What do you think?
Rate this book
Race and Popular Fantasy Literature: Habits of Whiteness
This book illuminates the racialized nature of twenty-first century Western popular culture by exploring how discourses of race circulate in the Fantasy genre. It examines not only major texts in the genre, but also the impact of franchises, industry, editorial and authorial practices, and fan engagements on race and representation. Approaching Fantasy as a significant element of popular culture, it visits the struggles over race, racism, and white privilege that are enacted within creative works across media and the communities which revolve around them. While scholars of Science Fiction have explored the genre’s racialized constructs of possible futures, this book is the first examination of Fantasy to take up the topic of race in depth. The book’s interdisciplinary approach, drawing on Literary, Cultural, Fan, and Whiteness Studies, offers a cultural history of the anxieties which haunt Western popular culture in a century eager to declare itself post-race. The beginnings of the Fantasy genre’s habits of whiteness in the twentieth century are examined, with an exploration of the continuing impact of older problematic works through franchising, adaptation, and imitation. Young also discusses the major twenty-first century sub-genres which both re-use and subvert Fantasy conventions. The final chapter explores debates and anti-racist praxis in authorial and fan communities. With its multi-pronged approach and innovative methodology, this book is an important and original contribution to studies of race, Fantasy, and twenty-first century popular culture.
238 pages, Hardcover
First published August 23, 2015
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
August 14, 2017
I had been toying with the idea of writing about race in fantasy for a while. I’d periodically do some googling to try to ascertain what research had been done in that vein already, and never found all that much. Then I came across a quote from Young’s book, and requested it at the library without looking into it much further. When I picked it up, though, I realized that this wasn’t just a single prior piece of scholarship. Rather, Young has assembled a comprehensive overview of the topic, something that not only carried out many of the inklings I had entertained but with real scholarship, but also explored many other topics in the same depth. Race in Popular Fantasy crystallizes much of the debates about racism, representation, and diversity in fantasy. I haven’t seen many people reviewing and discussing it yet, which is a shame and will hopefully change soon; Young’s work marks a helpful and accessible catalyst for future discussions on the topic.
The book is written in a detached, academic style and I imagine it might not be the easiest read for people who aren’t fluent in the vocabulary of that style. I found it to be just about right, always using the right words for things and maintaining a careful perspective but never indulging in academese for its own sake—though that’s not to say there aren’t places where things could have been stated more clearly. While she hints at some larger Theory stuff in the intro, all of her methods and framing feel straightforwardly and comprehensibly postmodern.
Young eloquently and succinctly reviews the role of early fantasists like Tolkien and Howard in popularizing and reiterating racial origin myths, building both biological (racial essentialism and predestination) and cultural (Anglo-Saxonism) race narratives into the foundation of the fantasy genre. This argument is well-made and makes a convenient reference. I also really appreciate that she points to cultural racism as an equal partner to scientific racism, giving the humanities (philology, folklore studies, etc) their fair share of blame for something science, extrapolated from anthropology and biology, too often ends up scapegoated for exclusively even to this day. In a similar vein, she traces “orcs” as a sort of wastebasket taxon for racial othering over nearly a century of fantasy. The one thing Young refrained from doing, probably a difficult scholarly leap but something I think is interesting and important to investigate, is the role fantasy plays in perpetuating ideas about Whiteness in culture outside of fantasy circles. I want to claim that Tolkien not only established a legacy of racism in fantasy, but serves as a major point of exposure to that Anglo-Saxonist Whiteness narrative for people who may never read any other fantasy.
Another chapter discusses the growing body of deconstructive, anti-racist, postcolonial, and POC-centric fantasy, something I find very interesting. Young’s summary indicates that there is much more of this sort of work than you might imagine (and it is far from a comprehensive discussion) while at the same time showing how much work is left to be done, how many huge gaps left to fill. This was true throughout the book, but this chapter I felt most keenly that while it was satisfying, I wanted more. Hopefully more bloggers and academics take up Young’s lines of thought and apply them to other works. The final chapter confronted racism in the fan community, focusing on a big catalytic event just before my time, which was interesting historical context for me.
I found those arguments compelling but easy to swallow, basically fulfilling my existing biases. The one I had more trouble with, of course, was the one on “gritty fantasy.” Having the lens turned on your own ideology is the most engaging but also consternating part of postmodernism. For the month and a half before I read this book, I’ve been working on a long, dense, tortured essay that tries to extol gritty fantasy (or at least the iterations of it I like) as superior to their Sword-and-Sorcery predecessors for their embrace of historicism. Young’s chapter repeatedly deconstructs the idea that gritty fantasy brings a more historicist approach to race in particular. This is fine insofar as I can separate myself, a reader who wants to see fantasy embrace history even further and really explore the roles of marginalized groups and changing social constructions in the past, from the people Young seems to be targeting: reactionaries who appeal to a largely debunked narrative of a monochrome medieval Europe to excuse the progress gritty fantasy has not yet made to incorporate POC.
But this framing of the argument is more mine than Young’s, and she doesn’t seem to have a lot of patience for the appeal to historicism in general. She generally treats it as a misguided anachronism that reflects more on contemporary ideas than the real past and—well, this is getting into territory I want to explore more thoroughly elsewhere. Regardless, this was a thought-provoking chapter for me and something I plan to take up in future writing (breaking that big essay up and bringing it into more direct engagement with this material). And Young’s other book, Fantasy and Science Fiction Medievalisms, which addresses medieval history's use in genre fiction more generally, promises to be an interesting perspective on the topic as well.
The book is written in a detached, academic style and I imagine it might not be the easiest read for people who aren’t fluent in the vocabulary of that style. I found it to be just about right, always using the right words for things and maintaining a careful perspective but never indulging in academese for its own sake—though that’s not to say there aren’t places where things could have been stated more clearly. While she hints at some larger Theory stuff in the intro, all of her methods and framing feel straightforwardly and comprehensibly postmodern.
Young eloquently and succinctly reviews the role of early fantasists like Tolkien and Howard in popularizing and reiterating racial origin myths, building both biological (racial essentialism and predestination) and cultural (Anglo-Saxonism) race narratives into the foundation of the fantasy genre. This argument is well-made and makes a convenient reference. I also really appreciate that she points to cultural racism as an equal partner to scientific racism, giving the humanities (philology, folklore studies, etc) their fair share of blame for something science, extrapolated from anthropology and biology, too often ends up scapegoated for exclusively even to this day. In a similar vein, she traces “orcs” as a sort of wastebasket taxon for racial othering over nearly a century of fantasy. The one thing Young refrained from doing, probably a difficult scholarly leap but something I think is interesting and important to investigate, is the role fantasy plays in perpetuating ideas about Whiteness in culture outside of fantasy circles. I want to claim that Tolkien not only established a legacy of racism in fantasy, but serves as a major point of exposure to that Anglo-Saxonist Whiteness narrative for people who may never read any other fantasy.
