And genre in genral...
A while ago I was looking for Octavia Butler's story collection at the
Queens (NY) central library,
I was disconcerted to find that "Kindred" was shelved with Black Writers,
though others were with the SF collection.
I talked to the librarian about it, and asked whether, since they had
several copies, at least one could be filed with SF, which he agreed was
reasonable, and in fact he did. (I've spot-checked since.) But I couldn't
seem to push hard enough to get the duplication going the other way.
I have mixed feelings about the whole genre assignment deal, expecially
in libraries. On the one hand, it's useful to be able to focus on SF or
Mystery or Horror or Romance (if only to avoid them if one is expressly
uninterested in a category).
On the other, of course, readers who don't go to the genre shelves may
miss things they'd enjoy if the title caught their attention; and where a
writer works in different categories, titles may be missed entirely.
(Joan Aiken comes to mind: I enjoy her work, some titles more than
others, and I check for her in children's and young adult as well; now
with The Cockatrice Boys she's "officially" in Fantasy, though I'm not
clear why that one seems to have been marketed to the adult market. (And
if anybody has a copy of "Not What You Expected" they'd like to sell,
please let me know!))
I've been sneaking our local branch library's copy of Tepper's "Gibbon"
into the rather chaotic new books display, and have been gratified to see
that it's been checked out several times recently. The local SF
collection is very small, so the scope for this subversive behavior is
narrow.
My personal ideal would be for genre books to be shelved with everything
else, with identifying tags attached, so one could spot SF by a Black
writer (or maybe a Gay Black writer when we come to Delaney, for
instance). Even with the single tag, it is sometimes difficult to read
the author's name, so there's clearly no ideal solution (smaller tags,
maybe?).
Frances Green
http://gayellowpages.com
PS: I enjoyed The Sun and The Moon enormously.
PPS: And what about Judith Merkle Riley (sorry, I may have misspelled
her)? Strong fantasy elements, but always shelved with the general stock.
I love the way she points up the historical context of her heroines, with
their guilt feelings about their inappropriate activities!
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