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“A House by the Sea” by P.H. Lee was written as a response to Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.” I found that the texts this week were challenging, in that besides the WMST literature class I took, I cannot remember the last time I read fiction for a class, and I was surprised how challenging I found it to be. I found myself questioning whether I fully understood what was going on because fiction tends to have many metaphors and ideas that are to be interpreted rather than explicitly stated.

I agree with Lee, that they must live outside of society where they are not actively seen rather than the middle of the city. I was intrigued by the way she described imagining if they did live in the middle of a city “perhaps you’re on your way to an orgy or debate or to watch television” in such a casual way. It is true that if you saw the children on your way to one of these activities/hobbies, you would not enjoy them fully and that is not a utopia.

The more I read about the house by the sea with these people inside, the more stressed I began to feel. Thinking more about how these people suffer for the sake of utopia makes me think about certain people in the world that suffered for the benefit of certain countries. Starving children who end up dying of “simple” and curable things such as diarrhea who knew nothing put pain because of colonialization and imperialism happens all the time. But they are far away and we don’t have to see them. If they were on campus on my way to class I am sure it would haunt me for years.

In The Future of Bodyminds, Body Minds of the Future, Sami Schalk discusses the issues of speculative fiction and the conflict that arises when these written works ignore difference and intersectionality and frame them to be a problem of the past. The issues that Schalk points out are that fiction—particularly science fiction or futuristic fiction—portray diversity but ignore the systematic ways in which this diversity was able to be achieved within the story. Schalk writes, “discrimination and oppression based on difference is resolved here [Women on the Edge of Time] and in many speculative fictional futures through the erasure of difference altogether, or what smith refers to as ‘elminationist ideal.'” Schalk then goes on to explain how disability is unquestionably the most erased of them all. Schalk explains how situational fiction depicts disability as something to be fixed or an unwanted trait that needs to be eradicated from society in order for all individuals to be happy—able-bodied.

Through the example, situational fiction story, Parable, which features a heroine black female with disabilities, Schalk conveys that a utopian future does not have to be dependent on able-bodies; that disability is not a trait that needs to be erased. She writes that “the representation of hyperempathy in the Parable novels theorizes the possibilities and meanings of bodyminds, especially disabled bodyminds, in a number of important ways which require a change in how we read and analyze these texts and their implications.” Schalk dicusses the four “totalizing” approaches to hyperempathy—ignoring or erasing the disability completely, a disability with negative connotations, a disability as positive with a special power or gift, and disability as a uniqueness—and how these approaches obscure the “materiality of disability and its role in the plot, character development, and themes of the series,” and limit our understanding of disability. Schalk also discusses how Parable encourages a new way to view disability with less abilist understanding because it is a fictional disability set in a futuristic world. The series also challenges the notion that in a futuristic world technology will eradicate disability in order to produce an ideal society. Instead Parable “resists assumptions through depictions of the unpredictable nature of future technology and the possibility of a disability-related pleasure.” Schalk argues that the Parable series opens the doors for new possibilities for how to view disability in speculative fiction and creates a new meaning to bodyminds in ways that “require attention to the context and relationship of (dis)ability, race, and gender in interpretation and analysis.”

I really enjoyed this reading and its emphasis on viewing disability in a different way than how it is commonly viewed in speculative fiction. This issue has never been something that I’ve noticed while reading or watching futuristic fiction stories and I can now see the negative implications to this notion. I look forward to discussing this piece further in class.

The excerpts from Octavia Butler’s “Earthseed” were exceptionally intense and in some places harrowing to read. I did enjoy it but it wasn’t fun, which is always something I hope for when I read fantasy or sci-fi, though I know that wasn’t the purpose of this story.

Reading it made me wonder what could have possibly happened that drove people to act like this, but then I found myself asking myself if there was anything in this story that hadn’t actually happened in real life? Maybe not on this scale that I know of, but there was nothing in the excerpts (except going to Mars, specifically) that wasn’t true to reality. It reminded me of something Margaret Atwood said about writing “The Handmaid’s Tale”, which was that she specifically did not include anything that had not happened somewhere on Earth in history so that people couldn’t accuse her of making up such violence. It’s a thought that makes me sick to my stomach, that stories like these are so wholly grounded in reality.