Another chapter discusses the growing body of deconstructive, anti-racist, postcolonial, and POC-centric fantasy, something I find very interesting. Young’s summary indicates that there is much more of this sort of work than you might imagine (and it is far from a comprehensive discussion) while at the same time showing how much work is left to be done, how many huge gaps left to fill. This was true throughout the book, but this chapter I felt most keenly that while it was satisfying, I wanted more. Hopefully more bloggers and academics take up Young’s lines of thought and apply them to other works. The final chapter confronted racism in the fan community, focusing on a big catalytic event just before my time, which was interesting historical context for me.
I found those arguments compelling but easy to swallow, basically fulfilling my existing biases. The one I had more trouble with, of course, was the one on “gritty fantasy.” Having the lens turned on your own ideology is the most engaging but also consternating part of postmodernism. For the month and a half before I read this book, I’ve been working on a long, dense, tortured essay that tries to extol gritty fantasy (or at least the iterations of it I like) as superior to their Sword-and-Sorcery predecessors for their embrace of historicism. Young’s chapter repeatedly deconstructs the idea that gritty fantasy brings a more historicist approach to race in particular. This is fine insofar as I can separate myself, a reader who wants to see fantasy embrace history even further and really explore the roles of marginalized groups and changing social constructions in the past, from the people Young seems to be targeting: reactionaries who appeal to a largely debunked narrative of a monochrome medieval Europe to excuse the progress gritty fantasy has not yet made to incorporate POC.
But this framing of the argument is more mine than Young’s, and she doesn’t seem to have a lot of patience for the appeal to historicism in general. She generally treats it as a misguided anachronism that reflects more on contemporary ideas than the real past and—well, this is getting into territory I want to explore more thoroughly elsewhere. Regardless, this was a thought-provoking chapter for me and something I plan to take up in future writing (breaking that big essay up and bringing it into more direct engagement with this material). And Young’s other book, Fantasy and Science Fiction Medievalisms, which addresses medieval history's use in genre fiction more generally, promises to be an interesting perspective on the topic as well.
December 30, 2019
I found this gem when researching Robert E Howard and couldn't help myself. While she does make some interesting points here and there, she tries to label Tolkien a racist in such a lazy fashion, just assuming that you already believe her and that no argument is necessary. Given the time he lived in, I could probably be convinced. She never even tried. So here we go. Its not going to be pretty.
It turns out to be little more than a self congratulating crusade against high fantasy literature for people who seem to be surprised that a genre based on European myth and history might have predominantly white protagonists. Eureka, you've struck gold there. The intellectual prowess to achieve such a feat is astounding. I'll forgive the complete lack of evidence and embrace your assumptions. Its surprising it didn't sell well, despite its catchy title.
Its no secret that Tolkien was a fan of Norse mythology and history. Middle earth contains many references to the Sagas. His creation of orcs is not a catch all for labeling foreigners as monsters. Lord of the Rings is a story about the world being saved by the unification of various cultures to put aside their differences and stop evil. Was Tolkien also prejudiced against short people and midgets? The Dwarves are blamed for much evil and greed in middle earth, but I guess Habits of Height doesn't have the same ring.
Celebrating your culture by writing a novel paying respect to history doesn't make you a racist either. Such a bizarre argument was made that I feel this needs to be said. Helen could probably write a convincing thesis about how people who prefer white over wheat bread are racists. "In his Dark Tower in Oxford, Tolkien created the orc. Into it he poured all his malice and cruelty... and racism."
Even in her dissection of Robert E Howard's Conan, merely having Mediterranean pirates that seem unfriendly and hostile is evidence of white supremacy underlying the entire genre. It couldn't be that they are murderous outlaws and hes in another part of the world. In this example she referred to them as the "blacks" of the scene, even though in the story they are probably based on Greeks or Egyptians. Even the story where he encounters a massive intelligent ape is construed to be a Black vs White moment with little to no context for it. It seems that she is incapable of seeing anymore than two races, "black" and "white."She chooses which is "white" and which is "black" based on which would suit her statement. She puts words in the mouths of the authors and makes what she wants of it.
The Writer seems to think that her position and belief is self evident. Assumption is being presented as fact. At best, it comes across as ignorant and condescending. At worst, it comes across as an insulting cash grab to prey on the social issues of the day by a writer desperate to be taken seriously. How American progressive.
It turns out to be little more than a self congratulating crusade against high fantasy literature for people who seem to be surprised that a genre based on European myth and history might have predominantly white protagonists. Eureka, you've struck gold there. The intellectual prowess to achieve such a feat is astounding. I'll forgive the complete lack of evidence and embrace your assumptions. Its surprising it didn't sell well, despite its catchy title.
Its no secret that Tolkien was a fan of Norse mythology and history. Middle earth contains many references to the Sagas. His creation of orcs is not a catch all for labeling foreigners as monsters. Lord of the Rings is a story about the world being saved by the unification of various cultures to put aside their differences and stop evil. Was Tolkien also prejudiced against short people and midgets? The Dwarves are blamed for much evil and greed in middle earth, but I guess Habits of Height doesn't have the same ring.
Celebrating your culture by writing a novel paying respect to history doesn't make you a racist either. Such a bizarre argument was made that I feel this needs to be said. Helen could probably write a convincing thesis about how people who prefer white over wheat bread are racists. "In his Dark Tower in Oxford, Tolkien created the orc. Into it he poured all his malice and cruelty... and racism."
Even in her dissection of Robert E Howard's Conan, merely having Mediterranean pirates that seem unfriendly and hostile is evidence of white supremacy underlying the entire genre. It couldn't be that they are murderous outlaws and hes in another part of the world. In this example she referred to them as the "blacks" of the scene, even though in the story they are probably based on Greeks or Egyptians. Even the story where he encounters a massive intelligent ape is construed to be a Black vs White moment with little to no context for it. It seems that she is incapable of seeing anymore than two races, "black" and "white."She chooses which is "white" and which is "black" based on which would suit her statement. She puts words in the mouths of the authors and makes what she wants of it.
The Writer seems to think that her position and belief is self evident. Assumption is being presented as fact. At best, it comes across as ignorant and condescending. At worst, it comes across as an insulting cash grab to prey on the social issues of the day by a writer desperate to be taken seriously. How American progressive.
September 10, 2018
I had more issues with Young's book than I'm able to cover in a simple review at Goodreads. It is worth reading. It is informative and well researched. However, she makes some mistakes regarding both J.R.R. Tolkien and Robert E. Howard that could have been avoided with a little deeper research. REH did not get his philosophy/ideas about barbarism versus civilization from Tacitus as Young suggests on page 26. Sometimes Young cites sources in Howard and Tolkien studies by people who are not experts in those fields.
In chapter 5, Young states, "Colonisation [sic] and its legacies are not widely addressed in the popular Fantasy genre; it is not alone in this failing however." (p. 114) Why is it necessary for popular fantasy to address colonization? Young seems to think because science fiction is replete with colonization stories. This is her reason that the genre should address it. However, the sci-fi genre's colonization is not related to the kind of colonization I think Young is faulting it for not addressing. This left me scratching my head.
There are a few other things that left me wondering what she was getting at, etc. but as I mentioned above, too many to add to a simple book review at Goodreads. She does have a nice command of gaming, media, film, etc. when she's dealing with those issues, and she sheds some nice light on the progress of those media.
