Judith A. Little wrote:
>You wrote that Staton's _From the Legend of Biel_
>was your most favorite sf book of all time. I read it last summer
and
>could not figure it out, how it relates to feminism, I mean.
Since the
>work shows up on everyone's lists of the 'classics' I figure
I must be
>missing something terribly important. Can you explain (bare
bones) its
>significance? Thank goodness I noticed your note about it.
At last, maybe
>a small nagging puzzle can be solved!
Judith, it's interesting to hear that this book shows up on lists
of "classics," since I have yet to meet another s-f person who
has read it! To give you a really good sense of how beautifully
the book works for me would require my doing a re-read first.
Although I often sit down & write about books that make a big
impression on me, I've hugged this one close to me in a big, warm,
emotional silence. As if it were a deep, personal secret it comforts
me to possess. As I think about the weirdness of this attitude,
I see that it's not all that surprising, considering how the book,
somehow, represents a sort of apotheosis of nurturance-- both
in what it describes & in what it does for me emotionally. (&
by the way, it's not simply identifying with the child, nor with
the parenting adult-- but the entire character of the relationship
as a whole, that makes me feel this way.) I believe that of all
the feminist science fiction I've read, this novel best describes
a way of bringing human beings into the world that would make
human reality the brightest, and the most vibrantly creative and
beautiful that it could be. Reading about the main relationship
in the novel, which is between a child & the adult who is parenting
it, not only makes me believe that humans could be more than they
have been, but is in & of itself healing. This is a utopia that
focuses on the process of how a human being acquires a social
identity, & it proposes that the process can be done without damage.
It's significance for feminism lies in the fact that until humans
can find a way to become social beings without reproducing the
hierarchical binary, oppression & its concomitant violence will
be inescapable.
This is one of those fictions, by the way, where fetuses are grown
in vitro.
Timmi Duchamp
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu May 25 2000 - 19:05:57 PDT