AND tragic) LGBT’s in any Wayans Brothers film.

I don’t think any of these depictions are horrible or bent on destroying the LGBT community (some of them are clever and funny), but I do think they’re worth examining.   And the best kind of LGBT portrayal—in my mind—is one that turns the tropes on their heads, re-imagining what we think we know.    Can a gay teen save the world, as in Perry Moore’s Hero?   Have the lives of our folktale villains been suppressed and misunderstood, as in Douglas Clegg’s Mordred, Bastard Son?   This is the stuff I want to read.

Spam-mered!

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It says something when you start getting as many as 30 spam comments a day.   What it says, I don’t know exactly.

I guess I could take it as a sign of arrival.   There are shady companies across the globe that think they can benefit by drawing traffic from my humble site (unlikely as it seems).   But with my trusty Akismet Plug-In, their hyperlink gibberish is a minor inconvenience.   In fact, it’s kind of fun to scroll through the quarantined comments and, ultimately, obliterate them with a click of ‘Delete Permanently.’

I get five basic categories of spam.  About a third are advertisements for pharmaceuticals, especially “male enhancement” drugs like Cialis and Viagra.   Twenty percent are porn—99% of it, straight porn—which ticks me off.   They couldn’t even take a second to read a little about my site?   Another twenty percent is loan and credit offers.   Another twenty percent is internet or computer products.   And the rest is the most interesting category:   miscellaneous.

I’ve been spammed by companies selling kayaks in Australia, sites devoted to vulcanology, a fan site for a pre-teen Beauty Queen, and a project that collects sightings of UFO’s, among others.   Some spam comes in written in Russian, Hungarian and Chinese, so I’m not sure what they’re trying to sell, although I can understand enough of the French spam to see that they’re just as concerned about erectile dysfunction as here in the states.   The best stuff is poorly, ridiculously translated into English.   Here are some of my favorites:

On my review of Bret Easton Ellis’ Imperial Bedrooms…

“Good information but might you spoon feed it to me?”

On Writing Prompts…

“I hope you get a nice day! very good article, shaft written plus very outlook out. i am looking forward until reading frequently of your posts within the approaching.”

Many of the messages try to play to my ego, with near-incomprehensible, vague praise, in effect, trying to trick me into releasing them from spam purgatory.   It’s tempting, but I won’t compromise my integrity.

I wonder what kind of spam this post will get?