Reading Wednesday 20/01
Jan. 20th, 2021 10:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livYay I got back into reading, and have actually finished two of the books I was given for gift season.
Recently readA deadly education by Naomi Novik. (c) Temeraire LLC 2020; pub 2020 Del Rey; ISBN 978-1-529-10085-3.
This was a present fromcjwatson, and something I'd been excited to read anyway as several friends had enthused about it, especially ceb. I definitely appreciated A deadly education; it's atmospheric and exciting and a really good mix of originality with wielding genre conventions and tropes.
I had somewhat of the same problem with aDE as with Grossman's The magicians, namely that I'm not really interested in the premise that Hogwarts would, in fact, be horrifying if it were in any way part of this actual reality rather than a escapist fantasy. That is perfectly obvious and I don't need a whole novel, let alone a series, to anviliciously point it out. This problem is much redeemed by the fact that Novik is much better at both voice and pacing than Grossman; I really enjoyed El as a character, and the book was continuously exciting without just throwing the characters from one jeopardy to the next.
Also Novik fairly quickly moves away from pointing out the ways that Hogwarts just wouldn't work and gets into original and enjoyable world-building in its own right. Although she imagines some truly terrifying monsters, both human and bestial, it stays the right side of horror for me. My only real criticism of the tone is that minor characters die redshirt deaths whereas the established characters never really felt like they were in mortal danger. Though the scene about halfway through where El fights one of the most terrifying monsters is really emotionally vivid.
I'm particularly drawn to El because she has both normal teenager problems such as being bullied and having under-developed social skills and no idea how to handle her romantic feelings, and massive world-scale problems of being the most powerful sorcerer ever but with all her powers slanted towards destruction, and being trapped in a school full of monsters. Those two perpsectives might well fail to mesh but I thought Novik did a really good job with them.
El's backstory before the start of the novel reminds me ofrachelmanija's childhood, being brought up in a cult and often thrust into dangerous situations and never being able to form age-appropriate relationships, as well as the Indian connection. And as ceb pointed out, it's actually a real proper school story, and handles the prickly sarky outcast finally making friends and learning lots of life lessons and outwitting the posh mean girls – just note-perfect. On the other hand the destruction powers are clearly a response to Harry Potter being almost a Slytherin and having an affinity to Voldemort and so on, but again I think Novik handles that better than Rowling; I really believed that El was struggling with the idea that she might be fundamentally evil.
I enjoyed the climax perhaps less than the secondary climax with the solo monster fight. Partly because I didn't quite believe that El and her allies were really attempting the impossible, I knew all along they were going to win. And partly because I was hoping for El and Orion's friendship not to turn into a romance, sigh. In some ways the denoument was too successful; I'm nervous that the sequel will be just a completely different book because the driving force of the Hogwarts-but-horrifying setup has been removed. But I really liked the twist ending where El receives a letter that throws several things into doubt.
Also I am excited to be able to read the fic, includingjack's Yuletide piece set immediately after the end of the book. So despite my annoyance at the the rather superficial criticisms of Harry Potter, I do want to spend more time in the world.
Becoming Eve by Abby Chava Stein. (c) 2019 Abby Stein; Pub Seal Press 2019; ISBN 978-1-58005-916-9. Birthday present from my parents, since lots of people in our community are really excited about it. And I devoured it in a couple of days, it's an amazing piece of writing by an amazing person. The tagline says it all, really:
So Stein grew up not only Ultra-Orthodox, but from a major Chassidic dynasty. She's made a really interesting choice to write mainly about her experiences of being a trans girl / young woman in the Chassidic world, with only an epilogue that very broad-brush covers her escaping to secular life and her gender transition. I think she is correct to observe that there are already quite a lot of books about leaving very closed and insular Ultra-Orthodox communities, and there are already quite a lot of trans coming out stories, but almost no stories about lives like her first 20 years.
Stein's writing is incredibly engaging. I really like the way she portrays her Chassidic life. She neither romanticizes it nor villifies it; clearly she has in fact decided that fundamentalist Chassidism isn't the right way to live and she has good cause to be angry at her family and teachers and rabbinic leaders, but she's also really trying to convey what is positive about that world. She is also careful to explain the ways that Chassidism is distinct from mainstream Orthodox Judaism, they have their own customs and texts and they're not "more Orthodox" or more authentic than non-Chassidic Orthodox Jews, just different. In a lot of ways she seems like a contemporary, real life version of a Potok character!
Unfortunately a lot of trans kids have to fight their parents and other authority figures to be the gender they really are. But Stein's situation was extreme even compared to a lot of other trans narratives; she was prohibited from any secular media at all, whether print, broadcast or internet. She lived in a culture where parents' authority over children and religious leaders' authority over their followers is far more absolute than in general society. And furthermore Chassidic culture is intensely gender segregated; she basically had no interaction with anyone female at all other than her close relatives, until she got married after a single chaperoned meeting with her arranged bride. And she didn't have any way whatsoever to experiment with subtle femininity, as she had to observe a rigidly gendered dress code. Even having read the book I find it hard to imagine being trans in that context, and Stein seems to have followed the textbook path of being sure from a very young age she was actually a girl, wanting to play with girls' toys, experiencing dysphoria about her genitals and several other aspects of her assigned male role.