Overall, the book is worth reading. Unfortunately, at the price tag that Routledge placed on it will only ensure that it goes out of print fairly soon. I'm guessing this is Young's dissertation. I wished Routledge had let Young leave some bio info on herself so we, the readers, could know a little about her background and field of study.
In chapter 5, Young states, "Colonisation [sic] and its legacies are not widely addressed in the popular Fantasy genre; it is not alone in this failing however." (p. 114) Why is it necessary for popular fantasy to address colonization? Young seems to think because science fiction is replete with colonization stories. This is her reason that the genre should address it. However, the sci-fi genre's colonization is not related to the kind of colonization I think Young is faulting it for not addressing. This left me scratching my head.
There are a few other things that left me wondering what she was getting at, etc. but as I mentioned above, too many to add to a simple book review at Goodreads. She does have a nice command of gaming, media, film, etc. when she's dealing with those issues, and she sheds some nice light on the progress of those media.
Overall, the book is worth reading. Unfortunately, at the price tag that Routledge placed on it will only ensure that it goes out of print fairly soon. I'm guessing this is Young's dissertation. I wished Routledge had let Young leave some bio info on herself so we, the readers, could know a little about her background and field of study.
April 13, 2016
Recommended you check out if interested in race, fantasy literature or fantasy pop culture. Young provides a convincing argument of how whiteness and fantasy have been so carefully woven together that it seems difficult, sometimes almost impossible, to pry them apart. The title is perhaps misplaced as she explores video games, movies, and other media, in addition to literature. This renders it a bit too expansive but is still a welcome exploration.
March 3, 2026
A phenomenal undertaking, just somewhat falling short in its discussions of fandom.
February 19, 2017
This book offered a lot of interesting points on race in books that I have loved for a great part of my life.
I picked it up for my BA project which is on diversity (specifically race) in Young Adult fiction. I know that this book focuses on Fantasy, but I decided to read it anyways, as I figured some of the points might still be applicable.
I really liked this book, not only because it worked with books I personally love (The Lord of the Rings) but also great books I want to read at some point (Pratchett's Discworld series, GRRMs massively popular A Song of Ice and Fire) as well as adaptations of books, comic and short stories, both movies and games.
But also because I think it is an aspect that gets overlooked a lot in literary studies. Not so much race and racial issues, but fantasy as a genre and as a "working field".
I ended up giving it 4/5 stars, which might be largely due to me only skimming the second half of the book. But I did write down some great points and insights - plus, my bibliography just got a huge boost with all the books and articles mentioned in this book that I think might be helpful. I think they might know me on sight at the library soon.
I'd reccomend reading this book even if Fantasy isn't something you're all that interested in. I still think the conclusions hold and they're worth thinking about.
I picked it up for my BA project which is on diversity (specifically race) in Young Adult fiction. I know that this book focuses on Fantasy, but I decided to read it anyways, as I figured some of the points might still be applicable.
I really liked this book, not only because it worked with books I personally love (The Lord of the Rings) but also great books I want to read at some point (Pratchett's Discworld series, GRRMs massively popular A Song of Ice and Fire) as well as adaptations of books, comic and short stories, both movies and games.
But also because I think it is an aspect that gets overlooked a lot in literary studies. Not so much race and racial issues, but fantasy as a genre and as a "working field".
I ended up giving it 4/5 stars, which might be largely due to me only skimming the second half of the book. But I did write down some great points and insights - plus, my bibliography just got a huge boost with all the books and articles mentioned in this book that I think might be helpful. I think they might know me on sight at the library soon.
I'd reccomend reading this book even if Fantasy isn't something you're all that interested in. I still think the conclusions hold and they're worth thinking about.
September 29, 2024
3.5 stars
This was a very good deep-dive into race in fantasy literature. Young gives no quarter to ridiculous arguments, tearing down "plausible deniability" to demonstrate just how deeply racial logics pervade every corner of fantasy. I think her analysis of Gritty Fantasy and monsters were particularly strong.
That said, I think this text lacked intersectionality. Issues of gender, sexuality, class, and ability were largely set aside in favor of exploring purely racial arguments. But of course, Crenshaw taught us that no argument is ever purely racial. Young occasionally pointed out strides made in favor of queer or female inclusion in SFF as a way of showing how race has been left behind; she did so without acknowledgment of how those categories overlap. The book overall is also slightly out of date. This isn't the book's fault in any way, but many of the claims made about internet fan culture look very different in 2024 than they did in 2016.
Also, Young needs a better copyeditor. This book was full of missing words, minor grammatical mistakes, etc. They don't change the quality of her argument whatsoever, but they should not be present in an academic text published by ROUTLEDGE for fuck's sake.
This was a very good deep-dive into race in fantasy literature. Young gives no quarter to ridiculous arguments, tearing down "plausible deniability" to demonstrate just how deeply racial logics pervade every corner of fantasy. I think her analysis of Gritty Fantasy and monsters were particularly strong.
That said, I think this text lacked intersectionality. Issues of gender, sexuality, class, and ability were largely set aside in favor of exploring purely racial arguments. But of course, Crenshaw taught us that no argument is ever purely racial. Young occasionally pointed out strides made in favor of queer or female inclusion in SFF as a way of showing how race has been left behind; she did so without acknowledgment of how those categories overlap. The book overall is also slightly out of date. This isn't the book's fault in any way, but many of the claims made about internet fan culture look very different in 2024 than they did in 2016.
Also, Young needs a better copyeditor. This book was full of missing words, minor grammatical mistakes, etc. They don't change the quality of her argument whatsoever, but they should not be present in an academic text published by ROUTLEDGE for fuck's sake.
April 18, 2022
Talk about projection.
I decided to read this book because of several references to it and damn did it prove all of my worst fears right. Not because I think the author is right, but because I think she is everything that she criticizes. It is so bad that she not only grossly misinteprets things, she basically ignores everything that doesn´t fit and shows clear signs of looking only what fits her viewpoint, which ironically is exactly the same that she critizes.
It started early on to be clear what was going on as she is an author writing about the whiteness of Fantasy and clearly restricts her range/definition of Fantasy primarily, if not exclusively, to what she calls middle ages Europe, which really seems to be middle ages England again. In other words: she chose a range that automatically adhers to her own bias.
Naturally, she never defines what "Whiteness" is, and it is clear that she is so "eurocentric" that she doesn´t name any fantasy work outside of it, and considered that she basically argues that among the early pulp publishing there could be "authors of color" since only pen names are often know, I made one hypothesis: By the end of this book, she will mention no positive influence on change from outside the US/UK. And I was right. And I made this hypothesis when I wasn´t even 10 % into the book.
Her weird assumptions started early on when she considers Tacitus to be an inspiration for the elves, dwarves, woses and orcs in Tolkien's works? Based on what? This is literally the first time I ever heard of that and since she has already made so many questionable claims at this point, I really questioned this. Seems rather like someone sees some similarities and so considers a point of origin without providing evidence. At this point I suspected that she would equate orcs with "black people" like so many others. And I was right again.
