Review: Long Hidden

Long Hidden
edited by Rose Fox and Daniel José Older 

★★★½☆

2014 • 370 pages • Crossed Genres Publications

There are a lot of tired arguments against diversifying media that I hate, but anything that incorporates the words “forced” or “shoe-horned” are in my top three stupidest arguments against diverse media. As if defaulting to cisgendered straight white men was somehow natural and not a product of the fact that most of the people involved in creating mainstream media fit into those demographics. As if stories have to go out of their way to incorporate any other perspective.

As if these stories might not be more poignant in someone else’s shoes.

Review: Heiresses of Russ 2013

Heiresses of Russ 2013 edited by Tenea D. Johnson and Steve Berman

Among the many hideous tactics Joanna Russ outlines in How to Suppress Women’s Writing, isolation is perhaps one of the most insidious, severing creators from their own community. For instance, Jane Austen is often people’s go-to classic female author, but when was the last time you heard about Jane Austen being influenced and inspired by the works of Fanny Burney? Once you start looking at Austen in the context of her contemporaries and influences, you suddenly realize that she’s not an Excepto-girl—she’s an heiress.