I heard R' Stein speak at Limmud in December, and she has in spades that (ex-)Chassid thing of being absolutely luminous with charisma. Her computer had died just before she gave her talk, so she had to Zoom in from her phone and speak without notes. What she said was really inspiring though not entirely coherent, completely understandably in the circumstances!
She talked about some interesting parallels between being Jewish and being Queer, not in a crude way and with commonalities beyond the fact that a subsection of society hates you for no reason. She draw a parallel between the centrality of the Exodus narrative in Jewish thought and religious life, with the importance of coming out in order to liberate yourself and others from the narrow place of living a false life. Not that she was advising Queer people to be completely reckless, but that coming out and being your authentic self can be an ultimately holy act. She wears a big obvious trans symbol as a pendant; she reported that she chose to do this when she was far enough through medical transition to be able to pass, but decided she didn't want to, she wanted to be visible as a trans woman. Though she did comment that unfortunately the Venus part of the trans symbol can be mistaken for a cross if people aren't familiar with it.
A lot of her talk was about what a triumph it is, what an amazing sign of progress, that someone like her would be invited to speak at Limmud at all, specifically *as* a trans woman, not just an expert on something else who happens to be trans, and that hundreds of people came to hear her, and she was highlighted as a big name and a major draw. I think she's right that even in the mainstream Jewish world who are part of modern society and much more aware of gender minorities than her community of origin, even 10 years ago such a talk would have been at best hugely controversial, and quite possibly couldn't have happened at all.
I was also really interested to hear that she is now actively involved in the Jewish world, as a member of an alternative and Queer-friendly Renewal community, and she has started using the title rabbi again, despite rejecting the context in which she was ordained. I liked her view that if your community doesn't love you for who you are you can find a different one, and if you can't find a better community you can create one. I think if we'd had the prepared version of her talk she might have had more specific advice about how to do that, but I liked the sentiment. I'm a lot less of an outsider than her, but I am bi and poly and in multiple mixed relationships, so I do have some of that hyper-visibility in even the Progressive Jewish world.
The scary thing about Stein is that she's 10 years younger than me and she has already been ordained, married, had a child, divorced, transitioned, reinvented herself as a Renewal rabbi, written a best-selling book, published a hugely popular blog, and become an internationally renowned speaker. She's going to change the world; I find it totally easy to believe that she's a direct descendant of the Baal Shem Tov, even though in her book she's somewhat embarrassed about the emphasis placed by the Chassidic world on ancestral prestige.
Recently read
This was a present from
cjwatson, and something I'd been excited to read anyway as several friends had enthused about it, especially ceb. I definitely appreciated A deadly education; it's atmospheric and exciting and a really good mix of originality with wielding genre conventions and tropes.I had somewhat of the same problem with aDE as with Grossman's The magicians, namely that I'm not really interested in the premise that Hogwarts would, in fact, be horrifying if it were in any way part of this actual reality rather than a escapist fantasy. That is perfectly obvious and I don't need a whole novel, let alone a series, to anviliciously point it out. This problem is much redeemed by the fact that Novik is much better at both voice and pacing than Grossman; I really enjoyed El as a character, and the book was continuously exciting without just throwing the characters from one jeopardy to the next.
Also Novik fairly quickly moves away from pointing out the ways that Hogwarts just wouldn't work and gets into original and enjoyable world-building in its own right. Although she imagines some truly terrifying monsters, both human and bestial, it stays the right side of horror for me. My only real criticism of the tone is that minor characters die redshirt deaths whereas the established characters never really felt like they were in mortal danger. Though the scene about halfway through where El fights one of the most terrifying monsters is really emotionally vivid.
I'm particularly drawn to El because she has both normal teenager problems such as being bullied and having under-developed social skills and no idea how to handle her romantic feelings, and massive world-scale problems of being the most powerful sorcerer ever but with all her powers slanted towards destruction, and being trapped in a school full of monsters. Those two perpsectives might well fail to mesh but I thought Novik did a really good job with them.
El's backstory before the start of the novel reminds me of
rachelmanija's childhood, being brought up in a cult and often thrust into dangerous situations and never being able to form age-appropriate relationships, as well as the Indian connection. And as ceb pointed out, it's actually a real proper school story, and handles the prickly sarky outcast finally making friends and learning lots of life lessons and outwitting the posh mean girls – just note-perfect. On the other hand the destruction powers are clearly a response to Harry Potter being almost a Slytherin and having an affinity to Voldemort and so on, but again I think Novik handles that better than Rowling; I really believed that El was struggling with the idea that she might be fundamentally evil.I enjoyed the climax perhaps less than the secondary climax with the solo monster fight. Partly because I didn't quite believe that El and her allies were really attempting the impossible, I knew all along they were going to win. And partly because I was hoping for El and Orion's friendship not to turn into a romance, sigh. In some ways the denoument was too successful; I'm nervous that the sequel will be just a completely different book because the driving force of the Hogwarts-but-horrifying setup has been removed. But I really liked the twist ending where El receives a letter that throws several things into doubt.
