Reflection: Concluding Thoughts on Beyond a Single Story

At the beginning of the year, I dedicated myself to try and read more books set in different locations with something I called Beyond a Single Story. The initial idea was to read one historical, one contemporary and one non-fiction book set for a bunch of countries or regions. In the end, I didn't end up reading all three categories for any one country, because, as the year wore on, I became increasingly disillusioned with the way I'd set the whole thing up. It was, at best, arbitrary and, at worst, promoting bad representation. 

I had pre-set categories, and I wanted something that checked a particular box. But there were often slim pickings in a particular category, especially when it came to historicals. I had called the category 'historicals' because I knew that it was unlikely that I would be able to find historical romances for all the countries, and was expecting to have to branch into general historical fiction. This plays into the lack of diversity and ownvoices in historical romance, but also the the tension that romance writers - particularly POC - feel between the HEA requirement of the genre, and the stark realities of life for POC in many historical periods.

The work of Beverley Jenkins, Alyssa Cole, Piper Huguley and other authors writing romances with African-American protagonists demonstrate that the two can be successfully and beautifully reconciled, but it can be a delicate balancing act. And perhaps this example does not necessarily translate to other parts of the world; there is not always the historical continuity and modern relevance that underscores African-American historical romance, (and some other romances set outside the white European(-descended) default, such as Jeannie Lin's Tang Dynasty romances). However, for countries where the recorded past is largely associated with colonialism, but where independence has since been achieved, there may be less desire to reopen those old, painful chapters of history. Or, where the colonial past is being written about, there may be a desire to present it warts-and-all, rather than placing a HEA at its centre. 

That is a lot of speculation, and it must be noted that I read a wonderful romance novel for this project, Under the Sugar Sun by Jennifer Hallock, that managed to balance a HEA with conveying the horrors of American colonialism in the Philippines. But, although Hallock has lived in the Philippines, it wasn't ownvoices. And, when I was looking for ownvoices historicals for any of the countries with colonial pasts, I consistently noticed that there were few to none set during the colonial era. (In some instances, I'm willing to admit there may be issues in what gets translated or released internationally, but in many countries, as a result of this very same colonialism, English is a national or official language, and literature is originally written in English).

For example, looking for historical fiction set in Ghana, the books I found by Ghanaian authors were mostly set in the post-Independence era or in the transition period from colonial rule to Independence. It was books by white or outsider authors that were set during the colonial period. One featured a British couple living in a seaside fort that I can only assume would have been a slave castle, where slaves were taken before boarding ships. Another was about the Fifth Anglo-Ashanti War, and a review I read expressed an Ashanti character's desire to "kill all the white people", despite the fact that the conflict was very specific and was born of a British administrators lack of awareness (or care for) Ashanti protocol. Ultimately, I decided that it was better to leave that category blank than to read and review something like that. I had wanted to read these books to counter my lack of knowledge, and even if I read and reviewed books with bad representation critically, this lack of knowledge would mean that there would still be things I didn't pick up on and subconsciously absorbed, and I didn't want that. 

This brings me to the second critique of this project, which was touched on in the point above. It promoted a lot of false equivalence:

• Between ownvoices and non-ownvoices authors
• Between Western and non-Western countries
• Between modern states and their predecessors
• Between countries/regions with histories of colonial and other forms of oppression and ones without

This was inadvertent, but intent does not equal or excuse impact. I created, framed and implemented the project in a way that was less than ideal, and I am sorry for it. I am the product of two white settler societies who have both been very successful at whitewashing their histories, and that affected the way I thought/think about other nations and their histories. I wanted to educate myself more about the different parts of the world, but this too is an idea deeply ingrained in whiteness, from the 19th century armchair ethnologists and anthropologists, who became "experts" on races on the other side of the world from their comfy London townhouses, complete with racist theories like phrenology and social Darwinism. 

These realisations came slowly over the course of the year, as I listened, learned, grew and reflected. As my unease built, my enthusiasm and the desire I had to see the project through to a "successful" (i.e. completed) end waned. Therefore, the gaps in what was read do not only represent where I could not find anything appropriate to read; they also reflect where I did not find or even search for something to read because of my disenchantment. However, there are still a few books sitting on my Kindle that were originally meant for Beyond a Single Story, and which I will hopefully get around to reading and reviewing in the new year, although not as part of the project.