I looked up the book, and found out that Earthseed is a practicing religion. The wikipedia page on the religion is the first search result, not the book it came from. It’s amazing to see the reach that works of fiction (especially sci-fi or fantasy) can have on the way people conduct themselves. The real-world impact of these writings can’t be ignored because of the strength in which these works of fiction physically manifest themselves in our world. I think that’s pretty neat.

My only question going into class is how does this relate exactly to feminist conflict? What do we have to learn from this and discuss?

I like the concept of fiction as a route to approaching issues of social justice and feminism. While I haven’t read much that relates to this, I greatly enjoyed Ursula Le Guin’s story of The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas. I feel like science fiction offers a unique perspective when thinking about oppression and discrimination in our society. In relation to the discussion we had in class over the last couple of weeks about imagining the “impossible” as possible, I feel like science fiction is a fitting outlet to do so. While science fiction is viewed as separate from reality, maybe it can be used as a way to explore what is clearly not reality now, but could possibly be true one day in the future.

Le Guin begins the short story describing the city of Omelas, which is a utopia where everyone is happy and fulfilled, where there are no armies or militia, no powerful rule, and no pain. Le Guin also states that these are not ignorant or dumb people; they have orgies and take drugs, therefore they are not naive. Rather, they are smart and still happy.

The twist that Le Guin incorporates is that there is a child that the people of Omelas keep in a closet in a basement, alone and unclothed and poorly fed. Le Guin says the people of Omelas need the child there to maintain the utopia they have. Most people of the city look at the child, feel guilty, but then move on with their happy lives. The last twist that Le Guin offers is that some people, a very few, who visit the child do not go on with their lives in the utopia fashion; they leave the city, going somewhere else, somewhere possibly worse, possibly not.

I enjoyed this story in terms of the writing style as well as the subtext. I am still somewhat confused about the meaning behind it; does the child stand for the people in society that we leave uncared for, the people that we oppress and harm again and again? Do people need to have an “other,” who is worse off than us, for us to maintain our own happiness? I am not sure of the message yet, and am eager to discuss this story in class.

Tuesday Smillie critiques Ursula K. Le Guin’s classic feminist science fiction novel, The Left Hand of Darkness. Basically, the novel is set in a fictional universe where the humanoid population are inhabited by brown skinned, androgynous, and gender-fluid people and something happens. Le Guin’s novel explored the effects of gender and sex on cultures and society. It breaks away the norms and relationships that is usually enforced within the systems of racism and binary gender that is found in society. This world offers an imagination of what could and/or would happen in alternative order of a human society.

However, as a white transgender woman, Smillie criticized how Le Guin and The Left Hand of Darkness “failed to critically engage the heteronormative gender binary Le Guin set out to interrogate.” Smillie and other critics scrutinized how Le Guin were consistent in the use of male pronouns to identify non-gendered characters, limited the physical configuration of human bodies, adverted the exclusiveness of any homosexual exchanges, and had little engagement of race. Responding to criticism, Le Guin wrote an essay, “Is Gender Necessary?,” and revised it twelve years later to take ownership of her past mistakes. “By looking to Le Guin’s practice as a model, we find that the radical act is how we proceed as our failure becomes clear.”

This story is about a city by the sea called Omelas, a utopian city of happiness. It begins with the Festival of Summer and the events that were occurring as a result; the town was decorated, music was playing, horses were racing, children were playing, food was being served, flowers were blooming, and the people were spectacularly happy. However, there was a catch. The narrator asks if I, the reader, believe in such a joyful town and occasion. In order to make this idealistic society seem a little more realistic, they introduce the town’s dark side. In the basement of a public building in the town, is a small closet with a locked door, where a child is being kept. It isn’t a secret and some have even come to see it. Though it can be found as upsetting, the townspeople take it as a sacrifice and attribute their happiness to the suffering of one. This allows most of them to move on with their happy lives. Some, however, are not able to do this. They can’t accept the truth of the situation and ultimately end up leaving. These are “the ones who walk away from Omelas.”

This story took an sudden, yet anticipated turn. Obviously such a perfect situation would have a negative trade-off. The way that some of the members of the community couldn’t take this compromise and instead, just left, seemed to be counteractive. They were so complicit in the institution that made up the city, that rather than doing anything to help the child or to change the situation, they just left. It was so deeply ingrained that they chose to just leave, rather than to seek out others who were also disturbed and start a movement for the liberation of this innocent child.

