I originally started writing this a few weeks ago, but decided that it was a difficult topic and my writing energy should be primarily directed towards my thesis. However I wanted to contribute something to International Blog Against Racism Week and I’ve got a few hours to spare between deadlines, so here you go.

A few weeks ago my father came to visit in order to help me move some of my stuff home. I hadn't seen him since before my birthday so he took me out for a meal and I had a steak frites. Mmmm. In an attempt to prevent Dad asking me questions about (a) my thesis and (b) about jobs, I distracted him with the other two subjects that are exercising my brain at the moment, Star Trek and racism. He confirmed that he did watch TOS when I was a kid, so I hadn't imagined that. And he was rather entertained that I am getting into science fiction after years of fantasy. However that isn’t what this post is about.

( conversations with my fatherCollapse )

For more International Blog Against Racism Week posts have a look at the links collected on ibarw or at the ibarw delicious account.

The 2nd Asian Women Carnival: with a theme of Intra/inter/transnationalities is up on oyceter

I haven't had a chance to read everything yet but some of the articles made me cry and the rest made me think. There are some useful definitions of the terms used in the discussion, and their limitations in this post.

If you identify as a POC/nonwhite person and you read or watch scifi or fantasy, give yourself a name check in this thread.

(Comments are open, you don't have to be a member of the community.)

Or if you aren't, just read the thread, it is fascinating reading. People are talking about their introduction to fantasy/sci fi, most of which were through their families.

My introduction to sci-fi definitely came from my Dad. He gave me all the Asimov books to read when I was complaining about having nothing to read when I was about 13. I also vaguely remember him watching the original Star Trek.

I've been following the current race discussion with some confusion and discomfort.  People have been bringing opinions and feelings and ideas to the table that I have never considered before.  And I have been thinking about these issues more than I have thought about anything else before.  But I still haven't had the courage to actually write anything about it yet.  Then today I looked at the links on metafandom and found this entry by ultranos_fic, The Current Race Discussion and That Caught-in-the-Middle Feeling. ultranos_fic has articulated many of the things I have been feeling about this whole discussion from my own perspective as a mixed race - half Indian Mauritian, half white English person who has had very minimal cultural influence from the South Asian side.

Completely forgot that I hadn't actually updated to Firefox 3.  I did it this afternoon and now I can actually post to Livejournal and read Google reader. 

kaz_mahoney posted yesterday about her top 10 favourite books of all time and invited people to post theirs.  It was pretty difficult to come up with one and I'm not entirely sure that this is the definitive list. 

1. Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkein
2. The Blue Sword by Robin McKinley
3. Fire and Hemlock by Diana Wynne Jones
4. The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper
5. Born Confused by Tanuja Desai Hidier
6. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
7. Persuasion by Jane Austen
8. Rilla of Ingleside by L.M Montgomery
9. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
10. ...And for Starters by Victoria Routledge

Most of them are books that I first read as a child.  Half are considered to be for children or young adults.  To my surprise only 4 are fantasy novels.  Three of them regularly appear in top 100 books of all time lists, and one of the others is by an author who appears on those lists but it is a lesser known novel (Rilla of Ingleside).  I find myself rereading that one far more often than Anne of Green Gables, I think it is related to the WW1 setting.  The first one that I read was The Dark is Rising when I was 8 , the most recent was Middlesex, two years ago.  I studied To Kill a Mockingbird at school for my GCSEs, the only book I read in English lessons and really enjoyed.  My mother read the Fellowship of the Ring to me before I went to bed over about two years and kept falling asleep while doing it. 

Two are by reatively unknown authors (I believe), Tanuja Desai Hidier and Victoria Routledge.  Those are the two books which I read and thought "this is me", and "someone else feels like this".  In ...And for Starters it was Iona's sudden enthusiasms for bands, eras of history or books that would be all consuming for a few weeks to months and then fade into the background.  In Born Confused it was Dimple's experience of the disconnect she experiences growing up in an almost entirely white community and culture, despite having an Asian orgin and family.  

i just found and interesting blog article by Nina Kelly on growing up in a mixed race family.  I can relate to some of the experiences that she described, while others are completely alien.  And if you substitute Asian for Black in the following statement, I would agree with her wholeheartedly.