From LISTSERV@listserv.uic.edu Fri Aug 25 10:37:15 2000 Date: Fri, 25 Aug 2000 12:34:16 -0500 From: "L-Soft list server at University of Illinois at Chicago (1.8d)" To: Laura Quilter Subject: File: "FEMINISTSF-LIT LOG0007A" ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 3 Jul 2000 15:44:53 -0700 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Laura Quilter Subject: Re: [rff] Fw: Rich Erlich's book on Ursula K. Le Guin is on the Web (fwd) Comments: To: feministsf@uic.edu, feministsf-lit@uic.edu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII fyi ... Laura Quilter lauraq@exploratorium.edu ph: 415.353.0465 / 415.561.0343 Learning Center Facilities Manager Exploratorium, San Francisco ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Richard D. Erlich Subject: Rich Erlich's book on Ursula K. Le Guin is on the Web > Rich Erlich's _Coyote's Song: The Teaching Stories of Ursula K. Le > Guin_ is on the World Wide Web at the address below. > > http://www.sfra.org/Coyote/CoyoteHome.htm > > "CoyoteHome" is a subsection of the site of the Science Fiction > Research Association, a site managed by Peter Sands of the University > of Wisconsin at Milwaukee. Peter calls this a very basic form of > "CoyoteHome"; Rich adds that he has arranged for an Index to be made. > > If you are interested, please visit the site. If you have any > questions or comments, please contact Rich Erlich via e-mail: > ErlichRD@MUOhio.edu. ------------------------------------------------------ This is the FEMINISTSF-LIT listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF-LIT Contact FEMINISTSF-LIT-request@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU if there are problems. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 4 Jul 2000 08:20:47 -0400 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Terri Subject: Kiissing the Witch Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" This is a forwarded message from Petra, who does not have access to her email at the present. ****************************************************************************** _Kissing the Witch_ is the BDG book of July. I've nominated it after reading all these favourable reviews about it (see the BDG nomination page) and I'm glad that it was selected. It is really a special book. Although fairy-tales the stories are non-predictable because they run counter to all the storylines we are used to. The stories have so many turns and twists I would have difficulties to retell them. It is a book to reread. The thrust of the stories is to take possession of the patriarchal stories, to give them a feminist/woman's/lesbian's perspective. Men only play a minor role. The princes in these stories are boring, insensitive and self-centered. Men try to control their women's life of use them as commodities. Even protective brothers try to rape other women. A depressing view. On the other hand the focus is on the relationships between the women, old cliches are upturned, stepmothers, old witches, and women looking out for their own interest shown in a positive way. The stories are not simple retellings of the old ones. At the beginning I always tried to identify the 'original' stories but gave it up soon because most times features from several stories were mixed or the viewpoint was so different that I recognize a story only now in hindsight. I just went through the book again and identified the following: the first one is Cinderella, then there's Snow White (Apple tale), Haensel and Gretel (Cottage tale), Beauty and the Beast (Rose tale), Rapunzel (Hair tale), Snow Queen (?) (Brother tale), Briar Rose (?) (Needle tale), the little Mermaid (Voice tale). The language is very economic, no superfluous word, but also none missing. I think it remarkable how 'sensual" the book is nonetheless. That the stories flow into each other, or better arise out of each other, is a wonderful feature but it also exhausted me. With each story it felt to me as if a screw was turned. I grew more and more tense and waited for the resolution, but it didn't come. Of course, it was not intended (to give a resolution, an end). The last sentence after all is 'This is the story you asked for. I leave it in your mouth.' i.e. we are expected to continue with our own stories. What's my favourite story? I cannot pinpoint it to one. I love the shoe tale because of 'I refused a canape and kept my belly pulled in', the apple tale because it described the tension between 2 women so well who could be best friends but circumstances make them to enemies, the handkerchied tale because the heroine is not nice but admirable in her ruthlessness, and the voice tale because it describes women's focus on romance so well. What did others like? Any comments? Petra ------------------------------------------------------ This is the FEMINISTSF-LIT listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF-LIT Contact FEMINISTSF-LIT-request@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU if there are problems. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 4 Jul 2000 13:29:49 -0800 Reply-To: shander@cdsnet.net Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Sharon Anderson Subject: Re: BDG Lissing the Witch MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit My favorite was The Cottage Tale, for purely selfish reasons. I have a brother. And all the times when I wish Joanna Russ' male-selective plague would rid us of the troublesoe part of the population that never seems to learn, I still feel guilty about my brother. I liked the philosophy that said, "my life is here, my safety is here, my salvation is here. Yes, I understand that it will probably be your death to stay here. So go and find your fate elsewhere, and good luck to you." ---s ------------------------------------------------------ This is the FEMINISTSF-LIT listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF-LIT Contact FEMINISTSF-LIT-request@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU if there are problems. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 6 Jul 2000 01:19:35 -0400 Reply-To: Amy Harlib Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Amy Harlib Subject: Kissing The Witch Book Review MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Here's my response to the book of the month in the form of a book review because I do reviews of SF & F literature for several websites. This one will end up at The SF Site and maybe The Blue Violet Journal. -- Amy Harlib aharlib@worldnet.att.net Kissing the Witch: Old Tales in New Skins by Emma Donoghue (HarperCollins, NY, 1999, $11, trade paperback, ISBN#: 0-06-440772-1). Irish novelist and playwright Emma Donoghue now does her own version of what seems to be a trend in fantastic literature these days: the 're-told' fairy tale. In Kissing the Witch, Donoghue uses a lesbian/feminist perspective in her revisionist retellings of 13 familiar stories mostly from The Brothers Grimm. In a spare yet poetic, emotionally intense, concise and skillful prose style, Donoghue offers refreshing and even startling, unconventional renderings of Cinderella, Thumbelina, Beauty and the Beast, Snow White, The Goose Girl, Rapunzel, The Snow Queen, Rumpelstiltskin, Hansel and Gretel, Donkeyskin, Sleeping Beauty, the Little Mermaid and one other that seems to be wholly original. The book is written in such a way that the stories are braided together, one linked to the next by the frame of a query that a character in the preceeding tale asks which has the effect of a continuous flowing stream with one story following the other to form one long narrative. Donoghue's heroines can be young or old and can be found in unexpected alliances---sometimes lesbian, sometimes not, but they are always brave and ready to shed their old-fashioned images and tackle life's challenges radiantly transformed---such as when Cinderella ditches the prince in favor of the fairy Godmother or when the Beast in Beauty and the Beast turns out to be a woman. These surprise twists are made believable by Donoghue's ability tomake her characters strong and well-developed, speaking in a variety of rich, compelling voices. Thus, the reinventions of Kissing the Witch prove the timeless, eternal value of fairy tales, for they depict the essential themes of the murkiness of desire and the necessity of finding one's way in such a manner as to resonate for everyone who has gone through the struggle with issues of identity, sexuality, step-parents, and societal strictures. This book, so beautifully and evocatively written, deceptively simple but rich in sophisticated meanings, deserves to be shelved alongside the original versions of these fairy tales as a modern classic worthy maybe even of supplanting the older incarnations. Kissing the Witch is highly recommended for all readers willing to be challenged even as the beautiful prose beguiles and enchants them. ------------------------------------------------------ This is the FEMINISTSF-LIT listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. 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