We're going Sci Fi for February! The meeting is Friday, February 16 at 5:30 pm. It's an outdoor potluck (email or text me for the location).
This round's pick is The Book of Joan. What was immediately interesting to me is that the author, Lidia Yuknavitch, is a professor of Women's Studies and film. You can tell (once you know) in the book; I'm about halfway through. Gender is certainly a theme.
I found this artists' statement on Yuknavitch's website:
My writing is informed, deformed, and reformed by these things:
I think gender and sexuality are territories of possibility. Never mind what we've been told or what the choices appear to be. Inside artistic practice the possibilities open back up.
I think narrative is quantum.
I think the writer is a locus through which intensities pass.
I think literature is that which fights back against the oppressive scripts of socialization and good citizenship.
I think the space of making art is freedom of being.
I think things that happen to us are true. Writing is a whole other body.
I believe in art the way other people believe in god.
I have had lots of jobs. Some of my favorites were being on an all male house painting crew, because you could see and touch your labor and it had concrete meaning and I could drink beer, pee standing up, and fart anytime I wanted; seasonal farm work like picking basil and fruit because I got to be outside and meet cool people; working on the road crew with Mexicans two of the times I was arrested.
I'm terrible at remembering anything about history (despite the fact that I'm interested in it) so I had to look up the story of Joan of Arc (here's the Wikipedia page).
I've compiled a list of reviews of the book, in case you're interested:
LA Review of Books : a very fair and apt assessment: Perhaps it is only “natural” that in a book that brings together so many different strains of history, literature, theory, and even science, some parts are bound to contradict others.
New York Times: the enthusiasm of this review quite honestly astounded me, from the title of the review ("A Brilliant, Incendiary Joan of Arc Story for a Ravaged Earth"), to an equation of Yuknavitch with scifi icon Ursula K. Le Guin, to the closing line: There is nothing in “The Book of Joan” that is not a great gift to Yuknavitch’s readers, if only they are ready to receive it.
Kirkus: A harrowing and timely entry into the canon of speculative fiction.
NPR Book Review: One of the pleasures of The Book of Joan is its take-no-prisoners disregard for genre boundaries.
These are, overall, very positive reviews. I am not a fan so far, but that makes me especially interested to hear everyone's various interpretations, impressions, and opinions next month!
Happy reading!