Link: Racism Without Racists by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva

Surfacing from writing my prospectus, editing the SEAsteampunk manuscript, and preparing for the end-of-quarter madness to drop off a few important links.

Eduardo Bonilla-Silva's book, Racism Without Racists: Colorblind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States, is a 2006 book in PDF and it's basically what it says on the tin. 

If the book is too tl;dr for you (and it is, after all, a BOOK), here is a Pyschology Today article on the same topic: "Colorblind Ideology is a Form of Racism"

POC-fronted Steampunk Projects? Say it ain't so!

'Cos that would be unpossible!

Or is it?

I thought Milton Davis' IndieGoGo fundraiser for SteamFUNK movie RITE OF PASSAGE was going to be the only major project featuring POC in any significant way (Black steampunk vampires, people!), but life throws things at one, doesn't it? 

There're only five days left to go, but TINKER could use all the help it can get. I'm currently in Malaysia on holiday so I've not been in a mood to aggressively interrogate people about it, so this is a belated post to tell people about it. 

What's interesting about it is that it's fronted by Filipino/Japanese actors (the Tinkers of the title), and set in SF after a brief stint in HK. There're way too many white people, and maybe too many POC villains, and there're a couple of problematic things I've identified so far in the copy, but it still seems to be a really good range of actual non-white folks given the geography they're covering, plus what looks like a lot of female characters who could actually graduate beyond Sexy Lamp level into Bechdel Test grades. (Granted this is easier to do in a series than in a movie, but even with a series, you know how they are with POC.)

So, check it out, spread the word if you can, and let me know what you think <3 I'm given to understand that writer is interested in dialog to help shape the story, which is cool.

ETA: ALSO! Among the people they have on board for the TINKER soundtrack is Steampunk POC interviewee Psyche Corporation! So that is also pretty exciting.

Call for Submissions: Long Hidden

Crossed Genres is accepting submissions for their anthology Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction From The Margins of History! Click through for the guidelines, and submit by July 31, 2013! The anthology is in the hands of Daniel Josè Older and Rose Fox. 

While not specifically steampunk, they do accept alternate-history type spec fic, which can also include steampunk. If you're not sure whether or not your story will work, you can email them (questions@longhidden.com) to find out! PLEASE make sure you address it "Dear Long Hidden editors," "Dear Mr. Older and Mx. Fox" OR "Dear Rose and Daniel". This makes sure you're addressing both editors; the editorial team is working as a team, and you should acknowledge them as such.

Happy writing!

Solidarity Link! Order of the White Feather

Some of you may know, or may not know, that about slightly over a year ago, steampunk authoress O. M. Grey was subject to harassment, followed by sexual violence, both physical and emotional. Instead of rallying to support her when she came out of the shock of it all, many people rallied around her attacker, the well-esteemed Professor Elemental, further driving her towards the fringes of the community.

In response, some members (plus her) have started the Order of the White Feather, the website which she built, to support members of the community and display solidarity by wearing a white feather.

101 List Updated!

To prove that I'm still alive, I just updated that tab above which reads "Read These Before Engaging."

Most of you who come to this blog in good faith actually wanting to learn will actually take some time out to read what's in that tab, for which I thank you.

Everyone else visiting this blog to blergh out at me for being racist or white-hating or whatever intellectually lazy non-arguments can fuck off; I'll be deleting comments if I suspect you just want your opinions heard. 

This comes in light of learning about @Anti_Racism_Dog, which Overland's Malcolm Harris talks about here. It's actually a long thing, so let me quote the relevant excerpts.

Spanish-language Links of Interest: Antologia Retrofuturisme and Aristofagia

So, two awesome things! Araceli Rodriguez of the Mexican steampunk magazine Mercenarios de DIOS pinged me to have me expect the upcoming anthology Planes B: Antologia Retrofuturisme! With an all-woman design crew, Mercenarios de DIOS has produced an anthology featuring Latin@ writers, with special guest Jeff Vandermeer (his story "Fixing Hanover" has been translated for this anthology).