Despite my disillusionment with Beyond a Single Story - and with myself for undertaking it - it was responsible for bringing me into contact with some seriously cool books, publishers and resources. I'd particularly like to note:

• Romanceclass - Independently published romance novels by Filipino authors, with a wide range of titles, sub-genres and settings.
• Ankara Press - An African romance imprint. As they say, their stories feature "self-assured women who work, play and, of course, fall madly in love in vibrant African cities from Lagos to Cape Town".
• Indireads - Publisher of South Asian popular fiction, including lots of romance.
• WOC In Romance - I hope most of you already know about this resource for finding romances written by WOC. I discovered it before I started this project, but it was certainly useful.

Reflecting on my experience, and looking forward to 2017, I think that the most appropriate for me to do better in the new year is to keep in mind the two resolutions from my Best of 2016 post (be better at reviewing diverse books I read, especially when I enjoyed them, and read and review more Antipodean authors and books), while also reading diversely without a prompt, challenge or other such device (which is essentially what I ended up doing when this project bit the dust mid-year). However, this does not mean a lack of awareness or self-accountability about what I read. Just like this year, I will keep track of what I read through Goodreads, allowing me to reflect, find and fix holes in what I am reading. I still intend to read as widely as possible within romance (and non-fiction). If, part way through the year, I feel that this isn't keeping me on the course I would like to be on, then I will reassess then. I have also recently classified my reviews by setting, and intend to use this as another tool for self-assessment (you can know that most of the books you read and review are set in the US, but it's much more shocking to see the extent to which this is true!)

Lastly, the paragraph above has framed reading diversely in terms of responsibility, and I want to clarify that: as a blogger who has the potential to influence other people's reading decisions and as a person with privilege on many different axes, I do feel that I should read and review diversely. However, I also do it for my own enjoyment, and because it reflects the world I live in, and next year I hope to focus on this "Here's what I liked about this book, and it had [POC/disabled/queer/etc.] representation", rather than the approach that underlaid the Beyond a Single Story project, which was a questionable "I read this book because it had a diverse setting, and here's what I thought about it". 

Apologies for the navelgazing, but I think that transparency, self-reflection and -growth are important tools for making myself and the blog better, and I wanted to be clear on where we stood at the end of one year and the beginning of the next. As always, feedback is more than welcome.

Cheers,

Dani

Recommendations/Reflection: Best Reads of 2016

EDIT 12/3/18: In light of recent revelations about Santino Hassell, I am no longer comfortable featuring his co-written book Fast Connectionas on this post. it has been removed from the 'Top 5 Unreviewed Reads' section, leaving it with only 4 items, instead of the original 5.

It's that time of the year where wrapping-up-the-year's-reading posts are a dime a dozen, so here's mine. My best 10 books of 2016 - five that I reviewed, and five that never got reviewed - plus an extra five that I read this year, but were not published in 2016. They're listed 1-5 in each category in terms of reading order, not as an internal ranking within that category. In instances where I haven't reviewed the book, I've linked to other reviews where the reviewer has felt the same way about the book that I have. Looking back, I've had a really good reading year, with lots of great discoveries, but there are also some things that I'm looking to change and refine as we move towards 2017.

Top 5 Reviewed Reads of 2016

1. Level Up by Cathy Yardley
Sweet, geeky flatmates-to-lovers story between two colleagues at a video development company. Light-hearted, but nuanced. Read full review. 

2. Earth Bound by Emma Barry and Genevieve Turner
1960s space race romance, with female computer engineer squaring off against misogynistic sausage fest. Grumpy chief engineer hero who's her adversary during the day, and her lover once they clock off. Atypical romance arc makes it very engaging and satisfying. Read full review. 

3. The Hating Game by Sally Thorne
This office romance was one of the year's most loved romances, and I was a definite fan. Funny, off-beat with a great slow-burn enemies-to-lovers romance at its core. Read full review.

4. The Gossip by Jenny Holiday
It's campus cop versus popular college girl in this swoony 1980s novella that packs a massive emotional punch despite its short length. Read full review.

5. Summer Skin by Kirsty Eagar
An Aussie YA/NA romance where the hero and heroine are young, imperfect and at competing university colleges. Raw, honest and feminist. Read full review. 

