Pleasures of 2017
by Carrie Devall
This
has been a very long and yet very short year. I did a lot of reading
but much was for work, or to understand how this particular
sociopolitical moment came to fruition. I watched a lot of bad TV,
dubbed, to improve my Spanish for work. However, the bright spots shone
that much more brightly this year.
One
fiction series that I read to bookend the year was Binti and it's
sequel, by Nnedi Okorafor. I picked Binti up because it was short, not
realizing the compressed story would pack such a wallop. I am not a big
fan of first contact and alien communication stories, until I read one
that hits home. Binti did this, dense in the best science fictional
sense, and full of possibilty despite horrific perils. The sequel,
Binti: Home, went off in a different direction but did not let up on
either possibility or realistic jeopardy.
I
reread Malka Older's Infomocracy in anticipation of the sequel coming
out in September, to be able to pay more attention to the worldbuilding
and political details. I was glad I did, though in both readings it
took me a long time to get into the story while commute-reading in short
stints. This was also true of Null States, the sequel.
However,
each story started moving along, in worlds rich in both small details
and political intrigue. Whenever anyone says they wish someone would
write a story about what comes next after this political chaos/standoff,
I say, "Read Malka Older." The intriguing concept of microdemocracy and
its up and down sides are illustrated with a variety of characters
spread across some very different settings.
I
spent a lot of 2017 immersed in Finnish language and cultural products,
spurred on by the idea of another truly world Worldcon and by my
ongoing infatuation with Finnish and Estonian literature. Briefly, in
August, I got to spend a week immersed in the real deal, attending my
first Worldcon and hiking around Helsinki, nearby Nuuksio National Park,
and neighboring Tallinn, Estonia.
We
saw lots of cool sights, but the highlight of the sightseeing was the
chance to experience extensive and affordable public transit while the
Minnesota legislature was trying to defund our city transit. Other
highlights of Helsinki were old buildings and finding lots of good vegan
food thanks to foodies, fads, and Nepali refugees. We had an
interesting conversation about American politics with guys who ran one
Nepalese restaurant, after they graciously let us eat and run at closing
time. We discussed tasty recipes across the language barrier at a
fancy Finnish local foods vegan restaurant in off hours. I made some
people laugh with me about my very limited Finnish abilities, and fooled a
few people until I became quickly tongue-tied. We discovered the
Gandhi-inspired Vegan Inspiratsioon nestled amidst the graffitied
medieval towers and churches.
A highlight of
Worldcon 75 was the many translation and world sff panels at the con,
though they filled up quickly. The chance to attend multiple panels
with Johanna Sinisalo talking and reading her work in both Finnish and
English was the main reason I saved up for this trip. I was not
disappointed. I learned a lot about many of the more
obscure-to-a-non-Finn references and weirder aspects of her novels. The
Iron Sky sequel trailer was an unexpected pleasure.
Many
of the Worldcon panels are posted on YouTube. I spent a lazy weekend
watching these and have to recommend the interviews with Johanna
Sinisalo and Nalo Hopkinson, for starters. Scott Edelman also did an
in-depth interview of Johanna Sinisalo for his Eating the Fantastic
podcast, along with many other interviews of a great selection of
writers. He asks good questions.
Not
to be a broken record, but I got the chance to see many Finnish films
and listen to Finnish folk music this year thanks to Suomi 100 events,
for the 100th year of Finnish independence. Finnfest was in Minnesota
this year. I went to see a coworker rock on the mandolin along with
some very talented musicians playing traditional instruments like the
kantele. (We also got to meet the 'true' Santa, but the record 90+
degree September heat was too much for his reindeer.) The films I saw
were all quite good, with an often subtle and sly sense of humor and
humanism that were appreciated by the Minnesota audiences.
Probably
the best was Love and Fury (Syysprinssi, 2016, directed by Alli
Haapasalo and shown at Finnfest). It did a good job of conveying a sense
of 80s art/lit and political scenes and their oppositional style. I
liked how the 80s was evoked by ideas, not pop music or clothes, though
these were not absent. The film seemed at first (and from the trailer)
to be a study of a flashy, narcissistic, and well-funded male writer and
his mental struggles. However, the quiet but solid spine of the story
was a woman writer just doing her work, finding her voice despite him,
and persisting despite limited support.
A
film from this year's MSPIFF that really stood out from a strong field
was Sami Blood (Sameblod), a film about Sweden's treatment of the Sami
people set in the 1930s, the debut film by Sami writer/director Amanda
Kernel. I was curious how the film would affect the mostly
Swedish-American audience. The festival often plays broad comedies as
their Swedish films. The great acting and the heartbreaking, intimate
story of a defiant young woman full of thwarted desires seemed to move
everyone.
