Mithila Review Issue 9

Issue 09, September 2017

Editors

Salik Shah

Isha Karki 

Ajapa Sharma

*

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Mithila Review © 2017. Copyright to art, poetry, fiction and non-fiction belongs to their respective authors. Cover art in public domain.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

Women of Color in Speculative Fiction: A Round Table Discussion

Participants: S.B. Divya, Priya Sharma, Mary Anne Mohanraj, Khalidah Muhammad Ali & Mimi Mondal. Moderator: Isha Karki

The State of Current German Speculative Fiction: A Round Table Discussion

Participants: Diana Menschig, Kai Meyer & Oliver Plaschka. Moderator: Alessandra Ress

INTERVIEWS

Cassandra Khaw: Narrative is frightening and staggeringly powerful, and those who control the narrative control what the world sees.

Isabel Yap: In Manila I’d never really think of myself as a ‘POC.’ It is a very Western-centric view of identity.

Khaalidah Muhammad-Ali: It was incredibly important to me to write a story about a Muslim woman.

Bryan Thao Worra: Secret Wars and Distant Stars

FICTION

Stories We Carry On The Back Of The Night

Jasper Sanchez

The Universal Library

Kurd Lasswitz, Translation by Erik Born

The Mountain

Vandana Singh

Blonde

Priya Sharma

Binaries

S.B. Divya

Five Lessons in the Fattening Room

Khalidah Muhammad Ali

Hide

Mahesh Raman

Partition

Tehseen Baweja

Excerpts: Hammer in the Dark

Mary Anne Mohanraj

Excerpts: Half of What I Say

Anil Menon

POETRY

Four Moons

John Philip Johnson

Cup of Tea

Naru Dames Sundar

Her Chemo Friend Explains Capricorn

Laura Page

Pollen

Rose Lemberg

Surreal Bucket List #3

Bruce Boston

Alternate Genders

Mary Soon Lee

Chronology Of Items Found On The Moon

Mary Soon Lee

Boatman

Mary Soon Lee

When We Were Young

Steve Simpson

Traces

David C. Kopaska-Merkel

What Kills A Man

Bryan Thao Worra

An Archaeology of Snow Forts

Bryan Thao Worra

REVIEWS & ESSAYS

Luminescent Threads: Connections to Octavia Butler

Alison Akiko McBain

Thorns In My Throat

Shveta Thakrar

Under the Radar: Sultana’s Dream

Mahvesh Murad

To hold contradictions in balance…: Tashan Mehta’s The Liar’s Weave

Gautam Bhatia

Borne by Jeff Vandermeer

Aditya Singh

Binti: Home by Nnedi Okorafor

Isha Karki 

About Mithila Review

Past Issues

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Acknowledgments

INTRODUCTION

Why another WOC special?

‘Narrative is frightening and staggeringly powerful, and those who control the narrative control what the world sees.’ – Cassandra Khaw

Growing up in the UK as an immigrant and a POC during the noughties, your cultural references for speculative arts were very limited to what was available in mainstream media: Harry Potter, Matrix, Buffy, Charmed, Darren Shan, Lord of the Rings... If you actively sought female representation in speculative fiction, you found the Lyras, the Alannas and Daines, the Hermiones, the Sophies, the Eowyns – all brilliant but all overwhelmingly white. You had to look much harder for speculative writers that looked like you. Finding Malorie Blackman’s work was akin to a revolutionary moment but it was a moment in a childhood eternity of reading, watching and soaking in a completely whitewashed perspective of the world. It’s a familiar story. Years later, you realise your own fictional characters were white, ethnically and culturally; your fictional situations and locales Western: you replicate what you consume.

To borrow Cassandra Khaw’s words: those who control or are given monopoly of the narrative anywhere in this world control what that world sees – more importantly, they control what that world thinks. It takes years to recognise and overcome that kind of deep-rooted internalisation. It takes years to reboot the very codes of your imagination. So why another WOC special? Because every issue like this is a challenge to that kind of damaging indoctrination.