Top 5 Unreviewed Reads of 2016

1. Let it Shine by Alyssa Cole
Bittersweet novella about the romance between a young black woman and her Jewish childhood friend, set in the 1960s against the background of the Civil Rights Movement and Freedom Rides. Read review by Rudi at Book Thingo.

2. Sofia Khan is Not Obliged by Ayisha Malik
Chick lit-slash-contemporary romance told through diary entries. Sofia's attempts to chronicle Muslim dating for the publishing house where she works are hilarious, insightful and leads to a very sweet romance! Read review by Carrie at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books.

3. A Gentleman's Position by K J Charles 
Inter-class romance between a lord and his valet in another strong book from K J Charles. I truly admire the way that she can take a situation and spin it so that the reader empathises with each character's perspective. Read review by Jay at Joyfully Jay. 

4. The Horseman by Charlotte Nash
The mystery sub-plot and well-developed characters in this rural romance set in Victoria make it a real page-turner. Read review by Lee at Scandalicious Book Reviews. 

Top 5 Not Published in 2016

1. Under the Sugar Sun by Jennifer Hallock (2015)
In the Philippines at the turn of the century, an American schoolteacher meets a kind-hearted mestizo sugar baron. Heart-squeezy romance and heart-wrenching exploration of colonialism ensues. Read full review. 

2. Act Like It by Lucy Parker (2015)
Probably one of the most praised books of this year, even if it was published in November last year. Fake romance trope-y goodness between a Darcy-esque West End actor and his castmate to counteract bad publicity. Read review by Sarah by Smart Bitches, Trashy Books.

3. Haveli by Zeenat Mahal (2013)
In 1970s Pakistan, headstrong Chandni resists her grandmother's attempts to push her into a union with a family friend's son, Taimur a.k.a 'Alpha Male'. Masterful novella with such strong characterisation. Read full review. 

4. Jasper and the Dead by R J Astruc (2013)
I only gave this M/M AU romance four stars (damn third-person present tense writing style) but the original yet familiar worldbuilding of Astruc's AU colonial Sydney has stuck with me over the course of the year, and I've recommended it to several people since, so I think it deserves to be here. Read full review. 

5. Chocolate Cake for Breakfast by Danielle Hawkins (2013)
Small-town New Zealand romance with All Black hero and vet heroine. Quirky but so emotional. Read full review.

Concluding Thoughts

The Top 5 unreviewed section is the most diverse, with 2 M/M romances, Cole's Let it Shine with a Black heroine and Jewish hero, and Malik's Sofia, a British Muslim of Pakistani extraction. This is disturbing and - quite frankly - not good enough. It's not good enough to be reading diversely if my blogging doesn't represent the full extent of this, especially when they are books that I could have reviewed positively. Clearly, next year, I need to more closely examine what I choose to review, what I choose not to review, and the unconscious bias or reasoning behind it. 

Recently, classifying my reviews by setting, I realised how few books I'd reviewed that were set on my own turf, which prompted my to check how many books from Australia and New Zealand I'd actually read this year. The results were dismal: 7 entirely set in Australia, and 5 in New Zealand. Given those stats, the Antipodes is grossly over-represented on this list, with 3 books set in Australia, 1 in New Zealand and 2 more (1 each) by Australian and Kiwi authors that were set elsewhere (Act Like It takes place in London, and The Hating Game in a unspecified New York-style city). Good books set in Australia or New Zealand bring with them a warm, familiar feeling, and every time I experience that, I wonder why I don't read more local fiction. Next year, I will. 

Lastly, thank you to everyone who has read and supported this blog over the last two years. It's been a blast. 

Onward and upward to 2017!

Opinion/Reflection: On Pygmalion, Gender and Emotional Labour

After weeks of particularly bad chronic pain, I turned to one of my all-time favourite comfort movies, My Fair Lady. However, as much as I love it, I am also very aware that the Pygmalion story is part of deeply embedded sexist societal discourses that seek to control and mould women and their behaviour so that they are desirable to men, both sexually, and as people to be around.

