Thread by @Amy_Butt_

Now attending 'decolonising SFF' with Geoff Ryman, Aliette de Bodard, elmyra/Milena & Parinita Shetty.

@geoffryman @ytterbiumcon
#eastercon70 #Eastercon

Geoff asking for examples of colonial tropes?
Milena: the tag line 'space, the final frontier' and the genocidal legacy in the word frontier,
Parinita discussing Harry Potter as 'woke for the 90s' how we can love these fictions and still have problems with them.
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Parinita on the importance recognising the work which is already being done, and how a key question is access to the this literature outside of the country of production.
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Milena talking about the importance of own voices, citing NK Jemisins broken earth which isn't there to make its audience feel comfortable.
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Geoff talking about the importance of writing and editing which respects the voice of the author, without adjusting the text to suit the imagined demands of a western audience. To resist elaborate explanations or italicised phrases for 'foreign' terms or concepts.
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Milena noting that as an audience of speculative fiction, we are used to trying to empathise with worlds which we might not be immediately familiar with, it should not be imagined as being beyond us as readers.
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Parinita talking about their perspective growing up, of the UK as a fantasy land which existed primarily in fiction, and the associated implication that fiction was something that had to be set in the US or Europe.
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Parinita on the issue of translation, that for some people in India SFF is not considered important enough to translate into English, and as more people are speaking and writing in English as a primary language there is a potential loss of this wealth of literature.
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Aliette on the role of language as a product of racial, social or class differentiation in Vietnam, on the issues of using the langauge of the colonisers, and how an apparently 'adulterated' language can still have power or be reclaimed.
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Geoff asking about the decolonising of the self, and the work we have to do internally. Milena talking about the powerful way in which fiction can overwrite or influence the perception.
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Parinita making a call for those who are from a dominant culture to work on decolonising themselves. Our first act should be to improve access to the fiction which has already been written. Use the platform you have to boost own voices.
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Geoff on the need to make a space. Don't expect the work to come to you. There is an inbuilt bias, which needs to be addressed in editorial, publishing and reading practices.
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Milena talking about the importance of reconsidering what we consider to be a good story, to challenge our internalised bias about the structure of fiction. To look for more than quest narratives.
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Some amazing sounding recommendations:
'strange worlds, strange times',
the 'Nigerians in space' trilogy,
omenana.com,
africansfs.com,
The comic republic ....
And so many more which I failed to note down in time.
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A really amazing panel, thank you so much to all the speakers!
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