Furthermore, not only were her arguments regarding an influence by Tacitus on Lord of the Rings really vague (chosing a leader by combat merit and consent is not unique) so far, but she, of course, comes with "the enemy is non-white and non-european" in regards to Sauron´s army. This not only ommits the many "white" people on the side of evil beforehand (e.g. Saruman and the Dunelandings) but ignores that the variags were never described and might be based on eastern europeans. Then she equated Frodo not believing that Gollum is of hobbit-kind with people believing that Africans were closer to apes, which led me to suspect that the problem is with her. You see, Gollum didn´t even look like a Hobbit at this time any more, no wonder Frodo couldn´t believe it.
She might be right in regards to the racism of the world of the original Conan adventures, but her tendency to downplay or dismiss other readings, especially of works coming after the original author, as well as her own racialized reading of things like the description of orcs with "swart" faces, red tongue and later crook-legged and long arms (which bears more of a resemblance to devils) makes her unreliable. The author ignores or downplays everything that contradicts her notions of the fantasy books she mentions being racist, she racializes herself constantly, and not to mention, she is so anglocentric she doesn´t even realize it.
It doesn´t surprise me at all that she mentions Bradley and LeGuinn just to basically ignore them and claiming that readers weren´t ready for the brown-skinned hero Get and seems to complain that some didn´t notice. And that Samuel R. Delany she mentions is mostly writinge science fiction, At least Charles R. Saunders wrote fantasy. She claims that Delany and Saunders create worlds "in which the racial logics that structure so many Fantasy worlds do not exist." But does that mean that there are no racial logics or simply none that she acknowledges? Saunders has his black and brown-skinned people enslave pale, yellow haired barbarians after all. Shortly afterwards I made a decision: I would skip every chapter dealing with media that I don´t know. At least for a while. Because there I can´t check her statements and she had made so many mistakes and possibly lied already that I could no longer believe anything she wrote. However, it is not only noticeable that she regards the 2011 Conan movie still as Whiteness despite the actors, calls out Legend of Earthsea by Sci-Fi for whitewashing but not Tales from Earthsea by Ghibli, and even more. She states that in the Lord of the Rings films "the nine members of the Fellowship.... were all played by White actors" (true) "while, as Sue Kim points out, the evil Uruk-Hai were played by Maori and Pacific Islander actors." That is a lie! Respectively, word play because she doesn´t say that "all of them" were. Because I checked the list of the cast, and only some were Maori, others were clearly white.
And she acts as if it is some big revelation that Skyrim, Dragon Age and Game of Thrones aren´t actually medieval realism. Even though you'd think all these wizards, dragons, demons and spells would make that clear to everyone. But lets not kid ourselves here, there are too many white people in it for her liking, that is all. And then she mentioned authors who problematize the meaning of "race" for the middle ages, so? She still claimed the times as racist. So what does she care? And when she states that the association of species with race in Fantasy is problematic, I can only sneer at that. Because the author did exactly the same thing constantly here. And did it occur to her that the focus on medieval england (with only slow spreading out into other parts of Europe) is due to historical cultural roots as well as language acessability? That is the same thing you see all over the world. But I suspect that she doesn´t care. And just when I was willing to give her credit where it is due, for pointing out that neither side was providing evidence in the debate about the casting in Game of Thrones, she shoots herself in the foot by not mentioning that a criticism of the casting for Xaro Xhoan Daxos was also that they gave a black man a slave background, not just that he was changed from white and gay to black and straight.
Granted, that was nothing in comparison to what was written in the chapter on orcs. That one was so bad it basically started with a lie: She claims that Orcs in Fantasy came into existence through Tolkien, but Tolkien was basing them of mythology, albeit there would probably some wordplay to excuse that away. Not only do I have to question what about the depiction of 4th edition D&D orcs looks "not-White" to the author, but claiming that these "bear a considerable esemblance to the Uruk-hai of Jackson´s The Lord of the Rings films" is just lying. At best there is a vague resemblance in the shape of the body and the clothes, but the differences in muscle mass, skin color, facial features and especially the style of the clothes is enormous. And either the author or this Sue Kim that she is quoting, is just lying. The orcs in the Lord of the Rings movies weren´t just brown and red, they were shades of gray, green, kinda yellowish or pink,They didn´t add all of that in the hobbit movies and they think the hair of the Uruk-hai looks like dreadlocks. Combine that with her own footnotes stating that the Warhammer orcs speak like english soccer hooligans and you know that she is lying when she once again brings in associating Orcs from Tolkien and the movies with black people. And the actual Black people in Middle Earth she only mentioned once and never again. And associating World of Warcraft orcs with "blackness" is even more ridiculous, they have no african (or african american) cultural or physical traits. And apparently to her, whatever an author does with orcs, it is always racist stereotypes to her, not that she ever says what race or why, which made me finally convinced that she is projecting her own racism on others and their work. Her false assumptions are also based on her ridiculous amount of anglocentrism, even though she constantly states "eurocentrism" (she barely mentions anything outside the english speaking world). To give an example: Being displaced is nothing specific to descendents of the transatlantic slave trade. And even when authors flesh the orcs out, the moment anything is used from non-European cultures apparanetly she calls it racialization, stereotypes and cultural appropriation. And apparently she thinks indigenous people are always environmentalist. If even the lore she states would be right, e.g. orcs in World of Warcraft weren´t exiled from Draenor THEY DESTROYED IT!
I was so happy when that chapter was finally over. And I stick with by hypothesis, this woman is the one who others orcs, racializes them and associates them with stereotypes of black people, despite Orcs being overwhelmingly European in origin. But for her nothing seems to matter in that regard. She only seems to associate "Whiteness" with not being racialized.
When her chapter on "Postcolonialism" came, I was sure there would be a bunch of bullshit. And it started early. According to her Anglo-Saxonism is a key foundation of Whiteness, but that means that all the examples of fantasy worlds based on France or Germany, Italy and Greece, would not be showing Whiteness then as they are not Anglo-Saxon. And since she mentioned several American fantasy shows, I wondered whether she ever mentioned the Last Airbender cartoon show and so I checked and she only did once in a footnote to a complain about whitewashing, that is all that show was worth to this goddman author! Keep in mind, she constantly stated that there should be shows based on non-European cultures but she never focuses on, or mentions, any. And this cartoon show was anything but obscure. This was just blatant hypocrisy of hers. And that North American indigenous cultures have had more representation in Anglophone Fantasy fiction than those of "other parts of world such as South America and Australia," is really not surprisinge. There is not much anglophone down in South America and far less people in Australia than in North America, so naturally there is less anglophone access. That is what happens if you are as anglocentric as she is, you completely ignore that important fact.
Btw. that was no spelling mistake of mine, the quoted text missed a word."