For all that Henry asks Eliza to marry him, their relationship is extremely ambiguous, and I've always wondered if he actually has any romantic interest in her, or if he simply wants to secure her emotional labour. Because women's emotional labour is one of the key things behind these discourses: when a random man tells a woman to smile, what he is actually saying is that she must appear happy and at ease so as not to discomfort him, regardless of what she is actually feeling or her right to bodily autonomy. The most important or salient thing about a woman is how she appears to a man, as Henry so astutely realises: 

So, Eliza must not only do the work of transforming herself into a 'lady', but also take on large amounts of emotional labour for Henry, which goes unrecognised, and this is why Henry is so desperate to get her back when she 'runs away'. He doesn't know where anything is, and nothing is running 'as it should'. It is irrelevant that she occasionally objects to taking on this role, because it doesn't change the latent expectation that she will, and the ending - where she returns and all Henry says is "Eliza, where the devil are my slippers?" - implies that she accepts it as necessity. 

There is also the implication that she should be grateful to do this emotional labour, and grateful for her transformation in general, because it represents 'betterment'. In a situation familiar to many a corporate woman, it is Eliza who does all the work, and Henry who gets all the credit. Nobody acknowledges her achievements, or recognises the legitimacy of her anxiety about her future, to the point that she discusses her own death as a means of escape, which is dismissed merely as female hysteria. However, the film does also show sympathy for Eliza's plight, contrasting Pickering and Higgins' casual misogyny and self-congratulation with Higgins' mother, who understands Eliza's grievances and concerns perfectly. But this still perpetuates a gender divide: women are emotionally intelligent, while men are not. This is the very social stereotype that causes women to have to take on emotional labour in the first place.

Naturally, My Fair Lady takes it's cues from its source material, George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion. Despite the fact that Pygmalion was subtitled 'A Romance', Shaw was apparently horrified at the way stage productions, audiences and critics interpreted and amplified a romantic subtext between Eliza and Henry, and wished the emphasis to remain on his satirisation of the themes of class, independence and transformation. To the modern audience, all of these themes evoke Eliza more than Henry, but Henry's independence as a bachelor was also important to Shaw (McGovern 2011). In order to get rid of "any suggestion that the middle-aged bully and the girl of eighteen are lovers" (Berst p. 22, cited in Ross 2000), Shaw added a footnote to the play, in which he elucidated the fate of the characters after the curtain closed (Eliza marries her beau Freddy and opens a shop, all the while remaining friends with Higgins). The post-script also contains much long-winded philosophising, and is an oddd mix of proto-feminism and misogyny, awareness of class and classism. (According to his Wikipedia page, Shaw was a man of many contradicting opinions, including racial equality and intermarriage and eugenics). Shaw writes of Eliza: 

Such transfigurations have been achieved by hundreds of resolutely ambitious young women since Nell Gwynne set them the example by playing queens and fascinating kings in the theatre in which she began by selling oranges. Nevertheless, people in all directions have assumed, for no other reason than that she became the heroine of a romance, that she must have married the hero of it. This is unbearable, not only because her little drama, if acted on such a thoughtless assumption, must be spoiled, but because the true sequel is patent to anyone with a sense of human nature in general, and of feminine instinct in particular.

He's working his way up to saying that it should be obvious to the audience, especially women, that Eliza chooses Freddy. After all, he loves her, and is not likely to dominate, bully or beat her. What more can a gal ask for? 

I know very little about Shaw himself, but it strikes me that if he had lived today, he would have been a massive mansplainer, who thinks his work is the best thing since sliced bread, but bad-mouths everything else in the same genre, or using the same archetypes and tropes. Although the name Pygmalion refers to a myth where a sculptor falls in love with his creation and Shaw subtitled the bloody thing 'A Romance', when he wrote this clarifying footnote, he shits massively on romance: 

The rest of the story need not be shown in action, and indeed, would hardly need telling if our imaginations were not so enfeebled by their lazy dependence on the ready-makes and reach-me-downs of the ragshop in which Romance keeps its stock of "happy endings" to misfit all stories

He then works up to the inevitable stereotypes that we still see about romance readers and people who value a good HEA: 

[Higgins is] a standing puzzle to the huge number of uncultivated people who have been brought up in tasteless homes by commonplace or disagreeable parents, and to whom, consequently, literature, painting, sculpture, music, and affectionate personal relations come as modes of sex if they come at all. The word passion means nothing else to them; and that Higgins could have a passion for phonetics and idealize his mother instead of Eliza, would seem to them absurd and unnatural.

When I read that, I'm kind of happy that the romance between Eliza and Henry was drawn out against his will, despite my discomfort with it. It's a beautiful comeuppance to someone so holier-than-thou, not to mention the weird Oedipus complex thing going on. 

