While I like to see articles lauding Leckie

[james_davis_nicoll]

It seems to me the author of this one hews too closely to the standard forms used when writing about successful women.

For example, the photo of John Scalzi used in this article on Ann Leckie didn't have "John Scalzi, husband and writer" under it, it had "Sci-fi blogger and author John Scalzi is a big fan of Leckie", whereas Leckie's photo got (in part) with "St. Louis mother and first-time novelist.

Passages like

The first Nebula was given to Frank Herbert's Dune in 1966. Over the next thirteen years, only two awards for Best Novel went to a woman — both to Ursula K. Le Guin. That trend began to change in the late 1980s as more and more women began publishing. Since 2000 the gender split for Nebula winners, which is also awarded for novellas and short stories, has been about 50-50. But that hardly means we've arrived at a post-sexism literary world.

suggest the author means well, despite falling short.

Comments

[matgb]

One of your LJ commenters mentions that the photo captions are normally written by someone else and I suspect that's the case in this one, the lead paragraph is frequently also written or rewritten by a subeditor as well.

Also, it's a piece for her local newspaper, that she's a local mother is probably going to get people to read it in the local area more than that she's won two awards most readers haven't heard of and is likely to be the first to take the three (is that actually true, no one's won all three with the same book before?)

I just finished it this morning, and am waiting for the sequel already, first time since Old Man's War a book and background has really grabbed me and made me want to keep going immediately. And I think it's better than OMW, it's certainly the best first novel I can recall reading for a long time.

Yes, the article does get a fairly good sexist bingo score, but it is for a local paper, so I can forgive it concentrating on the point that she's local and has kids at local schools, etc.

[hrj.livejournal.com]

The article was startlingly thoughtful and perceptive after the oddly sexist language in the first few paragraphs. I could wish the article's author could have stepped back and realized just how much of the issues with women in SFF are the project of exactly the thinking (or lack thereof) that went into those first couple paragraphs.

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

In general, in fact, you can play 'How to Suppress Women's Writing' bingo with articles about Leckie -- this isn't unusual. I remember it too with Audrey Niffenegger when "The Time Traveller's Wife" came out. People just couldn't cope with 'it's a jolly good book and people like it a whole lot' -- they had to deconstruct it in ways that belittled it.

Does this happen with male first-time novelists? (Hint: no.)

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

I do not disagree with your point at all about the implications of the photo titling. However, I'll also point out that the people in the photos, and the captions, serve two different purposes, not the same, so to expect them to be parallel in construction might be asking too much.

Leckie's photo is in the rhetorical position of "here's who this marvelous person is, and the caption essentially captures her nature". (That it should say "mother" before "first-time novelist" is telling, true, true.)

Scalzi's photo is in the rhetorical position of "here's the professional we're using to lend credibility to our claim that Leckie is awesome". So the caption speaks to his professional qualifications: not only is he an author (in the field), he's also a blogger in the field: he's connected, he has opinions, he's with it. The fact that he's a husband and father is not relevant, because we don't need to know who he is, we just need to know that he's an authority, so it's his relevant credentials that are important.

Again, though -- it's also clear that we're seeing a post that reflects normative patriarchy, too. I get that.

[martianmooncrab.livejournal.com]

so, ask John to change his ..

[nihilistic-kid.livejournal.com]

I suspect one influence might have been that Leckie was interviewed in person, and Scalzi via email? (That's a guess.)

[davidgoldfarb.livejournal.com]

I notice that near the end of page 1, the article refers to Ancillary Justice as having a "strong female protagonist". Does it? So far as I can recall we never learn the biological sex of the body that bears the name Breq. (In fact, we never learn the sex of most of the major characters, with only one or two exceptions.)

[ann-leckie.livejournal.com]

As Nick suggests above, the reporter is local and interviewed me in person, on the phone, and via email, over a couple of weeks. He'll have contacted Scalzi (and Rachel, and MRK, and Nora) by either email or phone, and for various reasons I'm guessing by phone.

The pictures were their own separate thing. And the photographer was awesome, I really enjoyed meeting her. I am assuming the captions and the headlines weren't the reporter's choice. I'm actually on the cover of the print edition of the RFT (I know it's awesome publicity, but introverted me would like to crawl under a rock now) and includes, across the bottom, the line, "Women are aliens, too!" I'm blaming an editor for that, and also headdesking forever.

The reporter really did mean well. He's also terribly young. Or I am getting old, because my daughter said, "Mom, it irritates me when you say grown up people look like they're about twelve. Nevertheless, I think he's still learning how to write articles."