‘We’re still rare enough to be noticeable, although the situation is improving’ - Mary Anne Mohanraj

As editors of a publication with global reach, it is crucial we help dismantle any sort of hegemony on narrative. It is crucial we ensure that our material reflects our readers in all their guises. This issue is dedicated to highlighting the work of a select few Women of Colour, to discussing issues of identity, culture and representation, as well as showcasing that WOC, regardless of how they identify, can write whatever the hell they want. POC writers often suffer from pigeonholing and generalisations; in this issue alone, we have writers who dabble in everything from body horror, urban fantasies and fairytale retellings to space operas, manga-style fiction and hard sci-fi. We have those who draw inspiration from their cultural and ethnic backgrounds and those who don’t, those who have a fixed sense of the multiplicity of their identities and those who embrace liminality.

The WOC roundtable brings together five writers of South Asian origin who discuss and dismantle what being ‘South Asian’ means and how this affects their work. We have interviews, fiction and non-fiction from other WOC doing ground-breaking work in terms of genre and style. Reading these interviews and essays in conversation with each other invites the reader, alongside the writers, to interrogate issues surrounding ‘WOC’. Positive discrimination comes under fire; categories are questioned or embraced; tropes of ‘strong’ female characters are examined; the subtleties of writing about a culture other than your own are explored; representation as onus, burden or right is discussed.

‘I am energized by the growing number of WOC who are both writing and being written into narratives in SF. The categories seem useful as… an indicator, but I don’t like it when they get too stifling. It’s important to have that conversation, but not to let people get boxed in – that just kills growth.’ – Isabel Yap

Curating any kind of special issue focusing on race or gender can be problematic. It throws up a lot of questions on who we are centring or considering the ‘norm’ when we give people labels like WOC or POC – especially in a publication like Mithila Review, dedicated to spotlighting the global majority and to creating a truly global conversation about SF. At the same time, until it becomes the norm to have an issue dedicated to WOC without having any questions asked – just as it is the norm to have journals and issues which somehow end up featuring only white or male or Western writers – there should be another and another and another special issue bringing these voices to as many readers around the world as possible. Things have moved on since we were children but the onus doesn’t stop there just because a handful of WOC have gained recognition.

So why another WOC special? Because every special issue like this is a challenge: to creative spaces where these ‘marginal’ voices are devalued or tokenised; and to the worlds within our world where WOC struggle to see a reflection of themselves where it really matters.

‘These [mainstream] voices are always louder than mine, so I am not at all ashamed to write my own subjective dismissal of them in my fiction, because I know mine will never be the defining voice. The best I can do is to bring on the dissent.’ – Mimi Mondal

— Isha Karki

Editor, Mithila Review

editor@mithilareview.com

INTERVIEWS

Women of Color in Speculative Fiction: A Round Table Discussion

Isha Karki

‘The term South Asian is a broad banner in itself, encompassing different religious and cultural experiences, as well as sexuality and class. Can it be reduced to one distinct identity?’ — Priya Sharma 

Hosted on a shared Google Drive as our previous round tables, this discussion brings together five women with distinct styles and experiences who interrogate what it means to be a ‘South Asian’ writer in SF. In this thought-provoking exchange of ideas, issues surrounding representation, fictional tropes and belonging are explored and expanded with sensitivity. We hope this round table invites our readers to think critically about ideas of identity and community, challenges them to question any unconscious bias or assumptions they may have harbored about South Asian SF, and encourages them to seek out the diversity of narratives from the region.

Let’s start this roundtable with short introductions. Please tell us a little about yourself, how you see yourself as an individual and a member (representative?) of a cultural group or a nation, and how you reconcile these multiple identities, if at all. How aware would you say you are of your position as a Woman of Colour in Speculative Fiction (SF)?

