Signal Boost: Constructive Responses

[deathpixie]

This is why [Bad username or site: @ livejournal.com] is my favourite. He brings attention to awesome things.

(Italics are Warren, bold and italics are Cat Valente)

Cat Valente:

I was thinking the other day about the whole horrifying Elizabeth Moon situation.

She refers to sf novelist Elizabeth Moon, who outed herself on her own blog recently as a racist idiot who appears to get all her information about the world from Fox News.

I don’t like to just watch bad things happen and make outraged noises and then go back to reading the intertubes like nothing happened. I always want to do something–something positive, something that stands on its own and says something good just by being. I can’t do anything about Moon or Wiscon or any of it. I’m not on the concom and I’m not a habitual buyer of Moon’s books.

What I am is the editor of Apex Magazine.

That’s sf magazine Apex, generally considered to be having a bit of a renaissance since Cat took over as fiction editor, and available in very handy digital editions for various devices.

And I have the Wand of Editorial Oomph.

I would like to announce that the November issue of Apex will be an entirely Arab/Muslim issue. It will be beautiful. It will showcase writers of Arab descent and Muslim writers. (I am aware that many folk not of Arab descent are Muslim, that’s why I’m structuring it this way, so that writers from either culture or both can be part of the issue.) It will show how Islam is as much a part of the human experience as any other faith or story system that writers of the fantastic draw from. It will be a small thing, in the grand scheme. It will not save the world. But it will exist, and perhaps in its own way can stand beside the recent ugliness in the SFF world as something bright and good.

I am looking for material, but most especially poetry, from Muslim authors and authors of Arab descent. Let’s make it easy: if you think you might “count,” then you do. Southeast Asian Muslims, yes. American Muslims, yes. Anybody with a connection to the cultures of Islam, yes. The subject of your works can be anything you like, but I am only looking for authors with connections to Islam and/or the Arabic world. Please do not send reprints, we have that covered.

Excellent plan.

I agree with Warren (and Cat), this is a very excellent plan. We spend so much time focussing on the destructive. Let's get some constructive going. Boost the signal, let's help Cat make this issue of hers awesome!

Comments

[merhawk]

The only "problem" I see here is that Cat Valente (and by extension Warren Ellis) is conflating Arab and Muslim. Not all Muslims are Arab, as she notes, just as not all Arabs are Muslim.

If she hadn't been explicitly talking about how "...Islam is as much a part of the human experience...." (which is quite true), it wouldn't have even pinged me.

[warren-ellis.livejournal.com]

I think it's a "both" thing, not a "these are all the same one thing" thing?

I did my original post on the fly, may go back and edit the title.

[merhawk]

I was just reading through her LJ, and she did clarify there that it's meant to be either Arab or Muslim. Editing to make that clearer is probably a good thing. There's quite a few non-Muslim Arabs out there who probably don't want to be conflated with their Muslim Arab neighbors.

[jbmcdragon.livejournal.com]

You rock hardcore. :D

J

[deathpixie]

Well, she does say so even in that quote both [Bad username or site: @ livejournal.com] and I shared:

"(I am aware that many folk not of Arab descent are Muslim, that’s why I’m structuring it this way, so that writers from either culture or both can be part of the issue.)"

So yeah, I was a bit confused, since I remembered Cat (and Warren) specifically saying that.

[deathpixie]

Why, thank you, Miss JB. :)

[deathpixie]

It is indeed - she says so in the quote you (and thus I) provided!

[merhawk]

That implies that she's looking for a Muslim, not Arab issue. Especially considering the next sentence:
It will show how Islam is as much a part of the human experience as any other faith or story system that writers of the fantastic draw from.

That's implying that all Arab culture leans from Islam. Much of it does. But not all of it does. And *that* is where I felt her wording and well-meaningness falls apart. I acknowledge that she meant to be inclusive, even if her wording was imprecise. That being said, while I've studied the Middle East I'm not from the Middle East[1], so it's not quite my place to be speaking for my Middle Eastern neighbors.

[1]I know that at one point my ancestors were from the Middle East, but I can't tell you if that was hundreds of years ago or thousands of years ago.