There's a Hole in the Market, Dear Liza, Dear Liza...

So last Friday I spent most of my workday putting up a new window for the bookstore*. We ran a little think tank over at bakkaphoenix looking for good anti-Valentine's window ideas, and settled on a mix of two: Black History Month and Chinese New Year. I have privately named it The Stuff That Also Happens In February While You're Angsting About Your Weight. :p

I had really no problem finding good books for the Black History Month side of the window: black authors, black characters (as in A Wizard of Earthsea), stuff I'm not hesitant to put in a reader's hand. Easy.

Chinese New Year, on the other hand?

Damn. Y'know, I scoured the place. And I'd already cut out the letters, and I'm stubborn that way, so it was going to happen or else.

It turns out that thing a few years back where everyone was all "ooh, Asian fantasy!" really meant Japanese fantasy. And that thing where you have hot futuristic Asian cyberpunk settings really means Japanese settings. I can think of the odd book that has Korean characters, but otherwise...I sort of had to stretch, and have more books with just secondary Chinese settings or characters -- and by non-Chinese-identifying authors -- than I'd really like. The point was to point out the diversity of the genre. Which...apparently isn't so much.

(There's a point here to be made about cultural transfer springing out of imperialist history, politics influencing national and ethnic portrayals, and the fetishization of certain cultures by other certain cultures to the point where their portrayal is turning into more of a narrative kink than anything that resembles reality. Just fill that in like I wrote it down here.)

So. There's a hole in the market, guys.

Please fill by next year's window.



*A conversation may have happened that went like: "Leah, do you have the right books to make this window work?" and then "Well, I've spent the last &#$^% hour cutting the signage letters out of construction paper, so it damn well better work.**

**Yes, we are low-tech in the sexy glamourous indie bookstore business.

Aeschylus -- BUSTED

I read the Oresteia this afternoon for the Classical Modes of Literature class. Aside from being a truly kickass bit of drama -- no, seriously, it's blood and rhetoric all the way down -- it contained the following line in The Eumenides:

Leader of the Furies (to Apollo): "Never try to cut my power with your logic."

Dudes. Adam Savage is a Fury. :D