But Shaw is long dead, an it's his rendering of the Pygmalion myth that remains. There are numerous films, TV shows and books that have put their own slant Shaw's work, from the original 1935 German film adaption to the 1956 original Broadway production of My Fair Lady and modern adaptations like She's All That and Selfie. There's a post of the top 10 at Heroes and Heartbreakers. 

Many of the contemporary adaptations have feminist leanings, such as Jeannie Lin's My Fair Concubine, which I reviewed recently and absolutely loved. While these make explicit the fact that pre-transformation Eliza is worthy in her own right, the narrative structure still means that the hero will only discover this once he has forced her to undergo the transformation, which sometimes annoys me because it's so emblematic: men want women to change for them, and then women have to do more emotional labour when men don't like the results they asked for. 

No matter how feminist, I think that a Pygmalion tale with a female Eliza and a male Henry will also contain perturbing implications about the social control of the female person. Perhaps the only way to get rid of these is to gender-swap the roles (please someone write me some gender-swapped Pygmalion romance that are less problematic than Judith Ivory's The Proposition) or to make it into a M/M or F/F, like K J Charles' A Fashionable Indulgence. Charles' work shows that the romance between a Pygmalion and his Galatea does not have to, in any way, detract from the original and central themes of class, independence and transformation. In fact, they augment each other beautifully. Shaw was cremated, but if he'd been buried, I'm sure he'd be turning in his grave at that, the old, anti-romance bigot. 

Opinion: An Open Letter to a Bookish Charity

Dear [REDACTED],

I discovered you in my quest to find new homes for some of my books, and thought highly of your mission to distribute book to people on the streets across Australia. At first, it seemed we would be a perfect fit. You only wanted books in good condition; I already had a 'to go back to the Salvation Army store' pile and a 'good quality' pile, so I'd give the quality stuff to you. Except that, on further research, I realised you wouldn't want them, because, while my pile has historical fiction, non-fiction and speculative fiction, it also contains many romance and chick-lit novels. GASP!

I know that this is not going to be the beginning of a beautiful friendship, because "out of respect for your customers", you do not accept romance and chick-lit, or other inappropriate and pernicious influences such as religious materials and guides to getting rich quick and/or losing 10 kilos in 10 days.

Perhaps you fear that, if you did accept romance novels, you'd be swamped with tattered Mills & Boons and old school romances with dubious covers and even more dubious expressions of consent. Except that you have already stated that books must be in "near new condition", so anyone who did so would be showing a blatant disregard for your guidelines and the work you do.

Therefore, I can only assume you have made a moral judgement on the content of romance novels, in general but in specific as to their suitability for people who are homeless. It can't be that, despite greater visibility of men sleeping rough, you are unaware of the large numbers of women who are homeless. There were 45,813 women who were homeless on census night in 2011, which accounted for 44% of the total number of people experiencing homelessness. I cannot believe that, with the removal of government funding from domestic violence and homelessness services over the intervening years, that things are any better now.

Speaking of domestic violence, 55% of women state this is the primary reason they have presented to homelessness services, and I suspect this is where your reasoning for banning romance lies, given that you have also disallowed true crime books, and books that deal with drugs, depression and suicide.

And, of course, there are undoubtedly women who, after experiencing intimate partner violence, do not want to read books that centre relationships, some instances and sub-genres of which may normalise controlling or other problematic behaviours. But I also know many readers in the online community who have experienced domestic and/or sexual violence, and who read romance and chick-lit for exactly this reason. As romance author and scholar Maya Rodale said:

Unlike any other literature, romance novels champion women who defy expectations, they validate their interests and experiences, they declare women deserve love, respect and pleasure, and they reward them for refusing to settle for second best. 

They are escapist and provide a guarantee that everything is going to be okay, which can provide comfort in a world that offers no such assurances, especially to women.

Thus far, I've spoken exclusively about women, but statistics from America show that only between 82-84% of romance novels are bought by women, so perhaps your male clients would also appreciate the choice of a few romance novels now and again.

I can only assume that you think that romance is trashy, anti-feminist, not what your clients want, and potentially detrimental to their wellbeing. I don't even know what to say about the exclusion of chick-lit, because I'm finding it hard to see any objection there but undisguised literary snobbery. It's true that there may be sub-genres, tropes and themes that might not be the most suitable, but this is also true of literary and other genre fiction, all of which you accept without caveats.