And, as expected, when she comes to authors who allegedly break away from the "whiteness" and engage with postcolonialism, they are from the anglosphere, primarily from the US. The first author she mentions who engages in "critical ways with colonisation and imperialism in Fantasy" is from New York City, the next is also from the US. I will not name them, because I don´t want to expose them, this should be all about this book here. And when the author talks about postcolonialism, does that include adressing chinese, japanese, turkish etc. colonialism? Or is it just the anglosphere again that may be expanded to other european colonial powers because the author feels like it? The other authors that she claims change stuff in fantasy are from: Canada, US, born in US grown up in France, US, US, born and raised in the Carribean, got to the US in her teens. Yep, nothing fishy about this selection at all. And funny how earlier she accused authors of othering and racializing etc. when they wrote about cultures not their own, but not here. And trust me, the last author in her list, does racialize, I have come across him in Marvel Comics, he is plainly racist. Afterwards she criticizes the tv-show Buffy, her next author is from England, shits on the shows Angel, Charmed, True Blood, Lost Girl (what is that?), Once Upon a Time, Grimm and I guess also Sleepy Hollow. How predictable. And no, no Last Airbender or American Dragon here. No Asians allowed apparently. And she is not the only one who is so sloppy here, the people she quotes are not different. To give a further example: The jiang shi is not a vampire, it is a revenant yes, but not a vampire. And I wouldn´t call those bestial, neither are many Eastern European vampires. How do these idiots get this wrong? Oh right, they don´t care.
When she came to the TV show Grimm, it was really bad. She claimed that it was "littered with markers of German-ness" and has references that are "identifiable as germanic nonetheless". Is she referring to germanic languages? Because english is germanic as well? Or is she one of the idiots equating germans with germanics? And not only was their "german" horrible in the show, their creatures had no resemblance to the stories of the Brothers Grimm in almost all cases, nor grittier than many stories themselves. And according to her "Grimm is "fulfilling precisely the purpose that the Brother´s Grimm attempted with their original collection: locating/creating the mythology of the Germanic peoples which, they believed, had been suppressed by conversion to Christianity and the rationalism of the Enlightenment." If that is actually true, they sucked at that as several of their stories were deeply christian and became more in their later editions. And funny how what Grimm did was never called cultural appropriation by the author, even though it was a textbook example of cultural vandalism claiming authenticity.
And when I read how she stated that the presence of people of color is necessary to break Fantasy´s habit of Whiteness, I was thinking: Didn´t know that all the fantasy fiction produced in Asia and Africa was considered white. Then again, why should an anglocentrist like her care about those continents? Her chapter on fan communities I skipped as much as her prior texts about the Conan books. The author has lied way too often. And I am firmly convinced that she is a white supremacist now as she mentioned not a single non-European, heck, barely any non-Anglo influence on popular culture. Not even the Last Airbender cartoon was cited as a positive example. And she is undeniably a hypocrite, to give an example: Once she considered to have red hair be connected to supernatural powers as biological essentialism and racialization, but in a later example having magic be linked to being born with dreadlocks is fine... typical hypocrisy.
I was so happy when I was finally done with this author. It has been a while since I read such a racist book.
I decided to read this book because of several references to it and damn did it prove all of my worst fears right. Not because I think the author is right, but because I think she is everything that she criticizes. It is so bad that she not only grossly misinteprets things, she basically ignores everything that doesn´t fit and shows clear signs of looking only what fits her viewpoint, which ironically is exactly the same that she critizes.
It started early on to be clear what was going on as she is an author writing about the whiteness of Fantasy and clearly restricts her range/definition of Fantasy primarily, if not exclusively, to what she calls middle ages Europe, which really seems to be middle ages England again. In other words: she chose a range that automatically adhers to her own bias.
Naturally, she never defines what "Whiteness" is, and it is clear that she is so "eurocentric" that she doesn´t name any fantasy work outside of it, and considered that she basically argues that among the early pulp publishing there could be "authors of color" since only pen names are often know, I made one hypothesis: By the end of this book, she will mention no positive influence on change from outside the US/UK. And I was right. And I made this hypothesis when I wasn´t even 10 % into the book.
Her weird assumptions started early on when she considers Tacitus to be an inspiration for the elves, dwarves, woses and orcs in Tolkien's works? Based on what? This is literally the first time I ever heard of that and since she has already made so many questionable claims at this point, I really questioned this. Seems rather like someone sees some similarities and so considers a point of origin without providing evidence. At this point I suspected that she would equate orcs with "black people" like so many others. And I was right again.
Furthermore, not only were her arguments regarding an influence by Tacitus on Lord of the Rings really vague (chosing a leader by combat merit and consent is not unique) so far, but she, of course, comes with "the enemy is non-white and non-european" in regards to Sauron´s army. This not only ommits the many "white" people on the side of evil beforehand (e.g. Saruman and the Dunelandings) but ignores that the variags were never described and might be based on eastern europeans. Then she equated Frodo not believing that Gollum is of hobbit-kind with people believing that Africans were closer to apes, which led me to suspect that the problem is with her. You see, Gollum didn´t even look like a Hobbit at this time any more, no wonder Frodo couldn´t believe it.
She might be right in regards to the racism of the world of the original Conan adventures, but her tendency to downplay or dismiss other readings, especially of works coming after the original author, as well as her own racialized reading of things like the description of orcs with "swart" faces, red tongue and later crook-legged and long arms (which bears more of a resemblance to devils) makes her unreliable. The author ignores or downplays everything that contradicts her notions of the fantasy books she mentions being racist, she racializes herself constantly, and not to mention, she is so anglocentric she doesn´t even realize it.
It doesn´t surprise me at all that she mentions Bradley and LeGuinn just to basically ignore them and claiming that readers weren´t ready for the brown-skinned hero Get and seems to complain that some didn´t notice. And that Samuel R. Delany she mentions is mostly writinge science fiction, At least Charles R. Saunders wrote fantasy. She claims that Delany and Saunders create worlds "in which the racial logics that structure so many Fantasy worlds do not exist." But does that mean that there are no racial logics or simply none that she acknowledges? Saunders has his black and brown-skinned people enslave pale, yellow haired barbarians after all. Shortly afterwards I made a decision: I would skip every chapter dealing with media that I don´t know. At least for a while. Because there I can´t check her statements and she had made so many mistakes and possibly lied already that I could no longer believe anything she wrote. However, it is not only noticeable that she regards the 2011 Conan movie still as Whiteness despite the actors, calls out Legend of Earthsea by Sci-Fi for whitewashing but not Tales from Earthsea by Ghibli, and even more. She states that in the Lord of the Rings films "the nine members of the Fellowship.... were all played by White actors" (true) "while, as Sue Kim points out, the evil Uruk-Hai were played by Maori and Pacific Islander actors." That is a lie! Respectively, word play because she doesn´t say that "all of them" were. Because I checked the list of the cast, and only some were Maori, others were clearly white.
And she acts as if it is some big revelation that Skyrim, Dragon Age and Game of Thrones aren´t actually medieval realism. Even though you'd think all these wizards, dragons, demons and spells would make that clear to everyone. But lets not kid ourselves here, there are too many white people in it for her liking, that is all. And then she mentioned authors who problematize the meaning of "race" for the middle ages, so? She still claimed the times as racist. So what does she care? And when she states that the association of species with race in Fantasy is problematic, I can only sneer at that. Because the author did exactly the same thing constantly here. And did it occur to her that the focus on medieval england (with only slow spreading out into other parts of Europe) is due to historical cultural roots as well as language acessability? That is the same thing you see all over the world. But I suspect that she doesn´t care. And just when I was willing to give her credit where it is due, for pointing out that neither side was providing evidence in the debate about the casting in Game of Thrones, she shoots herself in the foot by not mentioning that a criticism of the casting for Xaro Xhoan Daxos was also that they gave a black man a slave background, not just that he was changed from white and gay to black and straight.
