* An occasional series from the point of view of The Dog.

This was an excellent read. It was gripping, it was exciting, and it presented a very unique character. Katsa is often very angry, and the way that Kristin Cashore showed Katsa’s anger and frustration was expertly done. Because of her personality, Katsa could have come off as irritating, but I thought she was fascinating. I also loved the fact that Katsa is not a typical girlie girl — she is, in fact, one of the butchest characters in fiction I’ve read about lately. She’s especially butch in the last part of the book, which involves her battling the forces of nature and fighting mountain lions while rescuing a princess. Seriously! Katsa kicks some ass for sure.

However, she’s not a lesbian (sadly). Katsa falls in love with a sexy prince, and that romance is quite intense. I must admit, though, that romance was my least favorite part of the book. Yes, that’s partly because I felt that Katsa really should have been gay dammit! But OK, I’ll grant you that some girls who kick ass can be straight.

And Katsa’s straight but definitely does not fall into the category of typical straight heroine who wants to marry the prince. In fact, she straightforwardly says that she will never marry — women in Katsa’s world are often forced into arranged marriages and, once married, are expected to bend to the will of their husbands. So I think it’s absolutely right that she declares she will never marry. I was shocked to find that the first two reviews on Amazon called out this fact as a warning sign.

Heidi Anne Heiner wrote:

I highly recommend the novel but I have to do so with a warning. If it matters to you, the book has a rather anti-marriage message in it which fits the main character’s personality, but will be the most problematic element for some readers.

And Unity Dienes, in a review titled “Loved it! But conservative parents take note,” wrote:

Also, and this is probably the “biggie” for conservative parents, Katsa rejects the concept of marriage, and there are several times when one or another character implies that it is a yoke that will force a couple to stay together regardless of their actual feelings. Being lovers is somewhat extolled as demonstrating their real trust and commitment to one another, since they are together without being forced, and love each other enough to set each other free if the love fades.

This book may actually allow parents to discuss these themes with teens, who need to decide where they stand on sex and marriage. However, some parents may decide just to skip this one if they don’t want to deal with the issues.

OK, given that Proposition 8 passed in California, I guess I should not be so shocked that people are trying to police traditional marriage even in book reviews on Amazon. But I am shocked. I mean, come on. How many books out there are about young women who pretty much only want to get married to the man of their dreams? Have you noticed the entire genre of romance fiction? Not to mention chick lit (which I admit I do like from time to time), and countless books about teen girls and their freaking boyfriends?

I’m sorry, but one book in which a girl — who clearly sees how marriage in her society is a yoke around a woman’s neck — refuses to be someone’s chattel, is not only perfectly acceptable but frankly, I think every girl should read it. Yes, I believe in marriage, but I do not believe that traditional heterosexual marriage should be championed as the best and only relationship that every girl should aspire to.

Do I sound upset? Yes. Because Graceling was an unusual book, and it was unusual because it was about a girl who stood up for herself and rejected what EVIL men wanted from her. Would it truly be better for Katsa to see how terrible marriage was in her society and yet still want to be a part of it? I’m glad she doesn’t buy into the fantasy of (straight) marriage.

So, even though Katsa is straight (hell, because she’s straight), I recommend Graceling highly. I don’t come across too many adventures with female heroines who don’t like to wear dresses and who don’t fall in love with vampires. Go and read it; it’s a wonderful story with clear and elegant writing, admirably told.

• A new Notes & Queeries is up at AfterEllen.com. This month I wrote about a recent South of Nowhere episode in which Spencer comes out to her grandmother; it got me thinking about how important it is, in the wake of Proposition 8, to come out to the older people in our lives. I haven’t read the comments at the end of it yet, but I will!
• Last night I went to my first Kid Lit Salon at Book Passage, an amazing local bookstore. I met lots of friendly writers and listened to a spirited panel discuss YA fantasy and book publishing in general. One of the panelists was author Henry H. Neff, who writes and illustrates a series of books called The Tapestry. I haven’t read The Tapestry yet but from the reviews it sounds wonderful — sort of like Harry Potter (only in a general way, really) but set in America with alternate history involved. It’s next on my list to read.
• Yesterday Ash went to copyediting! Woohoo! But don’t get too excited, it means the actual book in physical form is still a year away. Yes, publishing moves at the speed of snails, but I am very excited that someone is going to make sure all my commas are in the right place.
• I’ve gotten some great questions from readers about various topics, and I’m going to start answering them in my irregular series of FAQs. If you have something you think I know the answer to and wish to be entertained while I make up a response, feel free to send me an email at mlo at malindalo dot com.
• Also, I was going to title this post “Fly-by-night update,” but then I looked up fly-by-night in the dictionary, and discovered that the term actually means “not trustworthy; esp. financially irresponsible”! Clearly, it doesn’t mean “moving so fast (possibly because you’re a witch flying at night in a great black cloak) that you only have time to post to your blog in bullet points.” But I’d like to state that I think it should mean that.