If you get in contact, I would be happy to help sort through/read any romance novel donations and pull out ones that contain anything that might be triggering, and I'm sure there would be other people willing to do the same in other cities, including some of your current workers and patrons. Maybe that's not the best answer - I don't know - but surely it's better than completely removing choice and agency from your clients, as you are currently. After all, the entire purpose of your organisation is to counter the dehumanisation that can occur when people sleep rough, and yet you are treating your clients in a paternalistic and infantilizing manner. Unless you have asked your customers if they would like to read romance and chick-lit, and the vast majority said no, in which case I apologise. But somehow I suspect you haven't.

I still greatly admire the work of your organisation, and, although I can't make a donation without spending a sizable amount of time re-sorting my books, I'll send my serious literature friends your way.

Sincerely,
Dani

P.S. You'll never see this, of course, and I'll never be brave enough to send it to you, so...I guess we'll never know what could have been. Keep up the otherwise good work.

Review/Reflection: Skybound by Aleksandr Voinov

Skybound by Aleksandr Voinov had its merits. It's a very short novella (only 44 pages), so the plot was a bit rushed, but the characterisation was solid and the relationship arc was reasonable. It's very lyrically written. However, I also have some reservations about Skybound, if my thoughts are concrete enough to be called that. Maybe a better way of phrasing it is that there are some things that sit uneasily together for me, and which people definitely need to consider when thinking if this book is right for them. 

This is largely because it's set in the last days of World War Two, and is the romance of a German Luftwaffe pilot, Baldur Vogt, and Felix, a mechanic who works on the planes. Felix has admired and loved the flying ace from afar, but after he pulls Vogt from the flaming wreck of his plane, the two develop a friendship with undercurrents of something more. Vogt and Felix escape the airfield for a weekend, only to return to to the realities of the Russian advance on Berlin. 

As much as the central romance itself was well constructed, I think I would have felt a lot easier about the characters and their setting if they had shown more emotional angst. There was some, but it was brief and low-key and I didn't feel it was in proportion with the fact that Felix and Baldur are two gay men (and, later, a gay couple) in Nazi Germany. While they had some concerns about being outed, these were less in, say, The Imitation Game, set in Britain during the same period. Even if the mechanisms of the state had broken down at this point and people were no longer being prosecuted for homosexuality, I feel like 10+ years of living in a toxic, openly homophobic environment would have had an effect on the characters, both in terms of paranoia about being outed and their own acceptance of their sexuality. There is brief mention of the latter with regards to Felix, but by and large, I didn't see this, and I feel a bit uncomfortable about that, like it's an erasure of the Nazi regime's genocidal homophobia. 

The lack of more than low-level fear or angst extends to more aspects of the book as well, particularly the Russians closing in. While this drives the plot in the final scenes of the book, it is very underdeveloped until then, appearing like a bolt out the blue. 

I respect that it's a novella, so it can't include masses of content or suspense-building, but I felt both these areas were pretty essential if you are going to have an M/M romance set in Nazi Germany that uses fear of the Red Army's brutality to move your plot along. 

Voinov puts a lot of effort into painting a picture of the airfield, with details of the Luftwaffe and planes, but there is none of the same effort put into recreating other parts of the society. On some level, I think this was a conscious decision, part of efforts to portray Felix, Baldur and their ilk as citizens and soldiers of Germany and distinguish them from the Nazi establishment. But part of what did make me uncomfortable with the story is that the airfield is presented as a bubble, with little external input or output, even from other military establishments. But focusing on the technical aspects of the planes and not mentioning where Baldur's orders were coming from doesn't change the realities of the situation. 

And this is where my mind gets stuck, because an idealistic part of me wants to believe multiple experiences of the war can exist side-by-side without impinging on each other, but another part also recognises that in order to focus on a story like Felix and Baldur's, a thousand others are pushed out of the frame. Reading Elie Wiesel's Night after I read Skybound, but before I wrote this review, I was reminded that, at the same time that Baldur and Felix took that weekend away with ample food and warmth and petrol, the survivors of concentration camps were being forced to make death marches through snow-covered Poland and Germany ahead of the liberating forces. 

