women authors – Ink-Stained Wretches

Weaving Complexity into Story

by Renee Kimball

It has been a year of extremes—Covid, freezing weather, and higher than average temperatures forecast for the summer ahead.

During Covid quarantine, I read many, many books of all kinds. I forgot some of those within an hour of finishing, but others, stayed with me long after I turned the last page.

The stories that remained with me included specific historical, geographical, even philosophical backstories, that despite of a kind of literary density, held my attention. Each author had conducted meticulous research, and their obvious investment of time, effort, along with many complex details, was an achievement. Each story was the kind the reader falls into and stays to the end.

Similarities between them were clear; all were written by female authors; all contained resourceful, intelligent female protagonists; and each flawlessly merged a complex backstory within the main theme. What could have been unintelligible and unenjoyable was successful, even riveting. These stories were not mired in dry, mind-numbing facts, and the characters were believable, even likeable; what more could a reader ask?

In the first novel, The Signature of All Things, by Elizabeth Gilbert, we meet the protagonist, Alma Whittaker. Whittaker’s character is loosely based on the historical women explorers of the Victorian age. Alma’s story is engaging, and she not only became an explorer, but a respected scientist through her groundbreaking global research in Bryology, the study of mosses, a branch of Botany.

Alma, an unattractive baby, then a precocious child, develops into a brilliant multi-talented adult. Alma’s insatiable need to know everything, to her credit, gives her an unstoppable confidence that keeps her strong and saves her in the later decades of life. Her greatest disappointment is her failed marriage, the husband unable or unwilling to give Alma the love that she desperately wants, eventually leaving her unhappy and alone.

Gilbert’s rigorous research details the severity of the life of a Victorian woman. Blocked from entering or studying within male dominated scientific fields, any findings women might make were dismissed or stolen by men who took credit for the original work, or disregarded completely. In spite of this overall disregard, many women persevered, becoming explorers or scholars in their own right, and laid the groundwork of the first inklings of female equality.

The second novel, The Weight of Ink, by Rachel Kadish, introduces a dual timeline and two female protagonists: the present-day London historian, Helen Watt, who discovers an ancient cache of valuable correspondence, and Ester Velasquez, a Jewish female scribe, who was the actual author of the historical letters. Two stories run side by side, back and forth, jumping from present day London to the Jewish community of 1660s plague-ridden London.

Intrigue and tension rise as a present-day scholarly battle throws university professors and researchers in a race to establish control over the translation of the letters, while, in tandem, Ester’s life-story is picked apart as the letters are slowly translated, revealing her character and brilliant inquisitive intellect.

Ester, an orphaned Jewish adolescent, is sent to London along with her brother, from Amsterdam, when their family home burns, killing both parents. The children become wards of the venerated but blind Rabbi Moseh Ha Coen Mendes. Ester’s brother, slated to become a scribe for the Rabbi, refuses, runs away, and dies shortly after.

Hiding behind a fictious “male” persona, Ester becomes the Rabbi’s scribe. A scribe was traditionally a male only position, but the Rabbi silently allows Ester to hide behind a false identity and to transcribe his weighty correspondence. It does not take long for Ester’s razor-sharp intellect to rise to the surface when unbeknownst to the Rabbi, Ester modifies the Rabbi’s responses with her own commentary and questions. This correspondence is composed in reply to some of the greatest thinkers of the day, a list that includes the philosopher Baruch Spinoza, among others.

Kadish presents an intellectually strong and resourceful woman trapped by gender, religion, tradition, and social constraints in the frantic environment of plague-ridden London. Ester’s character refuses to be cowed and questions centuries of Rabbinical teaching and beliefs, even questioning Spinoza’s philosophies.

Kadish’s language flows, integrating the complex philosophical theories of Judaism and those of Spinoza through Ester, and again through Helen Watt, a specialist in Judaic history who demands Ester’s letters be given the prominence and respect they deserve. With Kadish, the reader becomes nothing less than a captive to the story—Kadish has created an historical page-turner.

The The Fifth Season: The Broken Earth, Book 1 by N.K. Jemisin, unlike the first two novels, is pure science fiction in imaginary time. The novel takes place on an Earth-like planet of broken islands, what Jemisin’s calls the “Stillness.” The ever-changing geological landscape breaks, fuses, rises and sinks, entire enclaves disappear, only to rise again elsewhere. Time runs in Seasons that begin and end with land-mass upheaval while creating a daily apocalypse for its inhabitants.

Essun, the protagonist, a middle-aged woman-healer, lives in the ever-changing Stillness, confronting numerous small enclaves of hostile caste-ridden survivors with bizarre magical abilities.

When her own toddler son displays telekinesis, he is murdered by her husband. Essun had hidden the child’s gift from her husband to protect the child, and although Essun has these same gifts she keeps them hidden because she too would be killed. After murdering the son, the husband takes their remaining daughter and flees. The novel is based on Essun’s search for her husband and daughter within the ever-shifting geological nightmare landscape.

All three novels are a testament to the authors’ exacting research and story-telling abilities.

Gilbert became an expert in Victorian mores, women explorers, and scientific standards of Botany and Bryology during the 1800s.

Kadish grounded her story in Judaism, Spinoza’s complex philosophies, the history of Amsterdam and the London plague. She successfully tackled the difficult job of two protagonists with parallel timelines, one present day, one historical, with finesse and without alienating the reader or breaking the thread of the story.

Although science fiction, Jemisin incorporated ever-changing geological manifestations—shifting tectonic plates, volcanic fissures, and violent changes resulting from those stresses. Notably, Jemisin’s characters are believable despite the imaginary violent landscape of the Stillness. Jemisin’s story is a woman’s fight for survival.

Countless other authors have successfully incorporated complex concepts into successful fiction novels. For me, Gilbert, Kadish, and Jemisin, prove that although the backstory may be scientifically and philosophically dense, it is possible to create stories both engaging and understandable to the reader

Their skill to weave complexity into writing is something to be admired, even envied.

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References

Image Extreme Weather courtesy of Pixabay

Images of book covers courtesy of Amazon

Heller, Jason. ‘Fifth Season’ Embraces The Scale And Complexity Of Fantasy. August 4, 201510:03 AM ET

Jason Heller. https://www.npr.org/2015/08/04/427825372/fifth-season-embraces-the-scale-and-complexity-of-fantasy

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A former paralegal, Renee Kimball has a master’s degree in criminal justice. Among her interests are reading and writing. She is an active Animal Advocate and fosters both dogs and cats and works with various organizations to find them forever homes.

A Common Reader Looks at Women Writing Science Fiction

by Renee Kimball

In Ex Libris, Confessions of a Common Reader, author Anne Fadiman explains the origin of the term, “common reader”—which Fadiman borrowed from Virginia Woolf’s story, The Common Reader, and Woolf had borrowed from Samuel Johnson’s Life of Gray (Preface).

“In The Common Reader– Virginia Woolf . . .wrote of “all those rooms, too humble to be called libraries, yet full of books, where the pursuit of reading is carried on by private people.” The common reader, she said “differs from the critic and the scholar. He is worse educated and nature has not gifted him so generously. He reads for his own pleasure rather than to impart knowledge or correct the opinions of others. Above all, he is guided by an instinct to create for himself, out of whatever odds and ends he can come by, some kind of whole.” This is the whole that I have attempted to create from the thousands of odds and ends that crowd my sagging bookshelves.” (Ex Libris, Preface).

I am a Common Reader, one of those who collect books without purpose—other than I am curious, (or nosy). I am in love with books—and their secrets. I enjoy that challenge of finding a connection—there is always a surprise lurking between the pages.

While I am attracted to all things bookish, I am not alone. Online, hundreds of like-minded bookaholics come together, willing to share their enthusiasm for good books, new authors, and interesting finds—excellent company in this time of social distancing.

Which brings me to this post about women writing science fiction. These bookish groups, and their book prompts, often require reading science fiction—a genre I normally do not read. I struggle with understanding scientific concepts, other worlds, fantastical cultures with fantastical abilities, much less the ability to pronounce non-phonetic imaginary names and languages. I lack imagination for made up worlds, but I admire those who possess it.

And that is how I came to read and admire, not one, but two female science fiction authors—Octavia E. Butler and Ursula K. Le Guin. In fact, there are many, many more, but this post addresses only these two.

The science fiction genre is a multifaceted, scientifically imagined environment with fantastical cultures—environments created from almost unruly imaginations, producing amazingly satisfying results, including social and moral lessons. Yet Butler and Le Guin push the boundaries even more—they are rebel authors who use their platforms to fearlessly address social ills: injustice, slavery, discrimination, diversity, feminism, social unrest, and sexuality and much, much, more.

Octavia E. Butler

Octavia Butler. Licensed by Nikolas Coukouma under CC BY-SA 2.5. Via Wikipedia.

“You don’t start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it’s good stuff, and then gradually you get better at it. That’s why I say one of the most valuable traits is persistence.”

From Dawn, Book I of III, Lilith’s Brood:The Complete Xenogenesis Trilogy

“Down on Earth,” she said carefully, “there are no people left to draw lines on maps and say which sides of those lines are the right sides. There is no government left. No human government, anyway.”

. . .

“What is it?” she asked. “Flesh. More like mine than like yours. Different from mine, too, though. It’s … the ship.” “You’re kidding. Your ship is alive?”

. . .

“She had learned to keep her sanity by accepting things as she found them, adapting herself to new circumstances by putting aside the old ones whose memories might overwhelm her. . .”

Ursula K. Le Guin

“. . . Write what you know,” I was regularly told this as a beginner. I think it’s a very good rule and have always obeyed it. I write about imaginary countries, alien societies on other planets, dragons, wizards, the Napa Valley in 22002. I know these things. I know them better than anybody else possibly could, so it’s my duty to testify about them.”

“But when people say, Did you always want to be a writer?, I have to say no! I always was a writer (tweet that, emphasis mine). I didn’t want to be a writer and lead the writer’s life and be glamorous and go to New York. I just wanted to do my job writing, and to do it really well.”

From The Left Hand of Darkness

“Light is the left hand of darkness and darkness the right hand of light. Two are one, life and death, lying together like lovers in kemmer, like hands joined together, like the end and the way.”

. . .

“Though I had been nearly two years on Winter I was still far from being able to see the people of the planet through their own eyes. I tried to, but my efforts took the form of self-consciously seeing a Gethenian first as a man, then as a woman, forcing him into those categories so irrelevant to his nature and so essential to my own. Thus as I sipped my smoking sour beer I thought that at table Estraven’s performance had been womanly, all charm and tact and lack of substance, specious and adroit. Was it in fact perhaps this soft supple femininity that I disliked and distrusted in him? For it was impossible to think of him as a woman, that dark, ironic, powerful presence near me in the firelit darkness, and yet whenever I thought of him as a man I felt a sense of falseness, of imposture: in him, or in my own attitude towards him? His voice was soft and rather resonant but not deep, scarcely a man’s voice, but scarcely a woman’s voice either…but what was it saying?”

Le Guin and Butler were fearless in their writing. LeGuin shook the science fiction world when she wrote about men’s role in parenting. In The Left Hand of Darkness, there are no women, no females, only one gender—male. Men go into “kemmer” when they become a female vessel and are then impregnated by another male. After they become pregnant and after delivery of their progeny, both men serve as parents. Male childcare and nurturing—a subject rarely discussed in 1969.

Butler forged ahead on similar lines, writing about slavery and sexual desire while portraying women in leadership roles, unafraid to demand respect and control. Butler’s aliens from other universes conquer earth and gain control through sexual conquest and mind control. She never shied away from using her writing as a means to remind us of the ills of slavery or subjugation of races while weaving these lessons into the tapestry of her stories. Butler was a leader of Afrofuturism and equality, believing “hierarchical” societies are a danger to society.

Both Le Guin and Butler are now deceased. Le Guin died in 2018, at 88 years of age, after leaving behind a voluminous legacy. Butler died in 2006, at 58 years of age, also leaving a voluminous legacy of work and papers. The list of Butler’s awards is too numerous to produce here; however, she won both the Hugo and Nebula awards twice. Le Guin won eight Hugo and six Nebula awards in addition to numerous others.

Both authors’ works will continue to be revered and read far into the future; it is also hoped other female science fiction writers will follow their example.

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Book covers courtesy of Amazon.com.

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