Malinda Lo

Today, my interview with bestselling fantasy author Tamora Pierce was posted at The Enchanted Inkpot and The Torch Online.

You might know of Pierce from her classic Song of the Lioness quartet, about a girl named Alanna who disguises herself as a boy to train as a knight. Since then, Pierce has gone on to sell more than 3 million print and audio books, and has published more than two dozen novels. Her latest novel, Bloodhound, debuted at No. 1 on the New York Times Children’s Chapter Books Bestseller List.

I spoke with Tamora Pierce over the phone just before she set off on a monthlong book tour for Bloodhound; we talked about the inspiration for the series, gender and sexism, torture, and why she still can’t bear to look at the Alanna books. Here’s a teaser from the interview:

Malinda Lo: At The Enchanted Inkpot we recently had a discussion about gender in fantasy. We were debating whether it’s necessary to include gender discrimination in fantasy novels set in historical time periods. You’ve just said that in Beka Cooper’s time, they would have used torture — however, unlike the Middle Ages, I was really surprised by how equal men and women were in Bloodhound.

Tamora Pierce: In that case, the universe I’ve built is one where there is a certain amount of equality. This particular time is more equal, actually, than the time that my other books are set in. …

But the thing that makes my world different from the real world — and the thing that I think makes a lot of it possible — is you have the equalizing effect of magic. It’s really hard to keep an entire sex down when they can turn around and do all kinds of nasty things to you with magic. … If it were the real world I wouldn’t be able to get away with it, but this is a world where women as well as men can apply magic, so that tends to even the playing field.

Also, this is a world where the gods are very much present. There is a kind of monotheism on the other side of the world that I cover in a couple of stories … but by and large it’s a pagan world, and it will stay pagan because the gods are very much present and very much part of people’s lives. So you don’t get this thing of people turning to the idea of a single masculine god. That’s never going to happen because the real gods are going to come in and put their feet down.

We partly turned into a sex discriminatory society because the pagans decided to concentrate the bulk of muscle power in a male god, and as many of the world’s religions turned into monotheism, the embodiment was usually a male god. So it made it easier to say women are second-class citizens, because if they weren’t, we would be following a female god.

I don’t do monotheism well. I don’t like it; I’m ham-handed when I try to write it, so I don’t.

ML: I was really struck by why you just said about the equalizing effect of magic. There are so many other fantasy novels with magic in them in which women are less than equal to men.

TP: I don’t see how they worked out that equation. The only way it works is if women acquiesce into being second-class citizens. And frankly, all it takes is one pissed-off 10-year-old with a lightning bolt in her hand to overcome it. … The only way, with [magic] in the equation, that you [could] have an entire sex being oppressed is if they consent to the oppression. Actually, the only way it ever happens is when people consent to that oppression.

ML: Over the years you’ve included gay and lesbian characters in your books. With each successive character, he or she has been more out than the last. You said in an interview that in earlier years, you were sort of afraid to do this.

TP: I was afraid I wouldn’t do it right — I’d screw up somewhere.

It was in either First Test or Page … Joren says to Neal, “So you can have her anytime you want,” or to Seaver, “She helps you with your homework, does that mean you can have her whenever you want?” And Neal says, “Vinson, Joren’s so pretty, does that mean do you have him anytime you want?” And Joren tries to break Neal’s head for him. And Kel stops Neal and she says, “You know, in the Yamani islands, nobody cares if you go with someone of your own sex,” and Neal says, “It’s very different here.”

People started coming up to me at my appearances and saying to me, “When I read that, I realized you were all right with people being gay, and I just wanted to tell you that really meant something to me,” and some of them would actually start crying. And I’m there [thinking], “Of course I don’t care if you’re gay or not!”

I realized if they take that much comfort from that teeny tiny line, then I owe it to them to try, whether I think that I’ll fall on my butt or not. I owe them better than one line. And that’s when I began to try and stretch a little — not try and write the gay experience, but have people there who [are gay].

ML: In Bloodhound, I’m pretty sure that the character Okha is one of the first — if not the first — transgender character I’ve ever encountered in young adult fantasy. In the book, you use the male pronoun to describe Okha. Is that right?

TP: I couldn’t really say “she” because that’s an artifact of our time. However Okha feels about it, Beka is still going to refer to him as “he,” because that’s what she sees. Okha knows that she’s a she, but Beka doesn’t.

So I had to look at it and go, OK, there are things I have to do to fit the time and the characters, but as far as Okha is concerned, the Trickster messed her up when she was born, and she’s female. And yeah, as far as I know, I can’t recall any other transgender characters in fantasy.

ML: There are so few transgender or gay characters in general. I’m kind of curious, do you have any opinion on why this is so?

TP: I have no idea. I guess cause we’re kinda like turtles, we only stick our necks out of the shell when it’s safe. …

I think those of us to whom it’s a real issue tend to write contemporary, where it’ll have the most effect and the most impact. We want to get the biggest audience possible. Very few of us in fantasy are addressing that as our primary issue.

Other than that, I don’t know. I just know that I have friends and I have fans, and I try to depict as much of the world as I can. So I don’t know why other writers don’t [write gay or trans characters], but I’m sure they will, because the generation that’s coming up now is a lot more accepting and a lot more “Yeah, that’s part of life” than mine.

Go to The Torch Online or The Enchanted Inkpot to read more of the extensive interview!