Mary Anne: I’m Mary Anne Mohanraj. I identify as a queer poly Tamil Sri Lankan American mother and writer. I don’t know that I’d say I reconcile those multiple identities, exactly — they comfortably coexist, and have for a long time now. I’m still pretty aware of my position as a WOC in SF; we’re still rare enough to be noticeable, although the situation is improving.

Mimi: Hi! I’m officially Monidipa Mondal, and write as Mimi Mondal. (I was given both names at birth, like Bengali children usually are.) I grew up in Calcutta and now live mostly around New York, but my permanent address (and where I go back when I run out of rent money) is still my parents’ house in Calcutta. I identify as female, queer and Dalit, and the last of those identifications has only come into strength in the past couple of years, not without a lot of disappointment and pain. I can’t say my identities are very reconciled; I happen to be an actively angry person. I worry a lot about how India has changed in the past three-four years, and whether there’s creative space for someone like me in the country any more. I try to see myself as a writer both in India and the US, and the two identities are so very different.

Priya: My father is Indian and my mother Anglo-Indian. They came to the UK in the 1960s and I was born in the 1970s and grew up in a market town where we were one of two Asian families. My roots are Indian and my soil is the northwest of England.

When I was younger I used to worry a lot about what I was and how I fit in. Some things happened that made me feel very unwanted and very much an outsider, other people made me feel very loved and included. I’ve got to a stage in my life where I don’t have the time or energy to worry too much about what other people make of me or dwell too much on what I am. I want people to look at my work, not at me.

It’s the same in terms of writing and the writing community. I’ve made great friends who just want to talk about books. I don’t think we should be blind to colour, culture or sexuality. I don’t want to live in a world where we’re all the same and all agree on everything. I’m just impatient to be in a place where my colour isn’t the sum total of what people see when they meet me.

S.B. Divya: I'm Divya Srinivasan Breed, published as S.B. Divya (using the Tamil naming/initial convention). I'm also an electrical engineer, the co-editor of Escape Pod, and parent to a 7 year old. I came to the USA from India when I was 5 years old so I'm a mix of Indian and American culture and personality. I don't have strong identification with any particular group, and I fit better at the intersections of Venn diagrams than in the circles. In terms of spec fic, I started reading science fiction when I was 10 and never stopped, but my being an Indian American never informed my reading because I had no friends or family (at that time) who loved the same books and stories. I'm used to being the only woman - of color or not - in a given space because of all my years in science and technology. Being a WOC in the world of spec fic doesn't often register except when other people bring it up or when I encounter another South Asian.

Shveta: Hi, I’m Shveta Thakrar, and here’s what I say in my bio, but condensed: a writer of South Asian–flavored fantasy, social justice activist, and part-time nagini. I’m a Gujarati ABCD (American-Born Confused Desi, though I prefer Creative for the C *grin*) and a Hindu, and I’m very aware of being a woman of color in spec fic. How could I not be? I’ve been fighting for inclusivity since I started writing seriously back in 2006. As Mary Anne said, things have improved a bit, but we still have a long way to go.

There are a lot of communities & sub-communities in the SF world, perceived or otherwise, and Mithila Review has hosted features on Asian SF, Latin SF and Czech SF. Do you feel there is a distinct South Asian SF community or identity? How familiar are you with South Asian SF writers, homegrown or diasporic, historical or contemporary?

Mary Anne: I’ve tried to build a South Asian literary community, through my efforts in founding DesiLit, hosting the Kriti Festival, and editing Jaggery lit mag. None of that has been SF-specific, but it’s been SF-inclusive. I teach some South Asian SF writers in my Writers of Color in SF class, and try to keep up with the newer writers — it’s getting harder to keep up, which is a good thing!