These are all just jumbled thoughts, and I'm not the person to give them any weight or validity, if they're to have any at all. But I do think that maybe 44 pages are insufficient to tackle all the context that needs to be addressed in a romance with a Third Reich setting. I think that would be the case with a heterosexual romance, but it's doubly so with a gay romance.

In the end, I haven't rated Skybound, because I don't feel like my thoughts are enough of a cohesive critique to rate it negatively, but I would also feel uncomfortable giving it a rating that was divorced from them. 

Opinion/Reflection: Australia's Erasure of Its Indigenous History

Australia's having another flash-in-the-pan moment where it has the choice to face up to its institutionalised erasure of Indigenous Australians in our history, or keep its head in the sand. Unsurprisingly, we've chosen the latter.

This time, the spark was a Daily Terror article manufacturing outrage over the fact that UNSW encourages the use of the word 'invasion' over 'discovery' when talking about British occupation. The whole thing has gone down much the same way it always does, and I don't have anything to say about it that an Indigenous voice hasn't said better; Luke Pearson's What Was 200 Years Ago? is particularly powerful.

However, something else that has caught my eye this week, as we've been dealing with this, is two remarkably similar stories of Indigenous archaeological finds on government building sites. One is in Sydney, where I live, and the other in New Zealand's Waikato region, where my family are from.

While building Sydney's much-anticipated lightrail, workers and heritage experts have uncovered a site with 22,000 Aboriginal artefacts, and the Sydney Morning Herald reported that an Indigenous heritage group is having to apply for an urgent stop work order. Transport for NSW claimed that the archaeological site was less than one percent of the whole site, and that workers could still work around it, but representatives from the heritage group said that the cache was the most easily identifiable part of a larger site, and that the whole area needed to be surveyed. The finds have significance for our understanding of inter-tribal trade and interaction, and according to an elder in the ABC article cited below, half of the site has already been destroyed. Transport's NSW statement is as follows:

All work that has occurred on the site since the artefacts were found has been in consultation with all Aboriginal groups...Transport for NSW and ALTRAC Light Rail are investigating, in conjunction with the Aboriginal representatives, opportunities to recognise the items found on site, for example in displays or education programs. The social value of the site to the local Aboriginal community is very high and we are continuing to work with [the Aboriginal groups] to identify the artefacts and how they came to be found in Randwick. - ABC News, Indigenous atrefacts found at Sydney light rail construction site, calls to halt work

Compare that response with what happened when a pre-European skull was found while digging a culvert for the New Zealand's new Waikato expressway. For a start, a stop work order was given immediately, and workers were transferred to sites up and down the expressway, away from the site. The press release from the New Zealand Transport Agency describes their process, and I've added some annotations for non-New Zealanders:

The Transport Agency's Hamilton highway manager Kaye Clark said project protocols which the NZ Transport Agency has developed alongside Waikato-Tainui immediately came into play when the remains were uncovered.   

“Our protocols include provisions for kaitiaki (guardian) from iwi [tribes] to work on site, as needed, to monitor earthworks as they unfold. This discovery was made by the kaitiaki and the project archaeologists working alongside each other, which is exactly what should happen,” Mrs Clark says.

The area was blessed by Waikato-Tainui [the local tribe] this morning (March 30) and work has stopped in that area while archaeologists remove the remains and carry out investigations in the surrounding area. 

Mrs Clark says where possible the Transport Agency worked hard to align new highways away from any sites of significance. 

“Working with iwi and the local communities we try to identify all areas of significance before we embark on our projects. Where that is not possible archaeological investigations are undertaken at the start of any project to collect and record any history so we can make it available for all New Zealanders,” Mrs Clark says. 

“In situations like this, we also have protocols we have developed alongside iwi to ensure correct cultural processes are followed.” 

Waikato Tainui, Te Arataura Chairman Rahui Papa said the co-designed process which led to the protocols being developed makes for an easier transition to ensure the correct cultural practice is engaged. 

“The NZ Transport Agency and Waikato-Tainui will continue to work in partnership to satisfy cultural values and to complete the journey that we embarked on together,” Mr Papa says. 

Once the koiwi has been removed, examined and the site investigation are complete the koiwi [remains] will be reinterred at Taupiri Urupa by kaumatua [elders].