Granted, that was nothing in comparison to what was written in the chapter on orcs. That one was so bad it basically started with a lie: She claims that Orcs in Fantasy came into existence through Tolkien, but Tolkien was basing them of mythology, albeit there would probably some wordplay to excuse that away. Not only do I have to question what about the depiction of 4th edition D&D orcs looks "not-White" to the author, but claiming that these "bear a considerable esemblance to the Uruk-hai of Jackson´s The Lord of the Rings films" is just lying. At best there is a vague resemblance in the shape of the body and the clothes, but the differences in muscle mass, skin color, facial features and especially the style of the clothes is enormous. And either the author or this Sue Kim that she is quoting, is just lying. The orcs in the Lord of the Rings movies weren´t just brown and red, they were shades of gray, green, kinda yellowish or pink,They didn´t add all of that in the hobbit movies and they think the hair of the Uruk-hai looks like dreadlocks. Combine that with her own footnotes stating that the Warhammer orcs speak like english soccer hooligans and you know that she is lying when she once again brings in associating Orcs from Tolkien and the movies with black people. And the actual Black people in Middle Earth she only mentioned once and never again. And associating World of Warcraft orcs with "blackness" is even more ridiculous, they have no african (or african american) cultural or physical traits. And apparently to her, whatever an author does with orcs, it is always racist stereotypes to her, not that she ever says what race or why, which made me finally convinced that she is projecting her own racism on others and their work. Her false assumptions are also based on her ridiculous amount of anglocentrism, even though she constantly states "eurocentrism" (she barely mentions anything outside the english speaking world). To give an example: Being displaced is nothing specific to descendents of the transatlantic slave trade. And even when authors flesh the orcs out, the moment anything is used from non-European cultures apparanetly she calls it racialization, stereotypes and cultural appropriation. And apparently she thinks indigenous people are always environmentalist. If even the lore she states would be right, e.g. orcs in World of Warcraft weren´t exiled from Draenor THEY DESTROYED IT!
I was so happy when that chapter was finally over. And I stick with by hypothesis, this woman is the one who others orcs, racializes them and associates them with stereotypes of black people, despite Orcs being overwhelmingly European in origin. But for her nothing seems to matter in that regard. She only seems to associate "Whiteness" with not being racialized.
When her chapter on "Postcolonialism" came, I was sure there would be a bunch of bullshit. And it started early. According to her Anglo-Saxonism is a key foundation of Whiteness, but that means that all the examples of fantasy worlds based on France or Germany, Italy and Greece, would not be showing Whiteness then as they are not Anglo-Saxon. And since she mentioned several American fantasy shows, I wondered whether she ever mentioned the Last Airbender cartoon show and so I checked and she only did once in a footnote to a complain about whitewashing, that is all that show was worth to this goddman author! Keep in mind, she constantly stated that there should be shows based on non-European cultures but she never focuses on, or mentions, any. And this cartoon show was anything but obscure. This was just blatant hypocrisy of hers. And that North American indigenous cultures have had more representation in Anglophone Fantasy fiction than those of "other parts of world such as South America and Australia," is really not surprisinge. There is not much anglophone down in South America and far less people in Australia than in North America, so naturally there is less anglophone access. That is what happens if you are as anglocentric as she is, you completely ignore that important fact.
Btw. that was no spelling mistake of mine, the quoted text missed a word."
And, as expected, when she comes to authors who allegedly break away from the "whiteness" and engage with postcolonialism, they are from the anglosphere, primarily from the US. The first author she mentions who engages in "critical ways with colonisation and imperialism in Fantasy" is from New York City, the next is also from the US. I will not name them, because I don´t want to expose them, this should be all about this book here. And when the author talks about postcolonialism, does that include adressing chinese, japanese, turkish etc. colonialism? Or is it just the anglosphere again that may be expanded to other european colonial powers because the author feels like it? The other authors that she claims change stuff in fantasy are from: Canada, US, born in US grown up in France, US, US, born and raised in the Carribean, got to the US in her teens. Yep, nothing fishy about this selection at all. And funny how earlier she accused authors of othering and racializing etc. when they wrote about cultures not their own, but not here. And trust me, the last author in her list, does racialize, I have come across him in Marvel Comics, he is plainly racist. Afterwards she criticizes the tv-show Buffy, her next author is from England, shits on the shows Angel, Charmed, True Blood, Lost Girl (what is that?), Once Upon a Time, Grimm and I guess also Sleepy Hollow. How predictable. And no, no Last Airbender or American Dragon here. No Asians allowed apparently. And she is not the only one who is so sloppy here, the people she quotes are not different. To give a further example: The jiang shi is not a vampire, it is a revenant yes, but not a vampire. And I wouldn´t call those bestial, neither are many Eastern European vampires. How do these idiots get this wrong? Oh right, they don´t care.
When she came to the TV show Grimm, it was really bad. She claimed that it was "littered with markers of German-ness" and has references that are "identifiable as germanic nonetheless". Is she referring to germanic languages? Because english is germanic as well? Or is she one of the idiots equating germans with germanics? And not only was their "german" horrible in the show, their creatures had no resemblance to the stories of the Brothers Grimm in almost all cases, nor grittier than many stories themselves. And according to her "Grimm is "fulfilling precisely the purpose that the Brother´s Grimm attempted with their original collection: locating/creating the mythology of the Germanic peoples which, they believed, had been suppressed by conversion to Christianity and the rationalism of the Enlightenment." If that is actually true, they sucked at that as several of their stories were deeply christian and became more in their later editions. And funny how what Grimm did was never called cultural appropriation by the author, even though it was a textbook example of cultural vandalism claiming authenticity.
And when I read how she stated that the presence of people of color is necessary to break Fantasy´s habit of Whiteness, I was thinking: Didn´t know that all the fantasy fiction produced in Asia and Africa was considered white. Then again, why should an anglocentrist like her care about those continents? Her chapter on fan communities I skipped as much as her prior texts about the Conan books. The author has lied way too often. And I am firmly convinced that she is a white supremacist now as she mentioned not a single non-European, heck, barely any non-Anglo influence on popular culture. Not even the Last Airbender cartoon was cited as a positive example. And she is undeniably a hypocrite, to give an example: Once she considered to have red hair be connected to supernatural powers as biological essentialism and racialization, but in a later example having magic be linked to being born with dreadlocks is fine... typical hypocrisy.
I was so happy when I was finally done with this author. It has been a while since I read such a racist book.
March 31, 2020
A Necessary and Interesting Book Marred by Poor Editing
Helen Young’s Race and Popular Fantasy Literature: Habits of Whiteness (2016) has a lot of accurate, interesting, and necessary things to say. Young addresses a relevant theme (conscious and unconscious traditions of racism in popular fantasy), explores a wide range of texts (including novels and short stories, movies and TV shows, and paper-based games and video games), and writes from the perspective of both creators and audiences. Her book is readable and academic--its seven main chapters averaging about 110 footnotes each. Here is an outline of those chapters.