Mimi: I am super familiar and have so many opinions on this! I feel like the homegrown SFF writing in India suffers from a sense of disconnectedness, because there’s very little reading of contemporary diverse SFF as well as of each other. Many people seem to be writing their first story/book after having reading only the classics, which means huge international bestsellers mostly by white male writers. (Hey, I also enjoy Asimov, LeGuin, Orwell, King, Pratchett, Gaiman, GRRM, etc. but there’s also so much beautiful, innovative, diverse SFF by writers who resemble us more.) South Asian SFF writers in the US/international scene mostly seem to be familiar with each other’s work – there is only a handful of us – but I cannot say the same about writers back in our countries. Most of them don’t bother to connect with writers or readers abroad either, so is there really a community? I don’t know.

I have been an SFF scholar and publishing professional in India so I’ve had a distinct advantage over the regular reader, but even I had to search really hard for the homegrown writers I liked. This is complicated by the fact that the publishing circles in our native languages are again so separated from the English publishing circle, as well as from each other. I grew up reading Satyajit Ray and Premendra Mitra in Bengali, as most other Bengali kids did, but not many of my non-Bengali SFF-reading friends have read them, even in translation. The first SFF writer in English I read was Samit Basu in high school – he was an active blogger and friends with some people I knew – and I had no idea that Vandana Singh and Anil Menon had already been writing Indian SFF in English. Apart from everyone at this roundtable (big fan of each of you, by the way!), I really wish more people read Kuzhali Manickavel, Indrapramit Das, Shweta Narayan, Usman Tanveer Malik, Vajra Chandrasekara, Shweta Taneja, Jash Sen, the Ravanayan comics series by Vijayendra Mohanty and Vivek Goel, etc.

Priya: The term South Asian is a broad banner in itself, encompassing different religious and cultural experiences, as well as sexuality and class. Can it be reduced to one distinct identity? 

I think there are fantastic projects out there showcasing South Asian writers. They foster new types of stories and new voices. One example is The Asian Writer, run by Farhana Shaikh, which looks to provide a voice of British Asian writing and is for readers and writers interested in South Asian literature. 

In terms of genre writers, I think Usman T Malik, Rajesh Parameswaran, Salman Rushdie, and Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni. I know she’s a literary writer but I’ve got to mention her as she’s a master of the short story form- Jumpha Lahiri.

S.B. Divya: I'm new to the world of contemporary spec fic in a lot of ways, but I'm always taking note of South Asian SF writers that I come across both online and in-person. That habit is ingrained from being an immigrant and always looking out for other Indians/South Asians! Our identity is probably as unique as any other, but I think we have an advantage that most educated Indians have a good grounding in the English language and can bypass the lost-in-translation pitfalls that other SF sub-communities might face. I've read stories by many of the authors that Mimi mentioned. Naru Sundar is another (and a friend of mine from before we were writers), Rati Mehrotra, Keyan Bowes, Roshani Chokshi...I'm sure I'm forgetting some others, but we are a growing community.

Shveta: I’m not quite sure how to answer this. I’ve just tried to promote and encourage where I can, particularly in young adult (as that’s where my personal focus lies). I actually feel on the outside of the desi community in general, though I only write desi characters and am glad to see stories starring people who look like me start to have more of a presence in the North American market. I also do try to follow work by writers in South Asia, like Sukanya Venkatraghavan, Indrapramit Das, and Krishna Udayasankar.

Many in the literary world often equate South Asian SF with retellings of mythical epics like Ramayana and Mahabharata (also equating the whole of South Asia with Hinduism and one origin story!). Some of your works overtly touch on mythical creatures, folktales, legends, though not necessarily South Asian in origin. Have you felt that the idea of South Asian speculative fiction is homogenized? Are tales from your childhood, culture, religion, pop culture, South Asian or otherwise, a source of inspiration for you? Tell us what your lasting influences are.

Mary Anne: I have a tiny bit of work that draws on the Ramayana (primarily the figure of Sita), but for the most part, this isn’t my source material. My family was colonized and became Catholic a long time ago, so even though I’m not religious myself, my cultural tradition was different. I’m far more influenced by the Arthurian story, actually, which I found as