Help from the Hive Mind

[dreams_of_wings]

so! In the fall I am going to be teaching two sections of introduction to women's studies at Suffolk University, which I am beyond thrilled about. But perhaps even more exciting is the fact that the department has asked me to develop and propose an upper division course for the spring semester, and the idea of mine they were most excited about is a

Comments

[asciikitty]

Maureen Johnson is writing some spectacular YA these days - I particularly recommend The Bermudez Triangle. Lauren Myracle likewise, her weird IM-speak series is a fascinating example of stunt writing.

Scott Westerfeld's Uglies trilogy is amazing and powerful and hard to read - I would go back to school in order to be able to teach those books.

Dairy Queen & sequels by Catherine Gilbert Murdock are lovely interesting books about a midwestern jock who has to deal with being a jock and a girl.

I have not yet read but have heard good things about Justine Larbalestier's book Liar and I read and enjoyed her Magic or Madness trilogy. Both have non-white protagonists.

Frannie Billingsley's Chime is made of win and awesome and... I just... I think everyone should read it.

I could probably go on.

[orbitalmechanic]

Dairy Queen was fantastic and a great change-up from the more usual urban YA stuff. The jock stuff is good, but I think the rural "sports are the only way I can go to college" part is more important.

[asciikitty]

Yes, in fact. The rural poverty questions and the [spoilers] and the [other spoilers] were really well handled.

[ayelle]

I really liked the whole DQ series -- maybe the second one best, painful as it was. And I already told dreams_of_wings how I felt about it but OMG Chime. Best book I've read so far this year.

[lillibet]

Two that I remember being very important to me as an adolescent were The Blue Sword by Robin McKinley and A Ring of Endless Light by Madeleine L'Engle. Not as much my favorite at the time, but stronger through time, has been The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula K. LeGuin. Unfortunately, Tenar is one of the only major characters in the Earthsea saga who's white. Oh, Nobody's Family is Going to Change by Louise Fitzhugh! Though that might be more children's lit than YA.

Recently I read Zahrah the Windseeker by Nnedi Okorafor which not only had all non-white characters, but is fantasy based in an African milieu, which is pretty cool.

[ricevermicelli]

I re-read The Blue Sword recently, and was surprised to find how deeply uncomfortable it makes me as an adult. I first read it in fifth or sixth grade, at which time I loved it to little bits.

TBS is, however you slice it, deeply derivative of both large chunks of Kipling and Lawrence of Arabia. Except that the protagonist is incredibly chill about the rape analogue. If you are looking for works about non-white anything, this level of unexamined Colonialism is not where I would go. (But then, I can barely tolerate Curious George. So you should know how much weight to put on this opinion.)

And Robin McKinley (whose work I read and enjoy) is TOTALLY FUCKING INCAPABLE of writing the end of a book. She gets within about thirty pages, and you can see the loose ends working together, and then there is an Incoherency. Someone has a hallucinatory bad period, or a colossal drug trip, a mountain falls down, blue dust gets everywhere... and then the book is over. It's frustrating.

[eestiplika]

My girlfriends and i adored *Jane Eyre* in our teens.

I'm a little disappointed no "genre" on there

[drwex]

So I'll confine myself to that (leaving off things like "Go Ask Alice" and "I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings"), being as I'm a rank amateur at this:

pretty much anything by Jane Yolen

"Girl in Landscape" by Jonathan Lethem

Scott Westerfeld's "Uglies" series

some people like Madeleine L'Engle but I'm much more fond of the fantasy things done by Terri Windling such as her Fairy Tale series and the Borderland stories. Granted that I'm not a huge fantasy fan to begin with, but I think Windling has a much better eye for these things.

"War for the Oaks" by Emma Bull, or maybe "Finder".

And now that I've drifted far into fantasy I have to nod to Ellen Kushner as well, though I'm having a hard time thinking of Kushner things with female protagonists.

Re: I'm a little disappointed no "genre" on there

[dreams_of_wings]

I'm confused about what you're trying to say about genre. I wasn't specific about what kind of genre recommendations I was looking for because I want recommendations from all different kinds of genres.

In any case, thanks for the recommendations.

Re: I'm a little disappointed no "genre" on there

[drwex]

I was mostly making a joke about fantasy and science fiction, which are often labeled as "genre" (in opposition to "mainstream").

When you are done disserting and have oodles of free time and if you like you can read some of the "genre ghetto" critical thinking, of which some is actually worthwhile, imnvho.

Regardless, sorry for making obscure references.

Re: I'm a little disappointed no "genre" on there

[ricevermicelli]

Wex, I'm boggling.

YA fiction? IS A GENRE. It is very nearly the most ghetto-ed effing genre there is, shat on almost as much as category romance.

And how, precisely, does anyone *get* within striking distance of a PhD in English these days, without immense amounts of critical discussion of genre? I couldn't get through a BA without multiple seminars on "What is Literature?", and the use of genre to marginalize women writers and writers of color.

[athenasbanquet]

Beauty, by Robin McKinley. Paired with Beauty by Sheri S. Tepper it made a hell of an impression

[asciikitty]

!!! I forgot about Randa Abdel-Fattah. She's got another one out that I've been meaning to look at.