beatrice_otter (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
beatrice_otter) wrote2016-03-19 06:08 pm
beatrice_otter) wrote2016-03-19 06:08 pm
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Caricaturing the Indian: seriously, JK Rowling?
I imagine you all have heard by now that Jo Rowling has been releasing stuff about American wizarding history over on Pottermore, and that it shows a lack of interest in anything but the pablum white-washed Pro-US Hollywoodized stuff, with bonus appropriation of Native American culture/mythology for a does of the exotic.
NK Jemison has a short post about it.
Native Appropriations does a more in-depth look at it, which I appreciate.
Now, Rowling has never been very culturally sensitive, shall we say, but when she was mostly just layering Beauxbatons and Fleru with every French stereotype she could muster, well, it's not like the French are an oppressed minority. And the general lack of diversity at Hogwarts and other problematic issues was bad, but at least they were tangential to the core of the story. This is, well, the appropriative caricatures are pretty central to the pieces she's releasing now.
As a palate-cleanser, here's A Crash Course in the History of Black Science Fiction. Would've been more appropriate to link to a crash course in Native American Science Fiction, but I couldn't find one. I found general Native American book lists, and lists of speculative fiction by authors of color, and SF/F stories "with Native American flavor" (?!?) but the best I could find was Wikipedia's list of Native American Speculative Fiction Authors of Note. And the University of Arizona recently published an anthology of Indigenous Science Fiction, of which some of the authors are native American.
NK Jemison has a short post about it.
Native Appropriations does a more in-depth look at it, which I appreciate.
Now, Rowling has never been very culturally sensitive, shall we say, but when she was mostly just layering Beauxbatons and Fleru with every French stereotype she could muster, well, it's not like the French are an oppressed minority. And the general lack of diversity at Hogwarts and other problematic issues was bad, but at least they were tangential to the core of the story. This is, well, the appropriative caricatures are pretty central to the pieces she's releasing now.
As a palate-cleanser, here's A Crash Course in the History of Black Science Fiction. Would've been more appropriate to link to a crash course in Native American Science Fiction, but I couldn't find one. I found general Native American book lists, and lists of speculative fiction by authors of color, and SF/F stories "with Native American flavor" (?!?) but the best I could find was Wikipedia's list of Native American Speculative Fiction Authors of Note. And the University of Arizona recently published an anthology of Indigenous Science Fiction, of which some of the authors are native American.