Tough but Tortured: Why Strong Female Characters Shouldn't Need Dark Pasts to Justify Their Power

A little more than a year ago, I picked up a copy of Whipping Girl, a collection of essays on gender identity and experience written by Julia Serano, a male-to-female transsexual whose unique experience of gender has allowed her a firsthand look at society’s prejudices from the position of a man and a woman. In a series of discussions on everything from the media industry’s sensationalized, inherently prejudiced depictions of transsexual people to the actual experience of life on both sides of the gender divide, Serano argues one overarching point: that it’s not women society devalues, but femininity.

I’d both loved and felt frustrated by the characters that tend to be blanket-labeled “strong female characters” for years, but it wasn’t until I read this book that I was able to really put a finger on why: the very thing that made me love them—the very thing that earned them that oh-so-difficult-for-a-lady-to-achieve status of the hero—also served to devalue my gender. Because all of these characters seemed to prove the point that there was only one way to be strong, and it was by embracing what society considers to be masculine characteristics: physical strength and an aggressive, impulsive personality. A bunch of a really fabulous bloggers have weighed in on this subject—mostly recently, S.E. Sinkhorn, whose post on how strong female characters devalue and even vilify the feminine I absolutely love. Bloggers have decried the unrealistic and objectifying nature of “waif-fu,” called for more fully realized female characters who can be valued and related to for their weaknesses, and pointed out the inherent male gaze in everything from these women’s poses to their costumes.

But aside from the fact that these characters, in their very existence, seem to prove that the only real strength out there is stereotypically masculine strength, and that it’s only acceptable in a woman if she’s also, you know, willing to submit to being a sex object (all of the above bloggers have proven this well) there’s one more thing that frustrates me about these types of characters. And that’s the frequency with which I see “powerful” and “damaged” go hand in hand in lady characters. Battlestar Galactica’s Kara Thrace takes the cylons and her shipmates to task with thrilling efficiency, but what makes her so unstoppable might be her blatant disregard for her own safety, which the show suggests is the result of her mother’s traumatic abuse and her father’s absence. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo's Lisbeth Salander is unapologetically and unstoppably out for herself, but she’s also on an unending rampage against the many men who have used and abused her. Firefly’s River Tam is a finely tuned killing machine, if you catch her on a good day, or at least one in which she’s not rocking in a corner or curled up naked in a womb-like cryo box.

I recognize that Kara’s brokenness humanizes her character and builds the foundation for what I actually find to be an incredibly resonant story of a struggle for faith and a journey towards peace. And while I have many problems with the so-called feminist trappings of the Millennium trilogy, I can understand the appeal for some women of a rape revenge story in which a woman seizes and uses the power that was originally denied to her by her attackers. As for River Tam, I… well, honestly, I’ve got nothing. Sorry. Does it help if I say I like Zoe and Inara a lot?

Don’t get me wrong. I believe that, male or female, most people come into their own strength through suffering. But where are the male characters who follow a pattern that matches those of the women? I can come up with only a handful, the most notable of which might be Batman, whose strength comes from a need to avenge his parents’ death: a tragedy, but arguably not a trauma on the scale of—or with the intense nature of personal attack and violation inherent in—rape or physical abuse.

So why does trauma seem to be a prerequisite that only women need to fulfill in order to be stereotypically strong?

Is it a subconscious need to rationalize what the reader or viewer might see as “bad behavior” for a woman? Is it an apologetic attempt by the writers to “declaw” feminist characters, making them less threatening to male viewers who might feel emasculated by their physical prowess or female viewers who might be uncomfortable with their self-assertiveness? Is it all a projection of male fantasies of a woman who is “one of the guys,” but still needs a man around to protect her or “fix” her? Can we just not understand why a woman might want to embody masculine characteristics if she wasn’t inherently screwed up?

I suspect it’s some combination of all of the above, in varying degrees given the particular film or book. And, needless to say, I’m not impressed. The particular brilliance of this trope as an anti-feminist tool is in the fact that it seems to answer the cries of feminists who ask for more flawed and fully explored characters, but at the same time it sends the message that women who seek power (the same power that men are portrayed as just naturally possessing) are unnatural, that they somehow need an excuse. Gee, where have we heard that before?

YA Cover (and Cultural) Trends: Turning the Discussion Over to You!

Writer and Publisher Friends, do you know you are the BEST at commenting? I hope the ongoing discussion of the sad, sorry state of women in our cultural consciousness isn’t driving anyone else to drink. (Are you feeling down? Do you need a hug? Here, here is an adorable malamute puppy for your sanity-restoring pleasure—but my flatmates and I call first puppy-hugging dibs.)

The discussions on my last two posts have been so well-informed and genuinely insightful that today I want to turn the spotlight over to you. The following are some of the comments and responses that made me stop and reconsider my position, that followed me away from my computer and onto the train or into the office or to my feminist lunch hour with Regina (hopefully a new tradition?), or that added something to the conversation that I couldn’t have added on my own.


Seanan McGuire wrote an interesting post on her own blog that, in part, provides a response to the common “But the cover reflects something that happens in the book” argument:

I've read several of these books. Putting a wilted waif in a beautiful bower on the cover is the equivalent of putting a wilted waif in a beautiful bower on the cover of Sparrow Hill Road. Yeah, Rose is long dead when the series starts, but why is that the image we need to focus on? Why is that the moment that sells the book?

I feel Seanan put her finger on the exact reason that I’m complaining about dead girls on book covers, and not about girls dying in books (though who knows, tomorrow is another day). The books I posted are far more varied in their themes and subject matter than their covers reflect, and the common visual ground chosen to represent and sell these books tells me something about the culture that created them—about the images we find worthy of our attention and gaze. What do you think? Are the cover images really the right moments of the book to be illustrated?

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In both the comments on my original post and in her own forum post here, Ami Angelwings brought up another heartbreaking conclusion that can be drawn from the interest of girls in images that suggest their own deaths:

A dead girl's corpse is perfect. It's not going to get old, or get fat, or eat too much, or sleep with too many people, or the wrong people, or cheat, or be gossipy, or sinful, or talk back, or the million other things society demonizes about women and our passions, desires and appetites. We're just beautiful and nothing more, just like a woman should be. To be the perfect woman, you have to be dead.

She shares her experience as someone who has recovered from anorexia, but who used to struggle not only to reach a certain beauty ideal, but who rarely forgot that, once reached, that sense of perfection would only have to be maintained. Certainly that exact experience isn’t universal to all girls, but do you think it’s something that teenage girls in particular might be able to relate to?

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Along a similar line of thought, an anonymous commenter chalked these covers up to our cultural fear of aging:

Could it be that the dead girl on the cover of the books appeal to teens because it represents a state of physical arrest? These dead girls in pretty dresses aren't growing, they aren't changing. The image is of a perfect, pale and pretty girl, one who doesn't have to worry about armpit hair, cramps, zits, college, jobs, PMS or becoming her mother. Being dead is great not because they hate their teenage girlish bodies --it's because our culture is youth obsessed. Being dead is great because it means you get to stay young. That's why vampire books are romances, and zombie books tend to be horror stories. Because getting old and rotting is something to fear.