Till tomorrow!

Here are some more excellent signs that I saw today:

It has been really amazing to read about all the protests across the country. I was really heartened by the turnout, and while the passage of Prop. 8 was totally depressing, it has resulted in a re-energized and determined queer community. Go gays!

So since I have this blog now, and I’m always looking for stuff to blather on about, I’ve decided to start my own FAQ list. They’re not necessarily frequently asked questions, but they are questions I get that I think would be fun or informative to write about on the blog. If you have a question, feel free to email me at mlo @ malindalo dot com, or leave a question in the comments sometime.

First up is a question I often get from students who have visited AfterEllen.com while doing a research project, and concluded that I must know The Answer to this: How are lesbians and gay people typically represented in the media?

Unfortunately, there is no Answer. There are lots of smaller answers that add up to a complicated and ever-changing, well, stew of things. But if you want an extremely simplified summary of my opinion on how gays and lesbians are represented in the media, I will start off by saying that I know nothing about how gay men, bisexual or transgender people are represented, so please don’t apply what I’m about to say to gay men, bi or trans folk. OK? OK.

Extremely simplified summary of my opinion on how lesbians are represented in the media:

At this time, November 2008, lesbians are very vocally represented in the media by out lesbian celebrities (Ellen DeGeneres, Melissa Etheridge, Rosie O’Donnell, and more recently Rachel Maddow), but they are practically invisible in film and television. There are zero lesbian regular characters on prime-time network television, and the only lesbians on cable are on South of Nowhere, which will end in a few weeks, and The L Word, which will begin its final season in January 2009. The lesbian characters we see on television are almost universally feminine, thin, and white (with a few exceptions on The L Word). There is a distinct lack of lesbian characters who are not white, thin and feminine (e.g., you rarely see any genderqueer or butch lesbians on-screen, and you pretty much never see any women who are larger than a size 2, anyway).

What does this mean?

In my opinion, this leads to a world in which lesbians can be famous, but they can’t have sex. Ellen, Rosie, and Rachel are all hilarious in their own different ways, and they are all harmless when it comes to their sexuality because they have basically been desexualized by their humor and their androgyny, which is not understood by the mainstream. Melissa is a mother and spends more of her time on being domestic these days than being a rock star, so even her sexuality is more muted now.

The last time a lesbian had sex on television, she was fired from her show. And Spencer and Ashley do nothing more on South of Nowhere than kiss each other very delicately.

This lack of sexuality essentially strips lesbianism of its threat to heterosexuals. If you don’t think lesbianism is threatening, good for you! But a lot of conservatives disagree with you. They will say that it threatens the stability of the traditional family. And no matter how much straight men say they like to see two girls making out, they still want to imagine themselves as part of the picture. Actual lesbians don’t want to sleep with men, therefore, they are threatening to some guys’ egos.

A lot of networks (and movie studios, and basically everything else) are run by guys. You connect the dots.

Isn’t this totally depressing?

Yes and no. Yes because, well, yes it’s depressing. No, because it means that lesbians have had to create new and alternative ways of representing themselves, for themselves. For example, AfterEllen.com’s vlogs, the web series 3Way, and movies from lesbian filmmakers such as Angela Robinson all contribute to a growing cache of goodies made for lesbians, by lesbians.

And the longer I’ve been a part of reporting this scene, the more I’ve noticed that we are slowly but surely making inroads into the “mainstream.” Lesbians are all over reality television now, because we’re part of reality. And there’s tons of great fiction to be read that has been written by lesbians that includes lesbian characters. I am hopeful that this trend will continue, and someday we will actually have a lesbian character on television who actually has a (sex) life.

So … that’s the answer to FAQ #1. Got another question? Disagree with me entirely? Tell me in the comments or send me an email at mlo at malindalo dot com. Thanks!