Chapter 1: Founding Fantasy: J. R. R. Tolkien and Robert E. Howard
Anyone who has read The Lord of the Rings and Conan should be aware of the thesis of the chapter, that the foundational worlds of high/epic fantasy and sword and sorcery, Middle-earth and Hyborea, are dominated by Whiteness. Young also exposes the attempts by later writers and fans to explain race in Tolkien and Howard as being typical of an earlier less enlightened era.
Chapter 2: Forming Habits: Derivation, Imitation, and Adaptation
Explores the continuing habits of Whiteness by the successors to Tolkien and Howard in fiction like Fritz Leiber (Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser), Michael Moorcock (Elric), and Robert Jordan (The Eye of the Wheel), comics like Dark Horse’s Conan the Barbarian, and games like Dungeons & Dragons and Age of Conan, with “counter-voices” from Ursula K. Le Guin (A Wizard of Earthsea), Samuel R. Delany (Neveryon), and Charles Saunders (Imaro) .
Chapter 3: The Real Middle Ages: Gritty Fantasy
Explains how writers like George R. R. Martin (GOT) and gamemakers like Bioware (Dragon Age) have tried to make their pseudo-medieval fantasy more “realistic” and less “escapist” than cleaner Tolkienesque “high” fantasy. Young points out that such gritty popular fantasy is still marked by “habits of Whiteness” and that typical defenses of such Whiteness like “The middle ages didn’t have black people” are inaccurate historically and inapplicable to fantasy worlds with dragons, giants, and white walkers. She argues that Whiteness fantasy fans say that gritty fantasy worlds are only fictional after all (so lighten up you pc fascists!) but also believe them to “represent the Middle Ages as they ‘really were’: full of violence, rape, mud, blood, and White people.” Young also connects the Whiteness of gritty fantasy to the white nationalism of some of its fans.
Chapter 4: Orcs and Otherness: Monsters on Page and Screen
Examines the depiction of Orcs in post-Tolkien fantasy, demonstrating that they’re usually coded as black and or Native American, even when writers like Mary Gentle (Grunts!) and Terry Pratchett (Unseen Academicals) try to do something new and sympathetic with them. Young explores paper and dice games like Dungeons & Dragons, miniature games like Warhammer, and computer games like World of Warcraft and summarizes a nuanced variation by R. A. Salvatore in his novel The Orc King.
Chapter 5: Popular Culture Postcolonialism
This chapter looks at popular fantasy and its treatment of (post)colonialism, with detailed examples from David Heath Justice (Way of Thorn and Thunder), Naomi Novik (Temeraire), and J. K. Jemison (Inheritance), explaining why there are so few indigenous writers of fantasy compared to the many White authors who write about indigenous peoples. The chapter argues that while future-oriented sf has often dealt with (post)colonialist themes, fantasy has tended to look back at the pre-colonial middle-ages, though 21st-century fantasy has begun critiquing colonialism and racism.
Chapter 6: Relocating Roots: Urban Fantasy
Anatomizes race in urban fantasy, which Young calls “sub-urban fantasy” because it often concerns fantastic beings and realms existing right beneath our everyday real world. She analyzes TV shows like Grimm (typical in being European-based and White) and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (atypical in featuring three African American main characters) and fiction like Aaronovitch’s River of London books, and introduces the cultural appropriation topic developed in Chapter 7, asserting that the key point is how authors write about different cultures and colors, not the culture and color of the authors.
Chapter 7: Breaking Habits and Digital Communication
Focuses on the online RaceFail 09 debate between fans and authors like Jay Lake, John Scalzi, and Elizabeth Bear about white authors of SFF writing stereotypical characters of color and engaging in cultural appropriation. It began with a minor backlash against race in Bear’s novel Blood and Iron, which led to a backlash against the backlash, and so on. This chapter is disappointing, because it gives almost no detail about Bear’s depiction of race so that it’s difficult to appreciate the debate. I did like Young’s analysis of an unusual set of texts--online communications in a community of readers and writers.
Young’s book should be read and discussed. Although she is balanced in her tone and understands how anti-pc people think, she favors more main characters of color in fantasy more accurately depicted. She points out important things concerning race in American culture, like that at the time her book was written, no writer of color had won a Hugo award for best novel, only two had won a Nebula for best novel, and only a few had won World Fantasy Awards, and that characters of color comprise only 10% of those appearing in television shows but 40% of those in the overall population. She also explains how “Fantasy’s habits of Whiteness” are gradually changing as more writers of color get into the genre.
Unfortunately, pervasive typos and grammar errors mar Young’s book, so many that I started noting them down more than Young’s good ideas. There are missing possessive apostrophes (“Saunders world”) and missing articles (“Since early 1970s”), incorrect plural nouns (“as the first three chapters of this books demonstrate”) and incorrect verb forms (“The early editions of D&D show that they are tribal but giving very few details of their way of life”). Many wrong words spelled correctly (e.g., beings not begins, form not from, planned not played, identify not identity, tape not tap). And umpteen comma splices (“Belit thus becomes an emancipator from the evils of history and commerce simultaneously, her physical and symbolic Whiteness is literally a beacon of liberation which emblematizes her superiority over her followers”). Such errors are legion. They excruciated my experience with the book (published by Routledge).
People interested in race in popular anglophone fantasy should read Young’s book, and I hope she'll be able to publish a revised edition in future.
Helen Young’s Race and Popular Fantasy Literature: Habits of Whiteness (2016) has a lot of accurate, interesting, and necessary things to say. Young addresses a relevant theme (conscious and unconscious traditions of racism in popular fantasy), explores a wide range of texts (including novels and short stories, movies and TV shows, and paper-based games and video games), and writes from the perspective of both creators and audiences. Her book is readable and academic--its seven main chapters averaging about 110 footnotes each. Here is an outline of those chapters.
Chapter 1: Founding Fantasy: J. R. R. Tolkien and Robert E. Howard
Anyone who has read The Lord of the Rings and Conan should be aware of the thesis of the chapter, that the foundational worlds of high/epic fantasy and sword and sorcery, Middle-earth and Hyborea, are dominated by Whiteness. Young also exposes the attempts by later writers and fans to explain race in Tolkien and Howard as being typical of an earlier less enlightened era.
Chapter 2: Forming Habits: Derivation, Imitation, and Adaptation
Explores the continuing habits of Whiteness by the successors to Tolkien and Howard in fiction like Fritz Leiber (Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser), Michael Moorcock (Elric), and Robert Jordan (The Eye of the Wheel), comics like Dark Horse’s Conan the Barbarian, and games like Dungeons & Dragons and Age of Conan, with “counter-voices” from Ursula K. Le Guin (A Wizard of Earthsea), Samuel R. Delany (Neveryon), and Charles Saunders (Imaro) .
