#like look around half the class is visibly queer. genderfuckery is just how we live

[bookwyrminspiration]

Hello Quil!

I am here to finally tell you about the book I mentioned before that I think you might like. I have essentially needed to obsess over this book for months because I have to write a very long essay about it, so I have a lot of thoughts and hopefully you will enjoy some of them. 

The book is The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K Le Guin. You might have heard of it before, or maybe even read it, since I saw you reblogging a post about Le Guin a few months ago, but since you have not brought it up I’m just going to tell you about it and hope you will be interested! :)

To start, the book has this really interesting format where most of the chapters are the story narrated by the main characters, but every so often they’ll be a folktale from one of the cultures which relates to the story in an interesting way and really shows off the world building. 

As for the plot, the book is about this guy called Genly Ai who’s a representative of “the Ekumen”, which is kind of like the UN but for space, and he’s trying to get these people on a planet called Gethen to join so they can all benefit from trade. 

Two important things about Gethen:

It’s super cold there. A ton of the world is just ice sheets, and then there’s a small inhabitable section of land. This actually has some cool effects on their culture, like the fact that a ton of people use sledges, or that there’s literally dozens and dozens of words for different types and textures of snow (I thought you would like that part when I read it)

Almost everyone who lives there is androgynous. They don’t really have concepts of “opposite” sexes or genders except for animals, which are sexually dimorphic. So basically everyone is intersex and non-binary, which is pretty forward-thinking for a book written in 1969. 

The gender thing is pretty interesting, but my favorite parts of the book were the politics and the interpersonal relationships. I don’t want to spoil too much of the book if you haven’t read it, but there’s a lot of interesting political intrigue bits and towards the end two characters form a really close relationship which was fascinating to read about. 

Also this book just has really good world building. With the descriptions they gave I felt like it could actually be an alien world with its own culture and ways of life. All of the places had pretty awesome names, too. 

I think one of my favorite parts about this book is the narration, though, because the way the narrator talks about stuff is actually kind of funny, without really trying to be? Like there’s this one point where he’s running away from a burning village but talks about it so nonchalantly that it took me a whole page to realize he was actually running away from a burning village? He’s also a really bad judge of character but you don’t realize this until like halfway through the book, at which point it sort of becomes dramatic irony and I found it kind of entertaining?

Also this book uses the misunderstanding trope in a way that actually makes a lot of sense and it’s very cathartic when the characters finally understand each other, so that’s awesome. 

Anyway, I’ve been talking about this book for a while and I should probably wrap up but I guess I’ve just had a lot of thoughts, which makes sense given that I’ve had to think about a book that I actually love for months for a school assignment. I hope you read this book and enjoy it! 

I’m doing well (just helped to crowdsource a speech and I’m now on a not-field-trip and listening to random acoustic performances.) I hope you’re having a good day too!

- Amethyst

~

Hello Amethyst!! This is actually a little wild, because while I haven’t read the book myself, I have already (fairly recently) received an incredibly enthusiastic endorsement for the book from a classmate and I’ve read a short story set in its world about kemmer (i forget how to spell it). My fantasy class read it for gender week!

I’m always a sucker for worldbuilding, though. love hard/high fantasy. the more complex and confusing, the more I fall in love. i want to know the methods and frequency of food transportation across and between countries <33

I gotta admit though, I do think when I get around to it that the planet being named Gethen will throw me off for a little bit. I’ll just keep thinking of a cryptic blond guy in spandex jogger shorts. but!! you’re absolutely right I do love the language detail! reminds me of a project i did once that (anecdotally) showed how the vocabulary of a language reflects its location/culture.

okay, I went to find the title of the piece I read. it’s called “coming of age in karhide” by sov thade tage em ereb, of rer, in karhide, on gethen. so I am familiar, at least through that, of kinda how the gender and sex work on gethen! though I didn’t understand that in karhide on gethen part of the subtitle until now, since I didn’t know gethen was a planet. and I agree it’s quite fascinating. apparently the inspiration for creating the system was because le guin wanted to be able to write the sentence “the king was pregnant.” and while there are easier ways to get there (transgenderism), she did achieve that.

political intrigue!! love when we get to explore the political systems of the fantasy cultures and they have impact on the story. though sometimes it can get overbearing. there’s a balance, as with everything. side note: love the incorporation of politics in the lady trend memoirs. they’re tied to everything because the structure of the world shapes how you can act and move in it, but it doesn’t overtake the mc’s passions and focuses.

and of course the funny narrator is always a bonus. especially when its done well. i read a book the other day called the similars that had a pretty classic teenage nihilism kind of humor, and it wasn’t great (the book as a whole, but I knew that going in), but it was startling in a fun way to get to like page two and see, “Grasping for some semblance of order, I began naming my different moods. For example: ‘A Zombie Just Ate My Body,’ which is like being frostbitten and stun-gunner and about 94 percent dead inside. At least that one is bearable, unlike ‘Get That Serrated Knife Out Of My Chest,’ which is as painful as it sounds.”

ough the misunderstanding/miscommunication trope, the bane of my existence. it can be done really well, it just can also be done really really bad and when it’s bad? infuriating. being misunderstood/misjudged is one of my least favorite things irl. i don’t know why, it just sets off this like visceral frustration and need to correct it

anyway! i fully intend to read this book someday! I actually had meant to pick it up a few months ago, but it wasn’t where it should’ve been at the bookstore, and I was sneaking in a trip between other things to pick up a specific book for my dad’s birthday, so I didn’t have time to stop and look more thoroughly unfortunately.

i’m glad you’re doing well! i’m like a week late on this one, but i’m also alright--officially done with the semester. which is nice because no more schoolwork for a while. but also weird because I. am a very well trained worker who now needs to figure out what to do with myself in the absence of assignments. i’ve just been reading so far, but i’ll have to figure something out or i’ll lose my mind a little :)