That’s a pizza that my girlfriend and I made last week. She made the crust, I made the sauce (it’s the same standard sauce I made for lasagna), and we topped it with broccoli, chicken (from a store-bought roast chicken, I admit, but it’s tasty!), sun-dried tomatoes, mozzarella and cheddar cheese. Then we put it in a very hot oven on a pizza stone covered with cornmeal, and we baked it until it was done. (Seriously, I’ve asked my girlfriend how long to bake it, and she’s the pizza baking expert and she will only say “till it’s done.”) That’s steam coming up from the pizza!

Here’s a close-up of one side of the beautiful thing:

So, here’s my thing about pizza: I love New York-style pizza. My devotion to it was firmly cemented by living in New York, in Manhattan, for two years. This was sandwiched between several years living in the Boston area, where there is also, I have to say, plenty of fine NY-style pizza. A truly delectable NY slice has a thin but crispy bottom crust, with a chewy and slightly puffy edge — but not too puffy! Now, there are several components to making an excellent slice of pizza, and they all must work together. Sure, some people think the crust is the most important part, but if the crust is good while the sauce and cheese are not, the slice is ruined. In fact, I think that there are three key components to a slice: crust, sauce, and cheese. If one is missing, the slice can only be subpar.

Now, of course, I live in California. I swear I have never had a good slice in California. It has been the one food tragedy of this state, in my opinion, and I don’t think I’m overstating it! (Let me say that I’m not talking about restaurant pizza, like from the wonderful Pizzeria Delfina, where you can get a very well-made whole pizza to eat with a glass of wine. I’m talking about a slice, coming out of a pizza shop, at midnight after a night out. Or even one you order to eat while watching TV.)

Sometimes I’ll find a slice with one or two components that are right, but it’s always killed by the subpar performance of the third. For example, in my old neighborhood in the Mission (where there are plenty of amazing burritos), there’s this pizza shop called Serrano’s. The amazing thing about Serrano’s is that each slice is made individually to order, and I have to say the sauce is excellent — spicy and tangy and salted just right. Unfortunately, the crust is usually too bready and thick (although at least it’s crispy), and they often put too much cheese on it.

Wait! you might be thinking: How can there be too much cheese? Well, there can be. There must be a proper proportion of cheese to sauce to other toppings, and too much of one thing is just shoddy performance. It’s like adding a pink feather boa to a classy evening gown. It’s even worse if the cheese is not high quality. This is the biggest problem I’ve encountered in California pizzas: too much cheese combined with bad cheese.

I’ve lived here for eight years now (OMG!) and I’ve tried as many pizzas as I can. I’ve gone to the famous Zachary’s in Berkeley, and though their Chicago-style stuffed pizza is certainly filling, it is not New York-style. As I mentioned above, sometimes you can get a good pizza in a restaurant, but that’s not the same as coming into a shop off the street and getting a slice to go and it’s all gooey and hot and crispy and basically the only thing in the world that will satisfy your needs. The closest I’ve found is Escape From New York, which isn’t really a NY slice (the crust is a bit too puffy), but at least it’s the right size and gets probably a 6 out of 10 in terms of sauce and cheese, and it benefits from having cute dykey employees (at least in the Castro branch).

Anyway, I’ve given up on finding a good slice in California. So now I realize I must perfect the home-made pizza. We’re close (as you can see from the pictures above), but the main area where we’re tripping up is the edge of the crust. How do you make the edges rise up a little while maintaining a thin and crispy bottom? Does this involve tossing the dough in the air? I suspect it might. I have never successfully tossed a pizza in my life, but I’m willing to give it a try. (If anybody has any pointers on the best way to do this without simultaneously flinging flour all over the kitchen and/or getting the dough stuck on the ceiling, let me know.)

And if there actually is good NY-style pizza in California, let me know where. I’ll try it. But I’m skeptical.

Anyone who has studied popular culture or cultural studies will be familiar with the idea that entertainment reflects broader cultural beliefs. I also believe that the connection between entertainment and cultural beliefs is an active one–I do think that entertainment has the power to change the way people feel about issues. Americans have seen a man of color in the White House on long-running, popular television series three times recently: twice on 24, with President David Palmer (Dennis Haysbert) and his brother, President Wayne Palmer (D.B. Woodside), and on The West Wing, with President Matt Santos (Jimmy Smits). The media has even noted distinct and sometimes uncanny parallels between Matt Santos’ fictional election campaign and Barack Obama’s.