This was clearly a representation of our society and the lack of participation by many in social movements, though the disparities are clearly existent. The comfortability involved in conformity is more important to people than fighting the systems that do not allow this this comfortability uniformly to everyone who exists in the society. Those who do see the harm that is being done, are portrayed as lost and unaccompanied in order to invalidate their concern, and therefore to maintain the current system that we live under.

I believe the main purpose of this piece is talking about child abuse. While I was able to get that from the main point of the child locked in the basement, I didn’t actually understand what all these formerly abused people living in a house by the sea versus the city was supposed to mean. My best guess was that it was the author wanting to see people having a place they could all live where everyone who went through child abuse could live out their lives in an overall positive way. The story gives the possibility of simple happiness and peace with other people who went through the same thing. Even if some never quite get there the house by the sea was a place where it would be possible for them to have the chance at a simple peace and happiness. 

I also think this piece touches on how society shuts kids of abuse out and the “city” represents general society where people ignore and allow child abuse to happen and perpetuate. What struck me was the beginning where it said “They can’t live in the City, of course. Can you imagine?… once you’d seen one of them, of course you’d spend the whole day thinking about it. You’d think about that one awful field trip you took as a child, seeing them locked in a basement, mewling and promising futilely to be good, and you’d spend the whole rest of the day feeling unreasonable and guilty and ashamed….would that be joyous? Would it be the happy city we live in, the happy life we enjoy?” This part struck me because it made me think about how we as a society ignore others pain and suffering. When we see someone who is being abused it makes us sad and so we don’t want to see it. 

I think I have some trouble when I have to interpret the meaning of everything in a story and when the author doesn’t tell me anything as definite. That is why I both enjoyed this story and the way it forced me think a bit more, while still feeling like I missed a lot of what the author was trying to say. 

In class we discussed adrienne maree brown’s Emergent Strategy. When going over the introduction and the sections on the principles and elements of emergent strategy we talked about a general definition for “emergent strategy” and brown’s description/definition of herself. When we went over the section on fractals it was mentioned how the book itself operated in the same way in terms of how the writing is very circular and similar to brown’s own way of speaking in conversation (but also sometimes difficult to follow along with). We also talked about the significance of science fiction and the writing of Octavia Butler to her ideas and the concept of emergent strategy. In the sections on adaptation and interdependence and decentralization, we talked about the struggle of adapting to change and how we deal with change in our everyday lives vs. how we would like to be able to. With interdependence, the aspect of faith in noticing complexity and being a part of movements, and whether or not the mentioning of faith in this way was appropriative, was brought up. Going into nonlinear and iterative pathways of change,  the idea of a “hater protocol” and how the Occupy Wall Street movement relates to the concepts in this section of the book. The last section we went over was on resilience — and shifting to a culture that uses difference productively rather than as a tool of non-productive conflict. Here, questions concerning optimism and imagining “impossible futures” were brought up and we also talked about transformative justice in healthy and abusive dynamics/relationships. We ended class with the assessment/checklist at the end of the book and discussed some of our answers.

“Emergent Strategy” was definitely an interesting read. While I struggled to follow it before coming to class, the group discussion did help a little bit in that it reminded me of specific points she had made, but I still felt overall a little lost with the subject matter. I’m not sure I still fully understand what emergent strategy is, what function it serves, and how it is related to feminist conflict. I think it’s just about navigating through the world with a specific attitude, but I’m unsure of how to work on it in myself or what that is supposed to look like in different circumstances. In the section of the book I had read, she shares an anecdote about being late to an event she was leading, and how she managed to come in with a positive attitude. I absolutely respect that and enjoyed reading it, but I’m not sure yet how to apply it to things like grief or other heavier subjects. My favorite part of the class period was honestly at the end, when we did the quickie quiz in the book on whether or not we are emergent strategists. It was a quickly eye-opening evaluation of certain parts of my life, especially how I handle change. But what also stood out to me were some of the questions like “do you have people who hold you accountable?” which I’m not sure I do. It’s something I want to look out for. We’re all working on it was a great note to end on.