Are you seeing a difference? Because I certainly am. One's on the defensive, and one's proactive. Also, one's a statement that was only made after the media picked up on the issue, and the other was a standard press release created to any inform interested parties about what had occurred. That's not to say that New Zealand is some kind of utopia - they still have the same legacy as any other settler society - but when it comes to tangibly respecting their Indigenous heritage, they're light years ahead of Australia.

You can be assured there are no public servants in NSW making statements about working hard "to align new highways away from any sites of significance". We don't even recognise that Indigenous Australians have sites of significance.

In 2014, there was a backlash when then-Prime Minister Tony Abbott said that the British arrived to "nothing but bush", but essentially our society functions on this premise. It's why there's mass outrage when we're told that 'discovery' is not an acceptable term, why Indigenous heritage groups have to campaign for something that should be automatic. In another depressing incident from the last week, it's why Tony Abbott was able to publish a Quarterly essay in which one of the opening lines was "we [Australia] lack a colonial past to complicate the present", and nobody really batted an eyelid. 

Reflection: #WNDB & Beyond a Single Story

Whether they realise it or not, most Australians are familiar with the concept of a single story. It's when foreigners ask us, unironically, about keeping kangaroos as pets. Its the entire sub-genre of Australian Outback romances. I've been polling all my romance reading friends about these, and none of them have ever read an Outback romance. Even though these books are (sometimes) made and distributed in Australia, they are primarly meant for external consumption. It's the advertisements on my cable television provider for a program in which some minor British personality goes bush to search the "real Australia". Cue images of horse-wrangling, cattle stations and crocodiles, and British Guy patronisingly explaining everything despite having a day's experience of the place. It's not that the stories of rural Australians aren't worthy or important - in fact, in our internal media these are often sidelined - but their presentation to international audiences invalidates the 85% of Australians who live in urban environments. 

And countries and regions all around the world have similar experiences. Often, we even encourage the stereotypes of the outside world to brand ourselves for tourism and business purposes, Australia's Where the bloody hell are you? ad campaign being a prime example, but this doesn't make them any less alienating or dangerous.

Author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's talks about how we are often lead to believe that one story about a particular place or people is the only story in her influential TED talk entitled The Dangers of a Single Story. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend watching it, or reading the transcript.

She recounts how, on coming to America for university, she realised that people saw Africa as a place of "beautiful landscapes, beautiful animals, and incomprehensible people, fighting senseless wars, dying of poverty and AIDS", and related to her through this lens. It was not their fault; this is what the media and popular culture presented to them with little differentiation between nations, regions, cultures and religions. Adichie, however, was not in the same boat. She says:

...because of America's cultural and economic power, I had many stories of America. I had read Tyler and Updike and Steinbeck and Gaitskill. I did not have a single story of America.

I thought of this quote when I was reflecting on my #WNDB Challenge as it comes up to the end of the year. Despite the fact that I had sought out books featuring characters of varying ethnicities, religions and sexualities, I have realised that 14 out of the 20 books I read were set in the US, and all but two took place in either the US or UK (and when I say the UK, I really mean England with the odd Scottish setting thrown in; Wales and Northern Ireland don't get a look-in). I undertook the #WNDB Challenge to counter hegemony, but ended up perpetuating it in another form. Unless they had immigrated to the US or UK, the people of the periphery were still silenced. No doubt about it, the fault was in my selecting skills, but this also reflects what I was exposed to on Goodreads, Amazon and other blogs.

I'm always loath to buy into romance/'light' fiction vs. 'literary' fiction binaries, but I do feel like the romance world is dragging its feet in this regard. The Man Booker prize has opened itself up to writers from all over the world and novels from all over the world are feted as literary masterpieces (this is has it's own set of problems as well, don't get me wrong). In contrast, all of the 2015 RITA Winners were set in the UK or US. 2014 had more diverse settings: one Outback, one partially set in Bangkok and one set in various European locations (but with the characters based in London). In 2013, we were back to all US or UK, excepting two fictional locations.

I have no doubt there are many romance novels set outside these conventional locations out there, but they are not making it past the literary gatekeepers and so languish in the dusty corners of the Kindle Store. In 2016, I'm making it my mission to find them. The aim is to review books from countries around the world in an aim to help myself see beyond the single story, and I would be grateful for any recommendations. 

As always, there will be an element of working this out as I go along. For example, should the author have to be from the country in which the book is set? The only things I'm sure about is that I would like to read more than one book from each country. After all, it would be pretty useless to counter a single story with a single story.