That means that Americans have gotten accustomed to seeing a man of color in the White House. (I might add that the only woman in the fictional White House in recent times, Geena Davis in Commander in Chief, didn’t fare so well. I’m hoping Cherry Jones in the next season of 24 does a little better.)

Anyone who doubts the power of TV to naturalize a previously rejected idea would do well to remember what happened after Ellen DeGeneres came out in 1997. No, it didn’t make everybody support gay people, but it made a difference one person at a time. It made a lot of parents take a more open and accepting look at their own children. This year after she married Portia de Rossi, the outpouring of support for her was incredible to see.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough. And I think it’s partly because her relationship with Portia is a celebrity relationship. We can still look at them from afar and admire them as colorful icons of Hollywood liberalism; they don’t necessarily speak to middle Americans as a reality. We need a lesbian or gay couple on prime-time television, on a highly rated TV show, and we need them to be main characters with prominent story lines. They must have real, whole lives, including relationships. And let’s be honest: these lesbians need to be popular characters.

Yes, I know there’s a great gay couple on Brothers & Sisters (also on ABC), but Brothers & Sisters has ranked at No. 37 and 38 in the ratings since it debuted. Grey’s Anatomy has always been a top 10 show, with several million more viewers than Brothers & Sisters gets. The Callica story line was set to be one of the most highly watched lesbian story lines on prime-time television ever. ABC’s decision to fire Brooke Smith and de-gay future story lines, in retrospect, seems like a forecast for Proposition 8 (which, incidentally, won by a slim margin in Los Angeles County, where those ABC suits work).

To all those ABC execs who decided to pull the plug on the Callica story line because of its “explicit” nature (since when does intelligently written, humorous metaphor = explicit sexuality?), I am ashamed of you. I thought you–the network previously known as Gay-B-C–were more enlightened. If, as the L.A. Times suggests, the reason for Smith’s firing was because she wasn’t thin and hot enough to play a lesbian on TV, then Hollywood really is as pathetic as everyone says it is.

But it’s not only Hollywood suits who are to blame. I read a number of the comments online about the Grey’s Anatomy de-gaying, and it was incredibly disheartening to see so many people disparaging Brooke Smith’s character because she was unattractive, or rejecting the Callica story line because it made them “uncomfortable.” I have no doubt that ABC took the opinions of those bigoted viewers to heart before they decided to de-gay Grey’s. And if Americans can’t stand to see lesbians in a relationship on TV, do you think they’re going to support them getting married in real life? Not by a long shot.

It makes me think that we’re going to have to wait long and hard for same-sex marriage to be a possibility in California again.

I missed the kids’ parade because I was busy watching my girlfriend and my friend Karla carve pumpkins in preparation for this event. See, don’t the pumpkins look great?

Afterward, we carried the pumpkins down the hill to a friend’s house, where they have a tradition of pouring glasses of wine for the parents (the kids get candy, of course). Needless to say, the parents love it. They also informed us that a house down the street was giving out beer, so as to not compete with the wine. At this rate, next year there will be an open bar somewhere!

The kids’ costumes were all excellent, and I was surprised to see how many Star Wars costumes there were until someone reminded me that George Lucas has this new Star Wars cartoon series on TV now. So there were lots of Jedis, but there was also an adorable Princess Leia in her kickass outfit from the beginning of The Empire Strikes Back. You know, this one:

Except the kid wasn’t carrying such a large gun.

The turnout, however, was apparently lower than in the past (even though there were still hundreds of kids), and my friends theorized it could have been due to the threat of rain (although it didn’t rain and was quite balmy), but might also be due to a new, fancier neighborhood Halloween party in this place called Sleepy Hollow, a neighborhood near San Anselmo (next town over). Apparently in Sleepy Hollow they set up a movie screen and show free movies for the kids.

When I was a kid in Colorado, it always seemed to be snowing or sleeting on Halloween night, there was no free wine, and there were definitely no free screenings of anything! I also had to walk uphill both ways wherever I went.

It’s a good thing I’m now an adult in California. Happy belated Halloween!

Beautiful downtown Fairfax

I’ve lived in cities all my adult life (Boston, New York, London, Beijing, Los Angeles, San Francisco — yes, all of them), so you might ask: Why, Malinda, did you move to this tiny town? Well, dear reader, I moved here so that I could become all domesticated with my girlfriend. And her dog.