Also I am excited to be able to read the fic, including
jack's Yuletide piece set immediately after the end of the book. So despite my annoyance at the the rather superficial criticisms of Harry Potter, I do want to spend more time in the world.from Ultra-Orthodox rabbi to transgender woman.
So Stein grew up not only Ultra-Orthodox, but from a major Chassidic dynasty. She's made a really interesting choice to write mainly about her experiences of being a trans girl / young woman in the Chassidic world, with only an epilogue that very broad-brush covers her escaping to secular life and her gender transition. I think she is correct to observe that there are already quite a lot of books about leaving very closed and insular Ultra-Orthodox communities, and there are already quite a lot of trans coming out stories, but almost no stories about lives like her first 20 years.
Stein's writing is incredibly engaging. I really like the way she portrays her Chassidic life. She neither romanticizes it nor villifies it; clearly she has in fact decided that fundamentalist Chassidism isn't the right way to live and she has good cause to be angry at her family and teachers and rabbinic leaders, but she's also really trying to convey what is positive about that world. She is also careful to explain the ways that Chassidism is distinct from mainstream Orthodox Judaism, they have their own customs and texts and they're not "more Orthodox" or more authentic than non-Chassidic Orthodox Jews, just different. In a lot of ways she seems like a contemporary, real life version of a Potok character!
Unfortunately a lot of trans kids have to fight their parents and other authority figures to be the gender they really are. But Stein's situation was extreme even compared to a lot of other trans narratives; she was prohibited from any secular media at all, whether print, broadcast or internet. She lived in a culture where parents' authority over children and religious leaders' authority over their followers is far more absolute than in general society. And furthermore Chassidic culture is intensely gender segregated; she basically had no interaction with anyone female at all other than her close relatives, until she got married after a single chaperoned meeting with her arranged bride. And she didn't have any way whatsoever to experiment with subtle femininity, as she had to observe a rigidly gendered dress code. Even having read the book I find it hard to imagine being trans in that context, and Stein seems to have followed the textbook path of being sure from a very young age she was actually a girl, wanting to play with girls' toys, experiencing dysphoria about her genitals and several other aspects of her assigned male role.
I heard R' Stein speak at Limmud in December, and she has in spades that (ex-)Chassid thing of being absolutely luminous with charisma. Her computer had died just before she gave her talk, so she had to Zoom in from her phone and speak without notes. What she said was really inspiring though not entirely coherent, completely understandably in the circumstances!
She talked about some interesting parallels between being Jewish and being Queer, not in a crude way and with commonalities beyond the fact that a subsection of society hates you for no reason. She draw a parallel between the centrality of the Exodus narrative in Jewish thought and religious life, with the importance of coming out in order to liberate yourself and others from the narrow place of living a false life. Not that she was advising Queer people to be completely reckless, but that coming out and being your authentic self can be an ultimately holy act. She wears a big obvious trans symbol as a pendant; she reported that she chose to do this when she was far enough through medical transition to be able to pass, but decided she didn't want to, she wanted to be visible as a trans woman. Though she did comment that unfortunately the Venus part of the trans symbol can be mistaken for a cross if people aren't familiar with it.
A lot of her talk was about what a triumph it is, what an amazing sign of progress, that someone like her would be invited to speak at Limmud at all, specifically *as* a trans woman, not just an expert on something else who happens to be trans, and that hundreds of people came to hear her, and she was highlighted as a big name and a major draw. I think she's right that even in the mainstream Jewish world who are part of modern society and much more aware of gender minorities than her community of origin, even 10 years ago such a talk would have been at best hugely controversial, and quite possibly couldn't have happened at all.
I was also really interested to hear that she is now actively involved in the Jewish world, as a member of an alternative and Queer-friendly Renewal community, and she has started using the title rabbi again, despite rejecting the context in which she was ordained. I liked her view that if your community doesn't love you for who you are you can find a different one, and if you can't find a better community you can create one. I think if we'd had the prepared version of her talk she might have had more specific advice about how to do that, but I liked the sentiment. I'm a lot less of an outsider than her, but I am bi and poly and in multiple mixed relationships, so I do have some of that hyper-visibility in even the Progressive Jewish world.
The scary thing about Stein is that she's 10 years younger than me and she has already been ordained, married, had a child, divorced, transitioned, reinvented herself as a Renewal rabbi, written a best-selling book, published a hugely popular blog, and become an internationally renowned speaker. She's going to change the world; I find it totally easy to believe that she's a direct descendant of the Baal Shem Tov, even though in her book she's somewhat embarrassed about the emphasis placed by the Chassidic world on ancestral prestige.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-01-22 08:04 pm (UTC)I haven't read aDE so I'm not sure how it relates to the conversation, but the thing for me about Brakebills is that pedagogically it was amazingly familiar to me as resembling my engineering school education- which was both horrifying and also full of wonders. There was something really gratifying to me about that, because I don't think my college experience was all that much like the typical college experience, and I don't think it's necessarily obvious that Hogwarts for college kids would necessarily be like that, as opposed to some other version of horrifying.