lenora_rose (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lenora_rose) wrote2010-01-08 09:07 pm
lenora_rose) wrote2010-01-08 09:07 pm
Entry tags:
More bookness
First, a review:
Anishnaabe World, by Roger Spielmann (Illustrated by Perry McLeod-Shabogesic and Tim Steven)
Spielmann is a white man who, having lived 11 years in an Algonquin community, and has taught in the Native Studies department for the next 18. His books is quite literally intended to explain a First Nations point of view to Canadians - one of his first points is that most First Nations identify first by their nation (Saulteaux, MicMac, etc) then and much later as Canadian - so as to better promote useful future dialogue and improve relations. Also, to do so in accessible and even funny vernacular. (And the illustrators, one Anishnaabe and one white, also did reality checking for him, one for respect and accuracy, the other for clueless person's accessibility.)
This is as good a book for this kind of dialogue as can be written by someone not actually in the culture he's discussing. He's strongly self-deprecating (Most of the stories he tells about clueless mistakes, he's the butt of the joke), cites First Nation sources both personal and scholarly, and he's respectful. A lot of both his method and his suggestions for showing respect across cultures could be applied to any cross cultural exchange, including things like don't reduce subtle cultural differences into simple black-and-white rules, and don't make the other person play by your rules all the time, even if they know your rules better than you know theirs.
There do seem to be times when, after making the point that there are 43 different languages and even more different Nations in Canada, he describes aspects of the Anishnaabe culture he knows best as if they were universal (He's usually careful about it, but without caveats on every second page that would render it unfunny or unreadable, his personal examples are easy for the most clueless of readers to conflate with the whole). (For my purposes, his examples are right in the culture whose mindset I actually kind of need/want to know better for writing reasons, so I'm just as happy with their presence.)
Even his choice to use Anishnaabe (Which I've also, and more frequently, encountered as Anishinaabe) as the most universal term used by the First Nations he knows is a slightly dubious one; on the one hand, it's respectful becuase it's a term they chose. On a similar hand, it helps strip some of the danger of confusing his this-culture examples as universal, since Anishnaabe, though used by several related Nations, is specific to one area of the country (around the Great Lakes, he says, but that's a pretty wide around, since there are Saulteaux and Ojibwe in Saskatchewan). On the other, it's specific to one area of the country, and leaves out First Nations in most of the rest of the country on those occasions he is speaking of experiences that *are* closer to universal.
Still, in general, it addresses most 101 level clueless questions, and touches on a number that are 201 head on, and hints at 301 aspects. It's a small book, it can't be expected to do much more. But it does do a good job of describing at least the rudiments of a the one Anishnaabe set of cultural values and mindset Spielmann knows.
(Actually, for the purposes of respectful fictional inclusion, this is flat-out better than Devon Abbott Mihesuah's "So you want to write about American Indians", which, as well as being US based, is better for scholarly work, addresses nothing past 101 or even 001 level, and is too afraid to slip into the "All cultures are the same in X way" and therefore is extremely short on specific examples. But then, Mihesuah wasn't trying to describe the values sets of any one group, just to fend off the blatant and egregious and actually racists treatments done far too often.)
He also includes a suggested reading list including sources both scholarly and from inside the culture (And as often as not both).
______________
The library trip actually netted a slightly different set of borrowed books than planned, so my list of to-read books is tweaked slightly.
______________
Not long ago, I followed a meme about the fifteen books you could think of that were deeply influential. This is a similar, but distinctly different set: the books I'd save if I could only save twenty out of all those I actually own.
(The restriction, I can say, cut at least three authors down sharply. And that I have to actually own them in the relevant edition caused me to included one oddity and lose at least one book I don't own but have hunted for, and which would be right up there - that being Ronald Lockley's Saga of the Grey Seal).
In the order they came under my eye, not of importance:
1) Joan D. Vinge - Catspaw
2) Susan Cooper - Seaward (If I had the chance to snag two of hers, the five-in-one Dark is Rising Omnibus is clearly the other choice)
3) Peter s. Beagle - The Last Unicorn (sadly, if I had for whatever reason to drop one more, this is probably the one I'd drop. Some of this may be the pragmatism of having it in an edition that's practically fallen apart, but not all.)