I’ve only been “living” here for a few days (although I’ve obviously visited here before), but I can already determine several differences from life in the Big City.

1. When I go outside in the morning, I smell trees! Woodsy, naturey, big green oak trees. You know the smell. It’s heavenly. I do not miss the stink of garbage down the block in the Mission (although I might come to miss the burritos and tacos).
2. It is so quiet that I can hear the birds singing, and these birds are not pigeons. I do not miss pigeons.
3. This town is somewhat lacking in diversity, especially compared to San Francisco. This takes me back to my childhood in another small town, Louisville, Colorado, except that Fairfax’s lack of diversity is made up for (sort of) in its left-wing liberalism and, again, unusually large number of Tibetan shops. Plus, San Francisco’s only 45 minutes away.
4. There are no good burritos in Fairfax. Sigh. I guess having good ice cream is a solid trade-off, though.
5. There is the most amazing neighborhood Italian restaurant ever here, Sorella’s. They give you cheese hacked off a huge wheel of parmigiano when you come in for dinner, along with a bowl of marinated olives. And then after dinner they give you animal crackers and gummy bears. And sometimes port. Plus almost all the pasta is penne, which is my favorite pasta shape (seriously — penne is superior), and it is all cooked perfectly al dente. Although there were tons of excellent restaurants in my San Francisco neighborhood, none of them were as excellently down-home as this one.

Will I go crazy from being separated from urban living? Will I long for the ability to walk to the Castro? (Probably. Or at least the ability to walk home from the Castro after a night out.) Will I go crazy from lack of good burritos at 2 a.m.? (I can’t stay up past 9:20 p.m. these days, so probably not.) Stay tuned to find out.

Which brings me to my own book, Ash, which is a fantasy. Where or how does race fit into fantasy novels? I’m not talking about orcs or goblins; I’m talking about humans. It’s been my experience that most humans in fantasy novels are white, and when you think about it, the descriptors that we Americans (or people of Earth) use about race simply do not apply in most fantasy fiction. There are no African Americans in fantasy because there is no Africa (usually). So what do you do?

Ash is a retelling of Cinderella. Most of you know the Cinderella story. There’s Cinderella, and then there’s Prince Charming, except in my book Prince Charming is a woman and she’s not a prince(ss), either, but for simplicity’s sake in this blog post, I’m going to refer to her as Charming. So, Cinderella meets Charming. They fall in love. I’ve always envisioned both Cinderella and Charming, in my book, as Asians. For the few people who have read a draft of my book so far, this might come as a surprise, because that is never explicit in the story. But why should it be?

I do agree with Mitali Perkins’ third point when it comes to the specific case of Ash: Respect your readers’ right to cast the story. I do describe my main characters’ physical appearance, but not terribly specifically. I want readers to imagine the Charming that they would fall in love with, because everyone has different tastes. But for me, she’s Asian. Except she has green eyes, because, frankly, I’ve always liked green eyes and she’s Charming, you know, and that’s how I see her. So I guess to be specific using terms we are familiar with, she must be biracial, or Hapa. And so is Cinderella, because she has brown hair.

(In case anyone is wondering, I am also of a mixed-race background, which may be why I started out with that as the default option for my characters. There are other characters in the book who are distinctly Caucasian, though.)

Can you imagine how bizarre it would be to insert the term “biracial” in a fantasy novel? So I left it without the specifics. If anybody asks me what race the characters are, I’ll tell them what I think, but really, it’s up to the reader in this case.

When it comes to fiction set in the real world (as in Earth), I actually think it’s necessary to explain a character’s ethnic and racial background. I realize it can be difficult, but race is always there in real life — it never leaves my side, haha — and as an Asian American writer, I want to write myself into the story. Other writers may not see that as a necessity for them, and that’s fine. For me, it will always be something I consider, just like I’ll always consider a character’s sexual orientation. Those are foundational for me. Race and sexual orientation influence the way the characters are seen by other characters, and the way they interact with them.

So I guess I have two different rules. In a fantasy world where there is no racial distinction, describing race is unnecessary, although I see my characters through my Earthbound eyes as being Hapa. In Earthbound fiction, race cannot be left up to the reader’s imagination, because I believe it is fundamental to a character’s identity.