If you're a Spanish-language reader, you can pop on over to Ricardo Montesinos' blog to read the first chapter of his story "El Hombre Que Invento Libertalia"!

Secondly, on Steampunk Chile's Twitter feed was this link to Artefactum Vapore's song Aristofagia on SoundCloud, complete with lyrics for you to sing along. Further clicking leads to their previous track Victoria. 

Link of Interest: Cosplaying James Ng's Imperial Sheriff

Over at Beyond Victoriana, the Steampunk Panda decided to make his debut into cosplay with an ambitious project: James Ng's Imperial Sheriff: 

I don't know why anyone would want to start off in steampunk with this much work, but if you got the ovaries for it, go for it, you know? Did he succeed? Well, pop on over to read his essay and check out the pictures, and judge for yourself! It is good to see more Asian dudes in steampunk actually being Asian.

Link: Review of Jay Kristoff's Stormdancer

A year ago I started seeing a bit of hype for Jay Kristoff's Stormdancer, which purported to be a "Japanese steampunk novel". I even read a vomit-inducing post from the author himself babbling about how awesome multiculturalism is for steampunk and how he was inspired by James Ng's art to write his novel ('cept, um, hello? China is not Japan?).

After my experiences reading the Windup Girl and the Peshawar Lancers, I'm pretty fuckin' burnt out on white authors writing non-white stories unless they've been critically vetted by people I trust.

So, instead of slogging through what promises to be a steaming pile o' shit masquerading as actual hot steam that makes the world go 'round, I shall instead link to someone else who intrepidly read the book and said everything I pretty much would have said if I had been the one to read it:

I'll admit, I was a little leery of Stormdancer from the start - Japanese steampunk sounds cool, but coming from a white western author, the chances of problematic weeaboo fuckery are high. Exoticization. Romanticization. Plain old appropriation. Yet for some reason, I didn't really peg Stormdancer as a weeaboo outing. I don't know why. There was no good reason, and yet, I expected Kristoff to be a scholar of some sort, or at least, to do some very in-depth, scholarly research, borne of a deep interest in, and respect for, Japanese culture. And while even that could have also potentially yielded something problematic, at least it would have been sincere. What I thoroughly did NOT expect to get was a book informed by fucking Wikipedia and anime, set in Japan for the sake of novelty. That came as a genuine shock. And a dramatic rise in blood pressure. WHAT THE FUCKITY FUCK? 

The thing is, that Wikipedia part? You can kinda tell. I mean, the first hundred pages or so of Stormdancer, basically until the airship crashes, are a chore to wade through, mostly because of the Wikipedia-esque info dumps. It takes almost exactly half of those pages to make any progress on the plot. The first fifty are just about showing off the world and detailing every little aspect of it, which is why it takes like twelve paragraphs for Yukiko and her father to walk down a street: we have to hear about the architecture, detail the clothing being worn (because we're using Japanese terms here, and not many readers will know offhand what a fucking hakama looks like), and explain the exact geographical setting, right down to which rivers cross where, and the ~exotic smells~ in the air, even though none of it is actually relevant to anything that's going on at the moment. I understand wanting to set the scene and acquaint readers with the world, but Jesus Herbet Christ, get on with it already. Work this stuff in to the action. Make me not want to put the book down out of sheer boredom. I mean, I haven't even gotten the chance to get angry yet.

Aside from the obvious appropriativeness of the text, it also sounds like Eurocentrism got married to Straight Dude Sexism and had a baby in the form of incompetent writing.

I don't care if you're writing a secondary world or an alternate history. If you can't manage basics right, you probably shouldn't be writing this story at all. Maybe I shouldn't blame Jay Kristoff too much; maybe being a weaboo who cannot tell when he is being a racist is an easy trap to fall into. But I will come down hard on his agent and editors who thought this racist dreck was worth publishing, because these people are supposed to be a bit more discerning (but time and again, it's been proven that many privileged folks are not very discerning when it comes to issues of justice, so....).