Another great
movie was Signature Move, by writer/director Jennifer Reeder, I think
also her debut. This was in English, Urdu, and Spanish, a fun lesbian
romance centered around semiprofessional wrestling. There was a pretty
thick layer of familiar cheese around the cross-cultural
misunderstandings and mother-daughter conflict, but it worked.
A
winning documentary was Chavela, by Catherine Gund and Daresha Kyl,
about singer Chavela Vargas. I had not known that she was originally
from Costa Rica, and knew her mainly as one of Frida Kahlo's more
dramatic lovers. She was popular first in Mexico, but alcohol took its
toll. The film spends a long time on her later life and the Spanish
revival of her career. It is worth seeing for the music alone.
Some
other things that lightened 2017 a little were the ever stranger but
delicious forms of vegan cheese my girlfriend learned to make. I also
read a lot of vegan cookbooks, to keep up. The most original and least
repetitive were Street Vegan: Recipes and Dispatches from The Cinnamon
Snail Food Truck, by Adam Sobel, and But I Could Never Go Vegan! by
Kristy Turner. The spicy sandwiches in the Street Vegan and the cheeses
in the Turner book are winners.
Catherine
Lundoff did me a big favor by making me get off my duff on a work night
to go see Cleve Jones speak at the Quatrefoil Library. It was in the
middle of a long week spent thinking about and working virtually in
Puerto Rico, but he was engaging and inspiring. He answered questions
about his book When We Rise. He covered a lot of ground, including
being a gay teen in Indiana, running off to San Francisco, working with
Harvey Milk, the Quilt Project, and his ongoing union organizing. The
admonitions that every victory is temporary, it can be done, and keep
fighting are still ringing in my ears.
The
French film Beats Per Minute ( 120 battements par minute), directed by
Robin Campillo, was a good look at a non-New York ACT UP. It reminded
me a lot of ACT UP Boston and San Francisco and conveyed the sense of
urgency, improvisation, and found community I remember. It took time to
get into the arguments about tactics and the ethics and effectiveness of
insider strategies that various documentaries have also explored.
Another
book about organizing and community that I spent a lot of time thinking
about after reading it was Sarah Schulman's latest nonfiction book
Conflict Is Not Abuse. She builds on her prior nonfiction writing and
draws on her experience in a range of social movements to discuss
effective and destructive strategies for ending abusive behavior without
relying on police and the legal and penal systems. It's not the first
discussion of these issues, but she draws on her unique points of insight
and personal experience.
I
read that after a very different discussion of recent social movement
praxis and ethics, Jonathan Smuckers' Hegemony How-To: A Handbook for
Radicals. Neither of these books said things that were news to me, after
years in the same and similar groups and observing what has worked and
backfired for others. But I liked how they were both rigorous and
forthright in examining mistakes and detrimental assumptions the groups
they were in had made.
I
picked up Juliet Takes a Breath by Gabby Rivera (Riverdale Ave Books)
because of the cover art by Kristy Road and the catchy blurb. It turned
out to be a fun and thoughtful story about a young woman from the Bronx
going to Portland, OR, for a summer internship with a new-agey white
woman who inspired her with a body positive manifesto. She wrestles
with the contradictions in various mentors' personal political theories
and the differences in their actions, forging her own way and pursuing a
sweet, sexy romance.
Carmen
Maria Machado's collection, Her Body and Other Parties is the kind of
short story collection you want to hate because everyone says it is a
must-read to the point it seems overhyped, but then you read it and
can't avoid doing the same thing.
Murder
on the Red River by Marcie Rendon, a local author, is a Minnesota
mystery in a familiar vein but explores the protagonist's experiences in
the foster care system and the legacy of Minnesota's removal of native
children from their parents.
Lucy
Jane Bledsoe's latest novel, A Thin Bright Line, fictionalizes and
extrapolates from what she learned about her aunt, who died in a fire.
The protagonist lucks into a job working for a visionary scientist who
is extracting the first-ever polar ice cores and explores various
lesbian communities of the Cold War era.
Finally,
I appreciated the detailed history of how various public lands and
national parks came to be found in the 2005 memoir of Mike McCloskey, In
the Thick of It: My Life in the Sierra Club. As a young lawyer, he
became the first field organizer of the Sierra Club, in the days before
the Club became a direct mail behemoth. It was a timely read, as much of
this legacy is under threat of dismantling, road building, toxic
resource extraction, and other destructive uses. I also learned some new
inside dirt on my uncle's longstanding environmental movement gripes
and antipathies.
As my uncle would say, the challenge is to Think Like a Mountain. But also, to win when necessary. Here's to 2018.
Carrie Devall writes from Minneapolis, MN, where it rains a lot thanks to global warming.
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