(no subject)

[owlectomy]

I just started reading Justine Larbalestier's "How to Ditch Your Fairy," which I'd previously been avoiding because it looked like a fluffy cotton-candy kind of book. What I didn't expect was that it's a fluffy cotton-candy kind of book about privilege, and how it's often invisible to those who have it.

I remember coffeeandink posting about Supernatural, and other TV shows that attempt to use monsters or aliens or vampires to talk about racism in a metaphorical way, and how that doesn't work if your TV show demonstrates skanky race issues when it comes to the humans and the black guy always turns out to be evil, or else dies. So what's interesting about "How to Ditch" is that it does talk about privilege metaphorically -- this is a world very much like our own, but many people have fairies to bring them extraordinary luck in specific situations. One might have a clothes-shopping fairy, or a parking-space fairy, or a getting-out-of-trouble fairy. And this is a specific kind of privilege that's sometimes visible to the person who has it -- but sometimes very invisible.

But "How to Ditch" doesn't erase issues by turning them into metaphors. The characters struggle with issues of nationalism and cultural hegemony when a cute new boy from far away transfers to their school, and while the book seemingly has everyone in New Avalon existing in a happy diverse rainbow (I said it was a fluffy book), at least it assumes that people of color are going to be teachers, celebrities, or the cute new boy from far away. Not bad for a fluffy book.

But at this point I'm less than 100 pages into it, so, I'll see where it goes from here.

Comments

[diceytillerman.livejournal.com]

Thank you, now I want to try to read it. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this after you finish it, especially on the handling of the privilege issues.