As for bloggers who helped this guy promote, a couple of whom are people I like, I hope you will be more discriminating in the future.

h/t to Requires Hate for the link!

Link of Interest: "On Supertrees, Neocolonialism and Globalization"

Via Annabeth Leow Hui Min (whose short story is the opener for the Singaporean steampunk anthology The Steampowered Globe), I read this interesting essay exploring the nuances of Singapore's new trend on "supertrees," its ties to the globalization rhetoric of how cosmopolitanism looks like, and how it reflects a neocolonial undercurrent by attempting to be representative but still viewing Singapore through a specific, colonizer lens, offering up the little island for consumption by a Western Gaze, and using these Eurocentric standards to measure success.

Consider how there are 225,000 species of plants in the new Gardens, the vast majority of which were chosen because they were “not commonly found in Singapore.” In essence, the Gardens represent an attempt to mimic globalization in the specific geographical location of Singapore as it strives, above all else, to be a hub of transnational capital and investments. What exactly were the costs in terms of the carbon footprint to carefully ship all these plants to Singapore? Further, like colonial botanic gardens of old, the Gardens are a vision of governmental mastery over nature, dictated by planners, scientists, botanists and capital. They are experimental spaces for technology and environment modification, and attempts to combat the equatorial climate of Singapore.
...
These omissions seem less grave when we consider how the larger human and environmental costs of the project might be obscured as well. We might do well to reflect on who exactly was doing the heavy lifting in the transformation of site that did not have roads, drains, sewers or electricity. In a 30 June 2012 Straits Times article, the chief executive of the Gardens, Dr. Tan Wee Kiat reveals that of the $1 billion spent on the gardens, 80 percent went to the infrastructure works while the 700,000 plants were less than 20 percent of the budget. While we might assume that some of the money that went infrastructure went into labour, I would argue that this is optimistic at best. Consider another article: “Injured worker goes home, loses 13 kg in 7 months” [Footnote 3] this time by the organization Transient Workers Count Too, dated April 2012. This article chronicles the misfortunes of Asad who was injured while commuting to the work site at Gardens by the Bay. His painful injuries aside, Asad’s revelations of his working conditions makes us question the sustainability and humanity of relying and exploiting foreign labour. According to the article, Asad worked 24 hours every other day in May and April 2011 for $1,600 a month. What exactly were the working conditions for the 1,000 workers then, who were reportedly working “around the clock” to ensure that the Gardens could have their official opening without a hitch? What kinds of human costs are justified here?
...
One of the UK-based designers responsible for Gardens on the Bay had a memorable quip in the promotional video, saying “On a plate, this is what Singapore is about.” While I am not against Singapore becoming a more cosmopolitan and diverse place, we need to ask some hard questions as well: Do we need to be served up on “a plate”? Who defines and decides “what Singapore is about”? Is it a breathlessly instant garden, planned to exploit the tourist market, built on occasionally shaky reclaimed land without much regard to the foreign labourers’ welfare or the decadence of spending hundreds and thousands of dollars on importing plants from all over the world? When we are simplified and contained “on a plate”, what other stories and issues are obscured from this self-presentation? Could we have a more honest and fair spatial relationship with this land that we call our home?

Read the rest of the essay at Yawning Bread, or click the link below to read my thoughts on how it relates to steampunk.

The Steampunk Postcolonialist at SF Signal!

Fabio Fernandes, who I interviewed earlier regarding the anthology of postcolonial SF he will be editing for the Future Fire, in turn asked me to participate in a roundtable about postcolonial SF, answering the silly question, "is it essential to belong to a culture that one is writing about?" 

So I gave a 9-paragraph answer purposefully deflecting the question because I am so tired of it, and instead countered with a question and completely different frame for the problem. 

There're answers from other steampunk writers too! Joyce Chng and Ekaterina Sedia participated, as did Steampunk Bible editor Jeff Vandermeer. Go check it out.