4) Samuel Schellabarger - Prince of Foxes (This won over the Three Musketeers, if barely; but I felt one of the two was enough for swashbucklers)
5,6) Elizabeth Bear - Ink and Steel/Hell and Earth (Because it's two books, this caused the most struggle; but no other one book of hers quite worked, so I ended up losing one more possible author slot. Of course, maybe future books of hers will change that. And I haven't read AtWS.)
7) Pamela Dean - Juniper, Gentian and Rosemary
8) Neil Gaiman - Anansi Boys
9) Ellen Kushner - The Privilege of the Sword (I grant you, parts of this only truly break your heart if you've read Swordspoint, but it's also so much better in other ways.)
10) Steven Brust and Emma Bull - Freedom and Necessity (Not necessarily the best, but the one pick for this list I hesitated over the least)
11) Robin McKinley - Rose Daughter (This one came out as a surprise to me; I thought there was no way I wasn't narrowing her down to Deerskin, but when I had both books in hand, this one got picked. It's lighter and it's more dreamlike, but I'm not sure these are bad qualities. This list is short on dreamlike books.)
12) Diana Wynne Jones - Fire and Hemlock (Or Maybe the Homeward Bounders, or Charmed Life, or... clearly, one of the authors who suffered from my limitations)
13) Terry Pratchett - Night Watch (If I could have a second pick, it would be Nation. Or the Truth. or Going Postal.)
14) Lois McMaster Bujold - Paladin of Souls (Much as I like Miles Vorkosigan...)
15) Thomas King - Green Grass, Running Water
16) Teresa Nielsen Hayden - Making Book
17) Jane Yolen - Touch Magic (essay collection)
18) David Thomson - The People of the Sea (A Journey in Search of the Seal Legend)
19) Carl H. Klaus, Miriam Gilbert, Bradford S. Field, JR, eds - Stages of Drama Fifth Edition (This is one I wouldn't have thought to include normally, but it's a fabulous cheater: plays from Aeschylus to about 2000, including both a lot of things I'd consider necessary, like Dr. Faustus and Arcadia, and a lot I wouldn't otherwise get a chance at. Plus essays. 1731 pages.)
20) Virginia Hamilton, Leo and Diane Dillon - the Girl who Spun Gold (Because yes, I needed a picture book. David Weisner's Tuesday is another real close second.)
Anishnaabe World, by Roger Spielmann (Illustrated by Perry McLeod-Shabogesic and Tim Steven)
Spielmann is a white man who, having lived 11 years in an Algonquin community, and has taught in the Native Studies department for the next 18. His books is quite literally intended to explain a First Nations point of view to Canadians - one of his first points is that most First Nations identify first by their nation (Saulteaux, MicMac, etc) then and much later as Canadian - so as to better promote useful future dialogue and improve relations. Also, to do so in accessible and even funny vernacular. (And the illustrators, one Anishnaabe and one white, also did reality checking for him, one for respect and accuracy, the other for clueless person's accessibility.)
This is as good a book for this kind of dialogue as can be written by someone not actually in the culture he's discussing. He's strongly self-deprecating (Most of the stories he tells about clueless mistakes, he's the butt of the joke), cites First Nation sources both personal and scholarly, and he's respectful. A lot of both his method and his suggestions for showing respect across cultures could be applied to any cross cultural exchange, including things like don't reduce subtle cultural differences into simple black-and-white rules, and don't make the other person play by your rules all the time, even if they know your rules better than you know theirs.
There do seem to be times when, after making the point that there are 43 different languages and even more different Nations in Canada, he describes aspects of the Anishnaabe culture he knows best as if they were universal (He's usually careful about it, but without caveats on every second page that would render it unfunny or unreadable, his personal examples are easy for the most clueless of readers to conflate with the whole). (For my purposes, his examples are right in the culture whose mindset I actually kind of need/want to know better for writing reasons, so I'm just as happy with their presence.)
Even his choice to use Anishnaabe (Which I've also, and more frequently, encountered as Anishinaabe) as the most universal term used by the First Nations he knows is a slightly dubious one; on the one hand, it's respectful becuase it's a term they chose. On a similar hand, it helps strip some of the danger of confusing his this-culture examples as universal, since Anishnaabe, though used by several related Nations, is specific to one area of the country (around the Great Lakes, he says, but that's a pretty wide around, since there are Saulteaux and Ojibwe in Saskatchewan). On the other, it's specific to one area of the country, and leaves out First Nations in most of the rest of the country on those occasions he is speaking of experiences that *are* closer to universal.
Still, in general, it addresses most 101 level clueless questions, and touches on a number that are 201 head on, and hints at 301 aspects. It's a small book, it can't be expected to do much more. But it does do a good job of describing at least the rudiments of a the one Anishnaabe set of cultural values and mindset Spielmann knows.
(Actually, for the purposes of respectful fictional inclusion, this is flat-out better than Devon Abbott Mihesuah's "So you want to write about American Indians", which, as well as being US based, is better for scholarly work, addresses nothing past 101 or even 001 level, and is too afraid to slip into the "All cultures are the same in X way" and therefore is extremely short on specific examples. But then, Mihesuah wasn't trying to describe the values sets of any one group, just to fend off the blatant and egregious and actually racists treatments done far too often.)
He also includes a suggested reading list including sources both scholarly and from inside the culture (And as often as not both).
______________
The library trip actually netted a slightly different set of borrowed books than planned, so my list of to-read books is tweaked slightly.
______________
Not long ago, I followed a meme about the fifteen books you could think of that were deeply influential. This is a similar, but distinctly different set: the books I'd save if I could only save twenty out of all those I actually own.
(The restriction, I can say, cut at least three authors down sharply. And that I have to actually own them in the relevant edition caused me to included one oddity and lose at least one book I don't own but have hunted for, and which would be right up there - that being Ronald Lockley's Saga of the Grey Seal).
In the order they came under my eye, not of importance:
1) Joan D. Vinge - Catspaw
2) Susan Cooper - Seaward (If I had the chance to snag two of hers, the five-in-one Dark is Rising Omnibus is clearly the other choice)
3) Peter s. Beagle - The Last Unicorn (sadly, if I had for whatever reason to drop one more, this is probably the one I'd drop. Some of this may be the pragmatism of having it in an edition that's practically fallen apart, but not all.)
4) Samuel Schellabarger - Prince of Foxes (This won over the Three Musketeers, if barely; but I felt one of the two was enough for swashbucklers)
5,6) Elizabeth Bear - Ink and Steel/Hell and Earth (Because it's two books, this caused the most struggle; but no other one book of hers quite worked, so I ended up losing one more possible author slot. Of course, maybe future books of hers will change that. And I haven't read AtWS.)
7) Pamela Dean - Juniper, Gentian and Rosemary
8) Neil Gaiman - Anansi Boys
9) Ellen Kushner - The Privilege of the Sword (I grant you, parts of this only truly break your heart if you've read Swordspoint, but it's also so much better in other ways.)
10) Steven Brust and Emma Bull - Freedom and Necessity (Not necessarily the best, but the one pick for this list I hesitated over the least)
11) Robin McKinley - Rose Daughter (This one came out as a surprise to me; I thought there was no way I wasn't narrowing her down to Deerskin, but when I had both books in hand, this one got picked. It's lighter and it's more dreamlike, but I'm not sure these are bad qualities. This list is short on dreamlike books.)
12) Diana Wynne Jones - Fire and Hemlock (Or Maybe the Homeward Bounders, or Charmed Life, or... clearly, one of the authors who suffered from my limitations)
13) Terry Pratchett - Night Watch (If I could have a second pick, it would be Nation. Or the Truth. or Going Postal.)
14) Lois McMaster Bujold - Paladin of Souls (Much as I like Miles Vorkosigan...)
15) Thomas King - Green Grass, Running Water
16) Teresa Nielsen Hayden - Making Book
17) Jane Yolen - Touch Magic (essay collection)
18) David Thomson - The People of the Sea (A Journey in Search of the Seal Legend)
19) Carl H. Klaus, Miriam Gilbert, Bradford S. Field, JR, eds - Stages of Drama Fifth Edition (This is one I wouldn't have thought to include normally, but it's a fabulous cheater: plays from Aeschylus to about 2000, including both a lot of things I'd consider necessary, like Dr. Faustus and Arcadia, and a lot I wouldn't otherwise get a chance at. Plus essays. 1731 pages.)
20) Virginia Hamilton, Leo and Diane Dillon - the Girl who Spun Gold (Because yes, I needed a picture book. David Weisner's Tuesday is another real close second.)