Ursula Le Guin

[droid]

That is the political point, and thats what is revolutionary about it, even today. That she managed to invert the racial politics of an entire genre without making a big deal of it.

 

[Benny Bunter]

That is the political point, and thats what is revolutionary about it, even today. That she managed to invert the racial politics of an entire genre without making a big deal of it.

I get it! Without being too Harold Bloom about it (though he had a point) I get the impression writers are far too heavy handed these days about these issues and it doesn't make for good literature is all.

 

[Benny Bunter]

I mostly swerve the whole politically correct issue when it comes to assessing who's a good writer or not. These norms change over time anyway. I agree though that le guin is especially good at bypassing all that, whether it's intentional or not. There's very little if anything objectionable in there by today's standards in what is a total minefield.

 

[DannyL]

I think Ged is kinda Native American colouring, rather than Black. She mentions it somewhere in the first Earthsea book. Vetch is black, I think, dark-skinned and the Kargs are I think whiteys as befits a bunch of incompetent pirate murderers.

 

[DannyL]

But Droid is totally right, it's a throwaway twist for her that a lesser writer would've made a hamfisted mess of, beaten to death over the course of a terrible trilogy called something like BLACK IS WHITE

 

[Benny Bunter]

I think Ged is kinda Native American colouring, rather than Black. She mentions it somewhere in the first Earthsea book.

Yeah I said before, his shipmates on the boat to Oskill call him "red skin"

 

[Benny Bunter]

It's a testament to the quality of the writing that it doesn't really draw your attention to contemporary racial politics, you're totally drawn into the self-contained world she creates.

 

[Benny Bunter]

It leaves you free to just enjoy the writing and the story. Who wants to be dragged down with real world politics when you're reading a fantasy novel with loads of cool stuff like dragons and wizards and magic?

 

[Benny Bunter]

I'm only a bit over halfway through the first book but I hope it continues in this vein

 

[subvert47]

At what point did you realise Ged was black? I didnt at all on my first read.

Early on she says (of Ogion): "He was a dark man, like most Gontishmen, dark copper-brown". That registered as a fact – and that Ged was therefore the same; also that the Kargs were white and East Reachers black – but an unimportant one. I guess it's white privilege that the described or implied race of characters wasn't relevant to me as a child. Coupled with the fact that I don't visualize much when I'm reading anyway.

On which note (to digress): I don't like other people to do the visualizing for me either, so I mostly avoid film/TV adaptations of fantasy novels.
Exception: Harry Potter. Those books are purely about plot. JKR tells a good story but her language is unmemorable and her characters poorly drawn. Plenty of room for actors and directors to make them their own.
Also: Game of Thrones, since I haven't read the books.

 

[Corpsey]

It's interesting comparing Harry Potter to Earthsea – the obvious one to compare being the first book. I like Harry Potter fwiw (without getting into the politics of it etc.) but the concept of magic is so much richer in Earthsea, plus wizards actually go around doing things for people. I know the point of HP is to render magic somewhat quotidian and that the wizards have to hide themselves for some reason or other but still. And goes without saying stylistically Earthsea is on another planet. But HP is funnier, so there's that.

 

[DannyL]

It leaves you free to just enjoy the writing and the story. Who wants to be dragged down with real world politics when you're reading a fantasy novel with loads of cool stuff like dragons and wizards and magic?

I think this is what she does such a great job of in Tehanu. Revises the whole world in light of her emerging political and feminist understandings.

 

[DannyL]

I wrote this about it before, seems more a repost.
Tehanu is an amazing book. I enjoyed it less first time I read it but when you realise what she's doing..... She's basically going back and rewriting her earlier story world via the lens of her later understandings of feminism, anthropology, history and so on. So you get attention brought to the value of women's labour, the ubiquity of male power and the threat of sexual violence etc etc. The rarefied fantasy world she created is brought into focus and becomes grittier, realer. It's a work of fucking genius IMO.

You have a lot to enjoy before you get there though Benny

 

[Benny Bunter]

Finished Wizard of Earthsea today - a perfect book, can't find a fault in it. I'll definitely be pushing it onto my son when he gets a bit older, I would have loved it if I'd read it as a kid. The Hobbit and the Narnia series were the first 'proper' books I read as a child but I reckon this is much better than them.

 

[Benny Bunter]

The Tombs of Atuan

I'm about five chapters in. This was hard to get into at first, very different from A Wizard of Earthsea, not the same sweeping setting and pacy narrative, but I slowly settled into the world of halls, tombs, walls and religious ritual/cruelty, and it began unfolding itself, semi-revealing — as with the first book — a complex, ancient world... And now (Spoiler alert) a wizard has turned up, so I can't wait to read the rest of it.

This is where I am now, end of chapter 5. I agree I was quite taken aback too by how different it is to the first book, I was expecting Ged to come into it sooner, and the third chapter about the prisoners really messed with me when I read it last night before going to bed, incredibly claustrophobic and cruel - bad vibes. I don't think the quality of the writing has dipped from the first book though and I'm totally hooked.

 

[Benny Bunter]

May the Dark Ones eat your soul, Kossil !

🔥

 

[luka]

the best thing about earthsea is definitely not that she might posibly have made some main characters not be white lol wtf

 

[Benny Bunter]

the best thing about earthsea is definitely not that she might posibly have made some main characters not be white lol wtf

Evidently, cos nobody even really notices it unless it's pointed out

 

[droid]

The fantasy tradition I was writing in came from Northern Europe, which is why it was about white people. I’m white, but not European. My people could be any color I liked, and I like red and brown and black. I was a little wily about my color scheme. I figured some white kids (the books were published for “young adults”) might not identify straight off with a brown kid, so I kind of eased the information about skin color in by degrees—hoping that the reader would get “into Ged’s skin” and only then discover it wasn’t a white one...

...I think it is possible that some readers never even notice what color the people in the story are. Don’t notice, don’t care. Whites of course have the privilege of not caring, of being “colorblind.” Nobody else does.

I have heard, not often, but very memorably, from readers of color who told me that the Earthsea books were the only books in the genre that they felt included in—and how much this meant to them, particularly as adolescents, when they’d found nothing to read in fantasy and science fiction except the adventures of white people in white worlds. Those letters have been a tremendous reward and true joy to me.

Ursula K. Le Guin on the TV Earthsea.

On Tuesday night, the Sci Fi Channel aired its final installment of Legend of Earthsea, the miniseries based—loosely, as it turns out—on my Earthsea...

slate.com

 

[Benny Bunter]

That's nice, no one is saying it isn't, but it's far from the most interesting thing about the book. Literally everyone here on the thread didn't notice it on first read.