Put in those terms, I can certainly see how this source of fascination could be more universal to girls, and particularly relevant to girls during their teen years. What are your thoughts? Does this change how you feel about the trend, or convince you that the fascination with death is more a part of growing up than a product of our culture? Or does it seem like even more of a product of our culture when you look at the trend this way?

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Interestingly, the vast majority of the authors whose book covers appeared in my post said that they had never thought of their cover model as dead. Building on that, Aimee Carter tweeted, “I see life (or the fight for it, which fascinates me) in most of those covers,” and Holly Black weighed in with the opinion that the internal tension created by the questions these covers ask—either “is the girl dead?” or “will she survive?”—holds the viewer’s attention and makes the covers successful. What do you think? Do the girls on those book covers look dead? Does it matter, if the initial impression the viewer gets is one of death, or at least passivity?

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CuddleBug looks at what would seem to be the antithesis of the dead girl cover—the butt-kicking heroine cover—and finds a surprisingly similar trend of passivity. She calls it "waif-fu": the cover image that suggests an active heroine but, through skimpy clothing and a supermodel pose clearly designed to show off more than her biceps (in fact, what biceps? That might make her look less slender!). Looking at the slew of covers CuddleBug features, it's hard to convince oneself that the audience they cater to is free of male gaze. And though I prefer a living, albeit sexualized, girl to a dead one, it's hard to see these as better role models for teens. As CuddleBug says:

Our options for female role models would appear to be either beautiful and passive young women posing around doing nothing in a pretty dress, or a beautiful ass-kicker who looks like she should be a supermodel. Who also, may I add, is not doing anything.

In this case, I don't think what causes young women to be attracted to these images is as much internalized misogyny as internalized ideals of beauty. Of course, one could argue that it's six of one and a half dozen of the other, but an excellent commenter on my last post did point out that there's a difference between misogyny and antifeminism. In any case, though, it does allow me to talk not just about these images, but also about a character trope that crops up frequently, especially in speculative fiction: the BAMF. Most sci-fi especially seems to feature at least one character that writers or directors can point to and say "Don't look at me, I put a strong woman in my work!" These characters are powerful, yes, and pretty evidently in possession of lady-parts, which is clear from their skimpy dress. But these characters are powerful solely in a way that's considered masculine. And while there are many women in the real world who kick butt and take names like its their job, the existence of those character types as the only strong female in a particular story world implies that there is no other way to be a strong woman—which simply isn't true. What do you think? And, is this a trend that extends to YA, or do you think it exists mostly in the world of adult books right now?

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For Zoë Marriott, the fairy tale trope implied by a number of these images carries with it an even darker implication than what we explored in last week's post. To explain, she goes back to the origins of the Snow White and Sleeping Beauty stories, which existed long before the Brothers Grimm prettied them up:

What really happens is that a travelling prince, in the course of his adventures, comes across an apparently sleeping young woman who is unable to defend herself, and rapes her. Then he goes on his merry way. About nine months later, the girl gives birth to a child, and this experience (not surprisingly) finally wakes her from her slumber. And then (the part which always makes me feel the most squinky) the girl is so grateful for having finally escaped the curse that she goes after the travelling prince, thanks him very much for his random sexual assault, and ends up getting married to him.

This represents a fairly strong and very dark male fantasy - that of the unresisting victim. A girl who can't fight or struggle because she is incapacitated. A girl who, although unable to offer any kind of consent to sexual activity, of course actually wants it. A girl who will even thank you for it later on.

And that's an even more powerful and heartbreaking concept than what I originally tackled in my post about dead girls on covers and internalized misogyny. If these covers both imply and idealize not just death, but also rape... what does that say about our culture?

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Glitter and Gore looks at horror, a genre in which you might expect to see a lot of dead girl covers, and finds traces of the dead-girl trend in re-releases of some of her favorites. What’s more, she sees an overwhelming trend towards passivity in the girls pictured:

What confuses me most is that, judging by the few of these books I have read, the heroines inside their pages are NOT submissive. They're tough, resourceful, and intelligent. Sometimes selfish or a little naive, but for the most part, they aren't at all like the images in these covers would make them out to be. But the covers are what entice people to read books, or should be. They are taking strong young women and turning them into prettified zombies.

Rae Carson tweeted something similar: “I wonder if it's a subset of a larger trend of passive female protags on covers? So many look simply vacant & beautiful.” Is that the more applicable trend here? Certainly that does open it up to include even more images we typically see in the media. It even ties in with the fairy tale tropes we talked about last week.

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And finally, in response to my discussion of the fairy tale trope in last week’s post, Katherine Langrish came to the defense of fairy tales:

I'd just like to add that the fairytales most often cited in these comments - Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, with their obviously passive heroines, are not necessarily at all typical of fairytales in general, many of which have extremely vigorous and adventurous heroines: Molly Whuppie, the Master-Maid, Lady Mary and the heroine of 'Fitcher's Bird', both of whom see off the Bluebeard figures in their respective tales, and the intrepid heroine of 'East of the Sun, West of the Moon' who rescues the Prince. The fact that our best known fairytales are those with passive heroines is not a reflection upon fairytale as a genre, but upon anthology choices and rewritings made - often - in the early 20th century and perpetuated ever since.

I’m so glad she brought this up, first because I’d be insane to totally write off fairy tales as a genre, and as an absolutely vital part of the history of storytelling, and secondly because it brings up a ridiculously important point that I’ve only be tangentially addressing in my posts. That point is that the stories we choose to share, versus those we choose to silence or at least omit from our discussions, go a long way in reflecting or shaping the culture that we get to live in. The choice of which stories to anthologize—made again and again favoring stories with passive female protagonists—tells us a lot about the subconscious agenda of those making the choices. The choice to anthologize or retell the story of Snow White rather than the story of Molly Whuppie (much like the choice to illustrate the deal-girl scene of a book rather than any other) both reflects and shapes the culture to which it is told. And it’s a culture in which the stories of adventurous heroines aren’t told that allows passivity in women to be idealized in the first place.


Share your thoughts!

How Dark Are YA Covers, Really?

One last post on cover trends before we move on to other topics: I just have to share the very brilliant Kate Hart's analysis of the darkness of YA covers in 2010. Kate looked at 400 covers of Young Adult novels released in 2010 to see if claims that teen books were all dark were founded:

What she found was very interesting, and incredibly important. Because there's at least one very significant way in which YA covers are not dark, and that's when it comes to race:

I've talked about issues of race in and on the covers of YA fiction at great length before, so I'll let Kate's post speak for itself. I highly encourage you to check out the entire post here.

Cover Trends in YA Fiction: Why the Obsession with an Elegant Death?

In honor of Halloween (sort of), and of our recent cover conversation, I want to talk this week about a ghastly, gruesome, and growing trend in YA book covers. What trend is that, you might ask?

This is where I say something I didn't ever expect to say in one of these blog posts: trigger warning.

Because the trend is dead girls.
Dead girls in water, dead girls in bathtubs, dead girls in forests, dead girls in pretty dresses. Girls who might be dead, or might just look dead. Dead girls in so many pretty dresses.

Now, don’t get me wrong: I love a lot of these covers. Several of the covers pictured above are among the most eye-catching designs I’ve seen in the last year. But it seems like we just can’t get enough of these images, and it’s not just contemporary readers. More than 150 years ago, Edgar Allan Poe argued for the elegance of dead women:

“Of all melancholy topics, what, according to the universal understanding of mankind, is the most melancholy?” Death — was the obvious reply. “And when,” I said, “is this most melancholy of topics most poetical?” From what I have already explained at some length, the answer, here also, is obvious — “When it most closely allies itself to Beauty: the death, then, of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world.”

Poe felt that every story should end with the death of a beautiful woman (you may have noticed he was pretty good at following his own rule). And he wasn't even the first; the paintings of many Renaissance and Pre-Raphaelite artists reflect the same fascination as those teen book covers:

Even so many years later, the worlds of advertising, pop culture, and fashion have embraced this ideal, churning out image after image of lovely dead ladies:

However long its history, this isn’t a trend that I particularly enjoy—and especially not when it's embraced by women and girls as this trend seems to be. It’s been well-documented* that the media depicts violence against women and glamorizes abuse, rape, murder, and suicide as positive so long as the victim can be sexualized in death. Beyond just desensitizing viewers or making truly horrific acts seem banal through overexposure, images that glamorize violence against women help to dehumanize women and girls. It’s a double-whammy; not only are the women in the photos objectified because, as lifeless characters, they become bodies rather than people, but they are also reduced to their sexualized parts. As Marina DelVecchio explains in just one of many articles about the subject, the dead girl in media “is merely a body, a vacant, empty, vessel intended to contain the needs of others—preferably men—and her body, which is the most desired aspect of her existence, perfect, lithe, smooth and hair-free, is open for interpretation and domination.” Seeing women dehumanized again and again makes it easier for those who are violent against women to justify their actions—and, indeed, to carry out violence against them.

As we learned from my last post, the fact that the above book covers have been successful—the fact that the first impression they offer drives potential readers to explore more, impacting overall sales in a positive way—says something fundamental about the tastes of their target audience. So I can’t help wondering about the larger implications of these images, especially as part of a larger media culture that glorifies a great variety of disturbing images of women.

For months I’ve mentally classified these images among those that I find disturbing and frustrating in the fashion and media industries. But, now that I sit down to write this post, I’m not sure if that’s really what’s going on in the above book covers. Most of the images aren’t blatantly violent or overtly sexual. It might be more appropriate to call them glamorized—they seem less the product of overt “male gaze”**, and more the product of teenage girls’ morbidity. Rather than presenting the idea that violated and dominated women are sexy, these images present the idea that it is beautiful and dramatic and—as Poe would have argued—poetic to be dead.

Now, there’s something about that idea that resonates strongly with teenage girls. Anyone who has worked with teenage girls will know that many have an astonishing taste for that which is melodramatic, desolate, and downright morbid. Parents, maybe you don’t want to hear this, but an extraordinary number of teenage girls are fascinated by the thought of their own deaths. Even if they don’t (and I hope they don’t) actually take part in self-destructive or suicidal acts, most of them think about it at least once. Many think about it a lot. At fifteen my friends and I reveled in images of fallen angels, girls in coffins, and beautiful women dying in the arms of their lovers. We wrote stories about girls like us dying, falling prey to madness, or being found by a boyfriend or a best friend already too close to death to be saved. We adored moments in film and TV like Eponine’s dying lament, “A Little Fall of Rain,” in Les Miserables: a tragic scene in which Marius (who has rejected Eponine’s love—oh, she is such a perfect teen girl character!) holds Eponine in his arms and sings to her as she dies from a bullet wound.

The glamorized images of death that teen girls seem so attracted to could, then, be a reflection of the sadness and morbidity that seems inherent at that age. Perhaps their appeal is in the fact that they validate and make beautiful the very dark thoughts that girls have, and which they have few opportunities to express. Maybe they provide a sense of catharsis, allowing teens to explore the dark things they imagine doing without actually having to participate in self-destructive acts.

But teenage boys suffer just as much from depression and thoughts of self-harm as teenage girls do, and yet I’m hard-pressed to find a YA book cover in which a boy is depicted as beautifully dead or dying. The closest I can come is Becca Fitzpatrick’s Hush, Hush. But it should be noted that the target audience for Hush, Hush is also female, and a comparison of the model’s powerful physique and active pose to the above girls’ placid, passive death poses suggests that these girls are internalizing very distinct and separate messages about ideal maleness and femaleness in death.

So, after a whole lot of thought, it comes down to this: I believe that this book cover trend—and the larger obsession of teenage girls with the concept of beautiful death—is at least in part the product of internalized misogyny. Girls, I’d argue, are taught from their infancy that their bodies are the most important thing they have to offer. But, at the same time, they are taught by a misogynistic media that their bodies are objects that have little worth, and that even allow or invite violence. And I believe that girls internalize that dehumanization very strongly—not using it to justify or excuse violence against women, but rather experiencing it as a call to action. A beautiful death becomes an understandable—and, for all intents and purposes, an encouraged—goal. It isn’t any wonder that teenage girls romanticize their own deaths. We practically ask them to.

I really want to say about this trend what I did about the normalization of self-destructive behavior in YA novels and the glorification of abusive relationships in Twilight. But, in all honesty, I’m having a hard time convincing myself that this is a thought pattern girls will wholly outgrow. To do so would require the adult world to reinforce the opposite idea: that women’s deaths are not beautiful, that women’s bodies are not objects, and that women are more than just the sum of their parts. And, as you can see above, the world of media for adults doesn’t contradict what we see in book covers for girls; it expands upon it and makes it a hundred times worse.

What’s more, it’s important that we see that the girls who internalize these ideals are living people, not just the passive victims we see depicted on those covers. As they learn to view the female body as both a sexual ideal and an invitation to violence, they begin taking an active role in helping it spread by reflecting it in their lifestyles, their values, and their art. That’s one of the reasons I cringe listening to “Love the Way you Lie” by Eminem and Rihanna; it’s not just Eminem’s graphic description of domestic abuse, but also Rihanna’s wholehearted compliance in and even propagandizing attitude towards abuse that makes the song tragic:

Just gonna stand there and watch me burn.
Well, that's alright because I like the way it hurts.

I don’t fault YA publishers or the covers above for this trend. As I said, I see those covers and the demand from which they stem as the product of, not the force behind, internalized misogyny. But, looking at them as a reflection of teenage girls’ psyches, I’m saddened by what I see and left feeling helpless in the face of forces that seem unstoppable. In the apt and succinct words of my good friend Jenny, “I know that we have to trust teenage girls to cope and persevere and come out of this fight kicking, but honestly I'd rather make all this shit go away.” This time around, I pretty much agree.

*See also this post on the fashion industry, and this one on fashion and advertising, and this one on music videos. And that's just from a quick search.
**For an explanation of the male gaze, try this article.

If you find this subject as depressing as I do, and are starting to feel like one of the teenage girls these covers are intended for, here's a video of an adorable kitten. You're welcome.

Edit: Just found this mini-rant on a similar subject by Allison at Reading Everywhere. Check it out! Even more disturbing images!

A Little Bit More on Twilight—And How About All That OTHER YA Romance?

Thanks to everyone who read my last post and joined in on the discussion. It’s been great to see the discussion shared around the web, and your comments have been so incredibly insightful and enlightening. You guys are awesome, and you give me all kinds of hope for this crazy world of books and readers.

This week I wanted to share and respond to a comment from a new reader, Reinhardt:

My concern over a larger swath of YA is the emphasis on relationships that can serve to reinforce co-dependence (abusive and otherwise). How many books can you think of that have the main female character pining, needing to be with a guy to feel fulfilled? I think this is a more insidious issue, in that this co-dependence (especially of teenage girls, but not exclusively so) is already normalized, and has been for a very long time. Hey, I'm a dude, and as one of the few who like reading "girl books”… I find the predilection of characters who can only find true personhood inside a romantic relationship as disturbing as Twilight-esque relationships. Really, they are the same, only with different degrees of creepiness.

In short: WHAT HE SAID, GUYS.

This is something I discuss a lot with my friends and colleagues, but not something I’ve posted about on here before. Reinhardt pretty well hit the nail on the head.

Experiencing love and heartbreak for the first time is an incredibly meaningful part of growing up and finding oneself, and thus it’s no surprise that it finds its way into so many of our books, whether for teens or adults. And I’m not against love stories—my very favorite book, The Great Gatsby, is a love story (though it is also much more than that), and it almost always moves me to tears with its revelations about the human heart. I’m certainly not against stories that have love in them, although when the romance in a story becomes the subject of all conversations about the book, nine times out of ten I’m going to duck out or show my Team Katniss colors. And, like with the Twilight series, I’d be a fool to write off all the teen romances out there, both because so many intelligent, talented, forward-thinking authors stand behind them, and because it provides a booming marketplace that helps keep the industry and the books I love alive and well.

But, by golly, I wish there were as many YA novels out there that featured female protagonists who don’t wind up in a relationship as ones that feature girls who do.

The Young Adult genre is essentially concerned with coming of age. By their very nature, YA novels take a character from childhood to adulthood, from trying different selves on for size to “finding oneself.” And because of that, these novels are usually structured so that the most exciting and important point in the plot, the climax, is also the moment at which the protagonist completes (or makes the novel’s most major step on) her journey from childhood to adulthood, from indecision to agency.

And because of that, I often feel that the climaxes of Young Adult romances, which always seem to be the moment at which the protagonist finally gets with her or his love interest, inadvertently convey the message that we are not whole—that we cannot find ourselves—until we are with another person.

What is more true is that we cannot be with another person (at least, not in a healthy way) until we have found ourselves. That’s why I always find that I enjoy stories about girls having adventures or living their lives more than I enjoy stories about girls getting the guy. Sure, a lot of the former do include romance; think of Malinda Lo’s Huntress, or Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games trilogy, or, for goodness sake, the Harry Potter series. But in these, like in reality, the developing romance is only one element of the much larger adventure that each character is living is her or his own life. And it is only one element of the story’s climax, or even a part of the falling action—the happy outcome that results from, rather than causes, the protagonist’s growth.

I firmly believe that the culture in which we live—and which we experience, understand, and perpetuate through the media we ingest—has a greater effect than any other factor on how we understand ourselves and the rules of the world around us. So I believe that, as long as such a huge percentage of the books targeted at girls in the YA sections of our bookstores or libraries revolve around the girl-gets-guy scenario, boys and girls alike will continue to internalize the belief that a woman needs a man to become whole and complete.

That’s why the books I want to acquire someday are the ones in which the girl fights the dragon rather than sleeping in the tower. I want to bring as many books as possible into the world that empower women to live independent lives with adventures in which they star. When I find romance woven into those tales, I want it truly to be one thread in a whole tapestry of real, human experience, which is just as meaningful and exciting and full of opportunity for women as it is for men. I want the girls who read the books I edit to be empowered to live whole, fulfilled lives, regardless of their relationship statuses. I want to normalize the diversity of human experience and shed light on the infinite ways in which teen girls—just like teen boys—can find themselves in this world. I want to balance out all the teen romance with all the teen everything-else that makes growth to adulthood so meaningful, so challenging, and so incredibly important.

What about you?

Oh yeah, and I can't resist sharing: Jen Hickman found these totally sweet images that are basically this blog post, but shorter, and illustrated (with R.Patt giving great face):









All praise Tumblr!

50 in '11 Update: Whipping Girl by Julia Serano

Though I've kept up with feminist and activist articles online (especially those related to the book business), it's been a while since I sat down and read a serious book on gender or feminist theory. Whipping Girl manages to do both in a series of essays explaining the trans experience, the way the brain and body work together to create gender, and the way society (often wrongly) perceives transexuals.

I didn't buy every one of Serano's points, but I did find her take as a geneticist and a doctorate of biology fascinating. While the differentiation between "gender" (psychological) and "sex" (physical) is becoming widely accepted in America, Serano argues that it's not enough—that a person's gender identity is made up of an even more complex combination of unconscious inclinations, instincts, socialized behaviors, inherent traits, and more. I'd recommend her book for the vocabulary she introduces, if nothing else. Armed with the terms Serano introduces and explains, one can begin to see how we see such a wide variety of gender inclinations and expressions in people of all sexes—how there can (and should naturally) be feminine men, masculine women, androgynes, and those on the trans spectrum (in a whole range of ways and for a variety of reasons).

From the perspective of a rabid consumer (and often a builder) of stories and media, I was also fascinated by Serano's deconstruction of presentations of trans women in the media—specifically, of how they are almost always depicted in the act of "putting on" their femininity, a selective viewpoint which serves to emphasize its supposed artificiality, perpetuating the idea that no one sexed male at birth can possibly experience genuine femaleness.

Finally, I particularly appreciated Serano's take on feminism. As someone who has had the experience of observing how others treat her when they believe her to be a man and when they believe her to be a woman, she's in the unique position of being able to make some very reliable judgments of how traditional and oppositional sexism are still at work in our society. Her description of the change in the way the same words and actions were received when she began to live as a woman rather than a man was fascinating, and a call to action for anyone who believes that men and women are no longer treated as unequal. She makes the point that, even in cases in which women are not discriminated against, femininity is devalued. She argues that we must change society's bias against femininity, whether expressed by men or by women, if we are to make the world a better place for people of all genders, sexes and gender expressions.

I'm heading back into the realm of fiction with this week's book, the 2011 Printz Award winner: Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi. I'm enthralled already!

WHY WRITE?: Historical Fiction

I’m not going to lie—this week’s WHY WRITE?^TM installment was a real challenge for me. When I took a look at the voting for this series and saw how popular historical fiction was proving itself to be, my first thought was that I couldn’t possibly do the topic justice. What do I know about writing historical fiction? What do I even know about reading it?

To quell my anxiety I turned to research, seeking out authors’ accounts of how and why they write historical fiction in hopes of justifying my own speculation on the matter. The articles I found helped inform and guide my thinking about historical fiction.

And then I began to realize that I do know something about historical fiction. True, it’s not one of those genres that I instinctively seek out—more often, it finds me. And, in the way that truly successful historical fiction can, it made its way into my heart without ever striking me with the thought that I was enjoying history (something which would have horrified my sixteen-year-old self, and which surprises me even today). And in examining what made me, a somewhat forgetful young woman with an aversion to date-memorization and name-recitation, fall in love with books like Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner or Laurie Halse Anderson’s Chains, I think I’ve come up with some answers to the question of why you might want to write historical fiction:

Because you want to explore an unfamiliar world. In a way, your reasons for writing historical fiction might not be so different from another writer’s reasons for tackling speculative fiction. It gives writers and readers alike the chance to experience another way of life vicariously. With the speed at which technology advances, political power changes hands, and trends come and go, the past can sometimes seem even more remote and unimaginable than any sci-fi universe—so historical writers, like authors of speculative fiction, are in the business of introducing their readers to new worlds. That opportunity is alluring to writers and readers alike; as Katherine Paterson says of her historical fiction, “…If I wrote only about what I know, I would never write. I write to find out.”

Because you love to learn, and you love to teach. But, unlike speculative fiction, historical fiction is firmly grounded in the rules of the real world—perhaps more so than any other fictional genre, since the events of the past are already written. For those who love research, historical fiction offers a chance to put that passion to use. What’s more, it can offer writers a way of sharing that passion with others. Events that may never have piqued a reader’s interest when encountered in a history textbook come to life when presented in the form of a story. And once that story takes root in a reader’s mind, it can plant seeds of curiosity that drive the reader to explore history all on his or her own.

Because you want to get to know not only the “what” of history, but also the “who.” One of the most powerful strengths of historical fiction is the ability it has to put a human, relatable face to events that seem far-removed from us now. Historical fiction gives writers a chance to explore long-gone times and places and to meet characters they never could have confronted otherwise—characters with whom both readers and writers can connect, even across the boundaries of time and culture. It’s no coincidence that, despite the fact that I count some works of historical fiction among my favorite books, I couldn’t immediately call to mind any that I’d read. When I think about The Kite Runner, I think of it first as a story about people, and second as a story about the conflicts in Afghanistan. Nonetheless, the relationship that I built with the novel’s characters spurred my interest in that time periods and the conflicts that surrounded it, and I began to see the people I’d read about in the paper and in textbooks as individuals, each with their own story.

Because you want to give a voice to someone who hasn’t had it. I see a lot of subversive potential in that power to put a human face on history. Every society has, somewhere in its history, a group of people whose stories have not been heard. Sometimes social and economic factors (like the fact that slaves were not taught to write, or that the lower classes often lacked the leisure time required to do so) keep certain minorities from sharing their stories. In other cases, their stories are intentionally rewritten or overshadowed by the voices of the majority, significantly altering the way we learn and understand history. We’ve all heard that the “winners” in any conflict are the ones who get to write the history of it. However, a writer of historical fiction can subvert that trend. Laurie Halse Anderson managed it in Chains, a novel in which she featured an African-American slave girl (someone whose viewpoint, I’d argue, is thrice-suppressed—for her race, her gender, and her age). When done respectfully, empathetically, and often, imagining history from the perspectives of those who are or were historically oppressed can give a much-needed voice to their struggle.

Because you need to make sense of the world we live in. The statement that we must learn from our history or else be doomed to repeat it may be a cliché, but it’s nonetheless true that, as Katherine Paterson says, “History gives us a pair of powerful eyeglasses with which to examine our own Times.” Sometimes as writers and readers we aren’t yet ready to confront the horrors we experience within our lifetimes—whether that means terrorism, war, or the prejudice we witness in our own society. But we can understand them better, and we can comment upon them or experience much-needed catharsis from them, through the lens of history. Ron Rash says it best in Publishers Weekly: “That may be the best that any work of historical fiction has to offer—not just to its author, but, more importantly, to its readers—a chance to grapple with the mysteries and complexities of the past, in hopes of seeing the present a little clearer.”

Now it’s your turn to educate me. Readers and writers of historical fiction, what draws you to the genre? What are the strengths that I missed? Do you disagree with any of the ones I listed? Let me know in comments!

WHY WRITE?: Science Fiction, Fantasy and Speculative Fiction

Thanks for waiting patiently (more patiently than I did, that’s for sure) for me to get my computer back up and running so the Why Write?^TM series could return! I’m back in action now with a shiny new hard drive, and I can’t wait to hear all of your thoughts on speculative fiction.

You probably know that I love a good piece of speculative fiction, whether it’s a short story by Neil Gaiman, a novel by J.R.R. Tolkien, or a TV show like Battlestar Galactica. I’ve written and read my fair share of literary criticism on speculative fiction, and recently had my socks rocked off by the Sci-Fi Museum in Seattle (which I highly recommend, if ever you’re in the area). Recently The Rejectionist got us all psyched up with her awesome Feminist Science Fiction Week, and it seems the book world still hasn’t run out of things to say about fantasy since the last Harry Potter book was released more than three years ago. It’s clear that speculative fiction has made a huge impression on us in recent years, so this is an area I’m particularly excited to explore. So with no further adieu—why write science fiction and fantasy?

Because you want to be part of a community. From the Trekkie to the Renaissance Faire regular, fans of science fiction and fantasy are a breed of their own. They devour every piece of speculative fiction they can get their hands on, they gather in rock-concert-crowd numbers for conventions, signings, and midnight movie showings or marathons. As readers, they tend towards a religious devotion to the science fiction and fantasy section of the bookstore. They know the cover clichés and spine fonts to look for, and they’ll approach new and established authors alike with the same eager, open mind. You’d be hard-pressed to find a more devoted fan base.

Because you want to get away. It’s no surprise that science fiction and fantasy tend to see an uptick in sales during times of political unrest, war, or economic strife. To some extent, all reading is about escapism—the chance to experience the unknown through another’s eyes for a few hundred pages—but nowhere is this more true than in speculative fiction. In sci-fi and fantasy we find an escape from the monotony (or downright unpleasantness, in some time periods) of everyday life. I’d guess that, in large part, the genre gains such devoted fans because the worlds it imagines, with all their wondrous possibilities, are positively addictive.

Because you want to channel your other passions into your writing. J.R.R. Tolkien was a philologist and linguist whose first job was with the Oxford English Dictionary; C.S. Lewis was an influential lay theologist; and James Tiptree Jr. (whose real name was Alice B. Sheldon) was a photointelligence expert for the U.S. Army Air Force and a doctor of experimental psychology. Great science fiction and fantasy has been written by biologists, astronomers, physicists, psychologists, philosophers, mathematicians, political theorists and more, and for good reason. The challenge of inventing an entirely new world forces writers to draw upon all of their areas of expertise, and many writers take delight in the challenge. For many who write speculative fiction, part of what makes the genre so much fun is the chance to invent a new language for the world’s mythological creatures to speak; to describe the properties of an imagined world’s extraordinary flora and fauna; to accurately depict the physics of spacecraft motion; or to create an entirely new social structure, government and religion. Writers and readers of speculative fiction take delight in finding their other passions woven into the stories’ plots.

Because you want to take advantage of a blank slate. But there are more reasons to want to create a new society than simply to be able to weave your own passions into its structure. Every writer, regardless of his or her genre of choice, has to establish the rules that govern their story’s world. These rules can be as basic as gravity or as complex as socioeconomic class, and they often go unnoticed by the reader unless they are unexpectedly broken, but they are nonetheless crucial to a story’s believability. Most writers are stuck with the rules that govern the world that we live in—all except, of course, for writers of speculative fiction. Because they require the author to build a new world and society, science fiction and fantasy offer writers a chance to work from a clean slate and create whatever rules will best serve their story.

Because you have something to say… The chance to create their own worlds allows writers to critique the world we live in by calling rules we take for granted into question. In science fiction and fantasy, people of color can be in the majority; homosexuality can be typical while heterosexuals are considered unnatural; gender and sex can be fluid or altogether changeable; religion can be re-imagined or re-interpreted—the possibilities are endless. By presenting a different social structure as normal and fully functional, these stories call attention to the constructed nature of our own society and force us to confront our own learned prejudices. Writers like Ursula K. LeGuin, Philip Pullman, James Tiptree Jr., Octavia Butler, and more have created functional new societies in which the rules of our society are turned on their heads. In doing so, they have encouraged readers to question the beliefs they’ve inherited from the world around them, open their minds to all kinds of diversity, and imagine a more ideal world.

…And you can’t always just come out and say it. Because of their incredible potential for subversiveness, science fiction and fantasy are often highly political and relevant to social and political climates of the time and society in which they were written. Often, the best works of speculative fiction subtly satirize or comment upon contemporary events. George Orwell’s 1984 and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World expressed fears about increasingly tyrannical leadership and the dehumanization of a society dependent upon modern technology; more recently, M.T. Anderson’s Feed expressed these same fears in a more updated form, featuring telepathic instant messaging and horrific pollution in a reflection of contemporary society’s obsessions. One of the things I love most about Battlestar Galactica is that it aired in the post-9/11 era and asked us to question issues of patriotism, fear, and our assumptions about or own humanity and that of those we treat as “others.” Episodes containing questionable election tactics or a character’s plea for a government that doesn’t make its decisions based on fear were startlingly relevant in the Bush era and remain so as the war in Iraq continues. In many ways the imagined-world context of science fiction and fantasy allows writers to make political statements that might otherwise be suppressed. And I think because there's a tendency in some lofty literary circles to write speculative fiction off as "too genre," it gets away with more than we give it credit for.

Do you agree? Disagree? Maybe there are other genres that do some of these things better. Maybe I missed a few good reasons. Let me know in comments!

The "Go-To Trauma" Part 2: Issue or Spectacle?

So, last week we established that though rape in literature raises a lot of questions, it's important that women's voices be heard on the issue and that books about rape continue to spread awareness and offer consolation to victims. But it seems to me that there are books about rape and violence, and then there are books that just have rape and violence in them. I recently read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (now’s the time for me to announce that there will be spoilers), and while I felt that Stieg Larsson wove a strong narrative and created compelling characters, especially in Lisbeth Salander, what I found myself thinking about most once I closed the book was the rape scene. Even a few months later, I’m not done thinking about it.

It just doesn’t seem necessary to me. True, it serves to develop Lisbeth’s character. We need to see her ability to carry out a coldly calculated act of violence before we reach the book’s ending, or her attack on Martin Vanger will seem to come out of nowhere. And for that to happen, Larsson needed to set up a situation for which Lisbeth is justified in getting revenge. Perhaps he chose rape because it’s so unforgivable that we’re certain to be on Lisbeth’s side, even as she reacts maliciously. And Larsson has established that Lisbeth reacts with particular violence towards those who violate her right to choose how she’s approached for sex, so the set-up is all in place for a scene like this.

But despite that—and despite the horrific crimes against women that Mikael Blomkvist discovers in his investigation, as well as the rape statistics that open every section of the book—this scene feels disconnected from the rest of the book. Larsson’s writing is subtle elsewhere, and his character development takes its time. Even the horrific murder scenes he later describes don’t have the same brutal feel that this one scene does. And it goes on for an awfully long time, in excruciating detail.

So I keep asking myself why Larsson wrote this scene in particular, when he could have written a shorter rape scene, or a different scene altogether. The scene made me painfully uncomfortable. That discomfort grew the longer the scene went on. And it stuck with me, because it made me wonder if maybe the scene didn’t end because Larsson was just a little too satisfied with it. I wonder if he found it a bit more thrilling to write than I’m happy accepting.

Missy Schwartz put it perfectly in her article questioning whether or not Stieg Larsson, professed feminist, had “an issue with women”:

The crimes are unspeakable—which you could argue is the point for an activist like Larsson: Bring it into the open, try to prevent it from happening again. Still, Larsson seems to want it both ways: to condemn such savagery while simultaneously exploiting it in graphic detail for titillating storytelling purposes.

That desire to have it both ways is what worries me.

It worries me not because of this one book or this one author, but because it’s a trend I see in a lot of writing, especially when the book is meant to be dark, and rape is used as that go-to tragedy. When I read certain rape scenes I have a hard time feeling that these scenes are about awareness, or that they’re therapeutic. Like the endless menagerie of horrific murders in your average slasher films, I feel like these rape scenes are as much if not more about a dark, voyeuristic pleasure that comes from watching something we can’t completely comprehend or experience with the character. When I read these scenes, there’s a part of me that feels like the writer is enacting a rape on a character. And I feel almost like the reader is enacting a rape on the character with each read, just to see what it feels like—and not from the victim’s point of view.

Perhaps this wouldn’t stick with me if I hadn’t had that feeling over and over again, both in my early writing workshops and as I read for classes or for pleasure. I have such conflicted feelings about this issue, but it’s also one of the closest to my heart.

So I’m asking you guys—what do you think? Is the increased visibility—any increased visibility—a good thing? Will that help teach our society to be sensitive to these issues, and to try to stop the epidemic of violence against women? Or could the epidemic actually be made worse by a culture full of books about rape that sensationalize it, or turn it into a spectacle?

The "Go-To Trauma": Is Writing about Rape Humanitarian, or Just Voyeuristic?

Brace yourselves, Writer Friends, because this week’s topic is a heavy one. I’ve been shifting these thoughts around in my head since I was in college, and when I read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo a few months ago they resurfaced. But even if you haven’t read the book, keep reading this post; I’m not going to talk about Larsson’s book yet. I’ll elaborate on that in next week’s follow-up post, but for now I want to talk broadly about one of the issues that this book brought to the forefront of my mind.

When I was young, I gravitated towards books about broken and wounded women, spurred by a teenage precociousness, even a certain morbidity. I think a lot of young readers today—particularly young girls—do the same; books like Laurie Halse Anderson’s Wintergirls, Sarah Littman’s Purge, and Gayle Forman’s If I Stay are today’s version of the books I read, like Patricia McCormick’s Cut and Susanna Kaysen’s Girl, Interrupted.

Broken women aren’t new to fiction at all, and I see a lot of beginning writers gravitate towards these subjects. I think we all have at least a side of our personalities that is fascinated by dark subjects. And I think our society considers rape to be just about the darkest subject, the worst crime, and possibly the most traumatic event one can experience. So it’s no surprise to me that I’ve yet to have a writing course in which my class didn’t workshop at least one piece about a rape. More often there are three or four in a semester.

Years of reading queries as an intern—and, of course, books as a general consumer—have taught me that the fascination doesn’t die down for writers after college. I recently had a conversation with a friend and coworker who called rape the “go-to trauma” in books and movies, and I think that’s spot-on. It’s easy to elicit a reaction to a rape—it’s clear who the victim is, it’s impossible to rationalize or justify the act, and it still carries a lot of the shock value that violence has begun to lose since we’ve been deluged with it in TV shows, movies and video games. Rape scenes are horrifying and compelling—and I think, on top of that, there’s something about them that makes both writers and readers feel like activists, at least in spreading awareness of that issue.

But are we always spreading awareness in a good way? When we write about rape, could there be something voyeuristic about it?

See, these scenes always get me asking questions. Do we have the same responsibilities toward fictional characters that we have toward fellow human beings? If we’re riveted by a scene about rape, is that even in some small way like being fascinated by an actual rape? What are the social implications of one reader’s—or of one writer’s—fascination with one rape scene? What are the social implications of thousands of readers’ and writers’ fascination with thousands of rape scenes?

I was once drawn to books about wounded women out of teenage morbidity, but as I’ve gotten older I’ve been drawn towards those books more out of concern for a society that I see as flawed in its treatment of women. Now, each time I read a book that features rape, I find myself wondering if it’s undermining or supporting a culture of rape and violence against women.

Some books bring female characters from rape or violence to redemption, and seem to have the power to spread awareness and spur action. Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak, Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns, and Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye opened the eyes of readers to the everyday horrors of violence against women by offering us whole, complex stories that could have been (and are) those of real women. And as the many powerful responses to recent attempts to ban Speak have demonstrated, these books are needed as much by the victims of such crimes as they are by those to whom they bring awareness.

In that respect, I stand strongly behind a lot of writers who choose to write about rape. It wasn’t that long ago that rape wasn’t even talked about. Truly, the fact that women’s voices are starting to be heard about rape is an accomplishment. That the media acknowledges, in any degree, the epidemic of violence against women in our society is a triumph. So it’s immensely important that there be books about rape and violence against women, and their crippling effects on women’s happiness and mental health.

But is there a wrong way to write a rape scene? What do you think? Have you read any books that involved rape or violence? How did you feel after reading them? Why?

Next week, I’ll dig into this issue further with some thoughts on The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo. Until then, leave your thoughts in the comments!

"We Aren't as Pretty or Interesting": Why White Readers and Publishers Have Got to Think in Color

I've had this post outlined for weeks, but I've been too busy during the week and too exhausted on weekends to find the motivation to write it, and now it seems a bit outdated. So let that be a lesson to you, writer-friends: make time to write, because if you don't a giant Amazon/Macmillan debacle will come and outshine you.

I considered scrapping this post altogether in order to focus on what's hot in the news right now, but to be honest, I haven't got much to add to the breakdown you can get from Rachelle Gardner, Kristin Nelson or that awesome dude named Eric over at Pimp My Novel. But since I do have something to say about people of color on book covers, and because it's incredibly important that these things get said, well... here goes:

In another blogger uproar like the one I posted about in November, the white-washing of Jaclyn Dolamore's Magic Under Glass made big news. After enough bloggers pointed out the fact that Bloomsbury -- the same publisher that whitewashed Justine Larbalestier's Liar -- had misrepresented the novel's darker-skinned narrator on the cover, the company issued an apology, stating that they'd soon be providing a new cover for future editions. And the book-blogging world rejoiced, again.

But when we stop celebrating, we've got to realize that the fact that the same publisher whitewashed covers twice, in rapid succession, is indicative of a serious issue. And other bloggers have noted that it's not just these books, and not just Bloomsbury. So why does this happen?

It happens because, unfortunately, the publishing world has yet to fully step outside of the white privilege with which it's been associated for ages. And it will be hard for it to do so.

Breaking into the industry -- even devoting serious amounts of time to reading for leisure -- requires money. It requires proximity to most of the publishing world in Manhattan, a notoriously expensive place. It requires a certain amount of leisure time in which to read and think. It requires, usually, the privilege of education. It requires the propensity to dream big dreams, and to see their fulfillment as a possibility. And all of these things are unavailable to a large segment of our society: the lower classes. And because race and class (along with gender and sexual orientation and gender identity and countless serious matters I can't discuss in one post) are inextricably bound in our culture, publishing's class issues are also its race issues.

I'm uncomfortable blogging about this, as a white, upper middle class Editorial Assistant. Only 33% of my city's population identifies as white, and yet 95% of the people I work with from day to day are Caucasian. I can't ignore the fact that my background -- my class and my race -- benefit me in this industry. Does that make me an inherently bad person? I hope not.

But it does mean that I, and other white readers and industry professionals, have an added responsibility. Because a huge percentage of the decision-makers in the book business are white, proposals most often get read by white agents, who bring their white perspectives to the table when deciding if characters feel realistic and if their struggles feel relevant. From there, they're read by white editors who bring them to acquisition meetings attended by the mostly-white staff of their respective houses. So, in effect, the people who get to decide which stories are worth telling, worth re-telling, and worth printing and binding and hyping up and selling, are mostly white. And if we're not careful, it's easy to forget that our experience is not universal. Having benefited from our backgrounds, we as publishers have a responsibility to consider what stories will speak to those whose experiences have been different from our own.

It's very, very easy to assume white as a default -- especially when we spend most of our time around people who share our background. One of the reasons that an uproar was so long in coming is that Magic Under Glass stated its narrator's skin color less explicitly than did Liar. And, having read the textual descriptions of the main character's appearance, I can see why many readers assumed Nimira looked just like the model on the cover; the book never specifically calls her colored.

And that's the problem. Too often, when we imagine a character from a book, we assume white unless otherwise stated. And we've been able to do that for too long because of our privilege. But white is not the default race -- whiteness is not the default experience -- and we must shake the idea that it is.

I'm working hard to do this. I'm trying to shake the fact that my internal narrator has an undeniably European-American accent. I'm trying to imagine characters in a rainbow of colors rather than picturing them as white characters and then modifying that image when I learn of their race. Frankly, it's hard. It's hard to go outside my own experience and forget what it's like to be in the majority -- which is to say nothing of how hard it is to not be in the majority, and to have no choice but to venture outside one's own experience.

So I'm looking to you all. How do you deal with this issue? Are you challenging yourselves to read or buy books about people of color? To drop whatever assumptions you may have about race? And how do you think we can help change the industry and -- even more importantly -- the way we and other readers and publishers think?

The Return of Book-Blogging Superheroes, or How You Folks are STILL Changing the World

After my post on the power of book bloggers, couple of you lovely reader-folk expressed an interest in learning more about how blogging has affected the publishing industry at large. I've kept an eye out for similar situations; here are two of my favorites:

After School Library Journal reported that Scholastic book fairs were censoring Lauren Myracle's Luv Ya Bunches because one of the characters has two moms, bloggers in the parenting and LGBTQ worlds took up arms and made their protests heard. The result? Scholastic reversed its decision and made the book available at middle school book fairs. Whether the newer decision reflects a full victory for the LBGTQ community or not is still up for debate, but it's hard to deny the power of an angry mob of readers and activists armed with the power of words and the accessibility of the internet.

This second example isn't really about blogging, and it's not really about sparking revolutions in publishing -- but, nonetheless, it's pretty wonderful for her (and for her agent, and for her future editor, wherever he or she may be, and for we readers!). What's more, it's probably of great interest to you Author-folk. On her blog, Write on Target, Debra Schubert has a funny and inspiring story of how she got her agent -- via Twitter.

How about you? Do you know of any other great stories of blogger activism that succeeded -- or didn't? I'd love to hear them!

How Book Blogging Can Make a Book Big, or How it Can Change the World

A few weeks ago, I spent a Saturday afternoon at the Children's Literary Cafe at the New York Public Library's new Children's Room. Pam Coughlan, Elizabeth Burns, Susan Thomsen and Anne Boles Levy (co-founder and director of The Cybils, who is unfortunately no longer blogging) led a fascinating panel on the Kidlitosphere and The Cybils. Moderated by SLJ blogger extraordinaire Elizabeth Bird, the four blogging powerhouses talked about everything from the creation of the Cybils to FTC limitations on advertisements in blogs.

Now, I'm always interested in thinking about how power shifts and influence is asserted, so when we began to discuss how bloggers have changed not only the book review process but the whole of the publishing process, I was intrigued. Fifteen years ago, the ladies said, publishers would have sent Advanced Reader's Copies (ARCs) of an upcoming title to all the known review sources (The New York Times, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, and so on and so forth), just as they do today. But, for the most part, that would have been it; a whole world of active bloggers didn't yet exist.

These days, bloggers have asserted themselves in a big way, and publicity departments take bloggers who review books more than seriously. The big-name review sources are great for reaching wide general audiences and especially for appealing to librarians. Nonetheless, really good bloggers often have their own groups of hundreds if not thousands of dedicated readers, and no publisher wants to miss the opportunity to reach that book-hungry crowd.

So bloggers can find themselves practically swimming in free review copies (major bonus), and publishers can benefit from the sort of word-of-mouth publicity that turns great books into major hits. The catch for publishers? Reviewers get to say whatever they want.

And so they have, to great effect. What I love about the power bloggers now wield in the book industry is that they can do far more than just trash a book; they can question it. And when enough bloggers question, somebody has to answer.

It was bloggers who first started questioning the review copies of Justine Larbalestier's Liar, wondering why the cover featured a white girl when the main character was clearly African-American. When Justine admitted that she was unhappy with the cover but that the house had refused to change it, posting her own powerful objection to the white-washing of titles in what is still, in many ways, an unequal industry, the battle took off.

Publishers and readers alike began to look for how race was addressed in the books they read. Cheryl Klein of Scholastic's Arthur A. Levine Books immediately posted her encouragement to writers dealing with issues of race, and updated her submission guidelines to encourage racially diverse submissions. Justine suggested that readers show the industry just how well covers featuring minority groups can sell by making an effort to buy at least one book featuring a person of color on its cover, and readers delivered. And everyone in the industry was reminded that book publishing no longer happens in some hidden room filled with the smells of ink and rust and paper where editors lurk and marketers plot their dastardly marketing plans (interns, of course, lurk in an even darker and more hidden room).

Justine's plea for readers to buy books featuring characters of color plays off of the power of the consumer, which is a strong force indeed. But the power of bloggers may even exceed it. Publishers are spending more money and more time attempting to appeal to reviewers -- a look at the flashy covers attached to review copies now but never present twenty years ago can show you that -- and they're looking to early reviewers to do more than generate blurbs. Because they see books before they even hit the market, bloggers can provide feedback that incites change in a book before it's ever released.

The best Justine might have hoped for, after her book's release, would have been a paperback reissue with a different cover. But bloggers saw the book before anyone else and made their opinions known; in response, Bloomsbury changed the cover of Liar.

My guess is that the power of bloggers will only grow as social media and e-publishing become more prominent in the industry. As bloggers test the limits of their power, publishers are beginning to realize that they have no choice but to be up-front about their practices. And the more we talk about what's going on behind publishing-house doors, the more the industry has to take our opinions into account.

So you can consider this an invitation, a wake-up call or a mission statement. What's bothering you right now? Is it the dearth of minority characters in fiction? Is it the infuriating absence of female writers on the Publisher's Weekly Top 10 Books of 2009 list? The antifeminist trend of glorified, disempowered female protagonists? Or perhaps the questionable motives of large publishers experimenting with new divisions and sources of income?

Whether you agree or disagree with those conflicts -- in fact, whatever issue gets you fired up, I hope you're being very vocal about it. What's more, I hope you're being vocal in a way that encourages discussion, sharing and, most of all, change. Because you have more power than you may know.