Chapter 3: The Real Middle Ages: Gritty Fantasy
Explains how writers like George R. R. Martin (GOT) and gamemakers like Bioware (Dragon Age) have tried to make their pseudo-medieval fantasy more “realistic” and less “escapist” than cleaner Tolkienesque “high” fantasy. Young points out that such gritty popular fantasy is still marked by “habits of Whiteness” and that typical defenses of such Whiteness like “The middle ages didn’t have black people” are inaccurate historically and inapplicable to fantasy worlds with dragons, giants, and white walkers. She argues that Whiteness fantasy fans say that gritty fantasy worlds are only fictional after all (so lighten up you pc fascists!) but also believe them to “represent the Middle Ages as they ‘really were’: full of violence, rape, mud, blood, and White people.” Young also connects the Whiteness of gritty fantasy to the white nationalism of some of its fans.
Chapter 4: Orcs and Otherness: Monsters on Page and Screen
Examines the depiction of Orcs in post-Tolkien fantasy, demonstrating that they’re usually coded as black and or Native American, even when writers like Mary Gentle (Grunts!) and Terry Pratchett (Unseen Academicals) try to do something new and sympathetic with them. Young explores paper and dice games like Dungeons & Dragons, miniature games like Warhammer, and computer games like World of Warcraft and summarizes a nuanced variation by R. A. Salvatore in his novel The Orc King.
Chapter 5: Popular Culture Postcolonialism
This chapter looks at popular fantasy and its treatment of (post)colonialism, with detailed examples from David Heath Justice (Way of Thorn and Thunder), Naomi Novik (Temeraire), and J. K. Jemison (Inheritance), explaining why there are so few indigenous writers of fantasy compared to the many White authors who write about indigenous peoples. The chapter argues that while future-oriented sf has often dealt with (post)colonialist themes, fantasy has tended to look back at the pre-colonial middle-ages, though 21st-century fantasy has begun critiquing colonialism and racism.
Chapter 6: Relocating Roots: Urban Fantasy
Anatomizes race in urban fantasy, which Young calls “sub-urban fantasy” because it often concerns fantastic beings and realms existing right beneath our everyday real world. She analyzes TV shows like Grimm (typical in being European-based and White) and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (atypical in featuring three African American main characters) and fiction like Aaronovitch’s River of London books, and introduces the cultural appropriation topic developed in Chapter 7, asserting that the key point is how authors write about different cultures and colors, not the culture and color of the authors.
Chapter 7: Breaking Habits and Digital Communication
Focuses on the online RaceFail 09 debate between fans and authors like Jay Lake, John Scalzi, and Elizabeth Bear about white authors of SFF writing stereotypical characters of color and engaging in cultural appropriation. It began with a minor backlash against race in Bear’s novel Blood and Iron, which led to a backlash against the backlash, and so on. This chapter is disappointing, because it gives almost no detail about Bear’s depiction of race so that it’s difficult to appreciate the debate. I did like Young’s analysis of an unusual set of texts--online communications in a community of readers and writers.
Young’s book should be read and discussed. Although she is balanced in her tone and understands how anti-pc people think, she favors more main characters of color in fantasy more accurately depicted. She points out important things concerning race in American culture, like that at the time her book was written, no writer of color had won a Hugo award for best novel, only two had won a Nebula for best novel, and only a few had won World Fantasy Awards, and that characters of color comprise only 10% of those appearing in television shows but 40% of those in the overall population. She also explains how “Fantasy’s habits of Whiteness” are gradually changing as more writers of color get into the genre.
Unfortunately, pervasive typos and grammar errors mar Young’s book, so many that I started noting them down more than Young’s good ideas. There are missing possessive apostrophes (“Saunders world”) and missing articles (“Since early 1970s”), incorrect plural nouns (“as the first three chapters of this books demonstrate”) and incorrect verb forms (“The early editions of D&D show that they are tribal but giving very few details of their way of life”). Many wrong words spelled correctly (e.g., beings not begins, form not from, planned not played, identify not identity, tape not tap). And umpteen comma splices (“Belit thus becomes an emancipator from the evils of history and commerce simultaneously, her physical and symbolic Whiteness is literally a beacon of liberation which emblematizes her superiority over her followers”). Such errors are legion. They excruciated my experience with the book (published by Routledge).
People interested in race in popular anglophone fantasy should read Young’s book, and I hope she'll be able to publish a revised edition in future.
Read
March 14, 2024Absolutely perfect for my purposes.
March 20, 2020
This wasn't particularly original in what it covered, but it is easily the best account of the ways in which the arguments around race, racism, and participation in science fiction and fantasy have been had. Highly recommended as a "catch up" text: well referenced with superb reading lists. which will lead you to source material.
The text ends in 2016, and I'd love to see an essay from Young on the changes since then, in particular the re-centering of the debate by those previously marginalised.
The text ends in 2016, and I'd love to see an essay from Young on the changes since then, in particular the re-centering of the debate by those previously marginalised.
February 19, 2018
This is an essential text for anyone wanting to understand the role of race in fantasy literature after Robert E. Howard and J. R. R. Tolkien. Young relies upon an astounding array of theoretical sources and her vast familiarity not only of the novels, but also of television shows, gaming, and on line debates. Yet her discussion moves quickly and she makes her points with precision and force.
May 19, 2022
Although my experience with this work was a bit uneven, being unable to follow some of the more theoretical discussion on identity formation and otherness, the book was saved by the concrete examples Young discusses and the wealth of fantasy books she shows overturning the “habit of whiteness” in the genre. Young goes back to JRR Tolkien and Robert Howard to show that regardless of the authors’ personal feelings/thoughts on race, the legacies of their works set up what she coins as a “habit of whiteness” in the fantasy genre. She follows Tolkien’s and Howard’s imitators as they affirm the habit and shows how even those that claimed to distance themselves from high-fantasy in favor of “gritty” fantasy left these habits unexamined and unchallenged. The second half of the work focuses on the works/authors working against these habits and the emergence of the internet as a way for fans/writers of color to make their presence known and push for change. It is this second half that was much more interesting to me for the sheer number of the ways in which these authors upend these unexamined habits and simultaneously enrich the genre. Definitely would recommend though with the caveat that some theoretical discussions got a little too abstruse for my taste.
July 9, 2020
"...creating a new world that alters such a significant aspect of society can culture (race) is no easy task no matter what one's identity. When the habits of the genre in which an imagined world is situated are those of Whitness, it is even more difficult. As author Kate Elliot puts it, "the status quo does not need world building"; change requires effort. " - Helen Young "Race and Popular Fantasy Literature: Habits of Whiteness.
4.5 stars because many of the ideas presented, even in the short time from publishing (2015) the internet, fandom and many of the issues with race have moved on. But a defintive primer for understanding racism with the SFF community from an academic perspective.
4.5 stars because many of the ideas presented, even in the short time from publishing (2015) the internet, fandom and many of the issues with race have moved on. But a defintive primer for understanding racism with the SFF community from an academic perspective.
June 21, 2023
Interesting analysis. Glad I chose this book for the seminar classes I teach on race and ethnicity. But there were points where it was a little too dense even for me to comprehend. Also, the editing needs to be better. Too many instances of grammatical and mechanical errors that should not be present in a text like this.
Want to Read
December 3, 2024Only interested in the section on Warcraft orcs because the layers of retcons to their lore have made them baffling
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews