Malinda Lo
Blog
Sep 19, 2009
This week in ASH news – Sept. 19, 2009
About a zillion Ash-related things happened this week — including Ash‘s virtual European tour! — so I’m just going to get right to business.
- I was interviewed by SLJ Teen, the School Library Journal e-newsletter focusing on YA books.
- Author Melissa Walker asked me a few questions about the cover of Ash for her Cover Stories series.
- I wrote a guest blog post for Teenreads.com on why it’s important to keep an open mind when you’re reading about subjects outside your comfort zone.
- I was interviewed over at Fantastic Book Review and I forgot to tell you about it till now!
- I was also interviewed at Feed Your Imagination!
Ash has recently received some lovely reviews from a few different corners of the internet.
“This retelling unfolds slowly, deliciously. It’s an internal story; a story about Ash grieving the loss of her parents, shutting down from it, and eventually choosing life and love. This is a tale about recovering from grief and unbearable loss.”
— A Chair, A Fireplace & a Tea Cozy
Note: I’ve been reading Liz B.’s Tea Cozy blog for a while now, and I know how well-respected she is in the kid lit blogosphere, so I was particularly pleased that she really got the point of the book.
“Ash is a very subtle, very quiet, very introspective take on the classic. There are those who will fall for the marketing gimmick and call this one a ‘lesbian Cinderella’ but the fact that Ash’s love interest is a female is, to my reading, almost immaterial (although I imagine GBLT teens will rejoice in it). The real story here (which took me some time to discover – but that is my fault and not the author’s) is about a girl struggling to find a reason to live and the people she encounters who help her find it.”
— Chasing Ray
Note: This is not a review exactly, but I had to mention Chasing Ray’s post about Ash because Colleen Mondor hit the nail on the head about the grief thing. And yes, “lesbian Cinderella” could be considered a marketing gimmick, but part of the reason I keep describing Ash this way is to identify it openly for queer readers. The cover copy doesn’t clearly explain the story — which is fine — but I want queer readers to know, very straightforwardly, that this book has a queer character.
And now that I’ve probably depressed everybody with all this talk of, um, depression, here are some cheerier reviews!
- “The choices that Ash had to make between Kaisa and Sidhean really had me turning the pages anxiously. All Ash really wanted was love and I think the underlying message of this book, is that in the end, that’s the only thing that matters.” — The Book Butterfly
- “This Cinderella doesn’t merely have a ‘fairy godmother’ appear and grant her wish. No, it goes into the complicated ways the humans and the fairy folk have long interacted — and how one race has kept its magic while the other has not. Malinda’s fairy framework — and her description of their world — is some of the most interesting I’ve ever read.” — The Torch Online
- “Highly recommended (and I’m not just saying that!).” — AfterEllen.com [Note: Yes, I used to be the managing editor at AfterEllen.com, and yes, I still do some work for them. Hence, I really enjoyed the "I'm not just saying that!" comment.
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Yesterday morning I taped a brief segment on Bay Sunday, a local morning show that airs on CBS 5 in the San Francisco Bay Area on Sunday mornings at 5:30 a.m.
Me and Sue Kwon, host of Bay Sunday, in the studio
Thanks to the miracle of the internet, however, you don’t have to be in San Francisco (or up at 5:30 a.m.) to watch it! Just go here to watch the video clip of my segment. Thanks to Bay Sunday for inviting me to be on the show!
Last but not least, eurOut.com took Ash on a European tour! Here’s Ash, from left to right, in Hamburg, Basel (Switzerland) and France:
Thanks, eurOut, and happy first birthday! Here’s to many more!
“And yes, “lesbian Cinderella” could be considered a marketing gimmick, but part of the reason I keep describing Ash this way is to identify it openly for queer readers. ”
Thank you for that! I was noticing that some (absolutely well-intentioned) people don’t like to describe Ash in that way, because they think it’s reductionist or that it will pigeonhole the book. To me, that knowledge is what first interested me about Ash. In my mind it’s only a gimmick if there’s no substance, and all the reviews I’ve read have convinced me that isn’t the case.
Malinda – in my formal review, which will appear next month in my Bookslut column, I do not refer to a marketing gimmick of any kind. I have however seen it all over the internet in reviews of the book and wanted to point out that lesbian romance is only one facet of the title. It will make it appealing to GBLTQ teens and I understand that…but the book has a broad audience appeal and I wanted to make that clear in this very informal post at my site. To me this was much more a book about surviving grief than anything else and I did not want readers to pick it up with the sole thought that it would be about romance (of any kind). As you could tell from my post, that preconception prevented me from enjoying the book at first and I was hoping to prevent that from happening to my readers.
I think the book is lovely, and I hope it finds many fans.
Colleen, I agree with you that surviving grief is a major theme of ASH, and I’m so glad you think it has broad appeal. I didn’t take your comment in your blog post as a criticism at all — I just wanted to note my own reasons for identifying the book as a lesbian Cinderella. I feel, as a lesbian who has done a lot of writing about lesbian representation in the media, that I frankly owe it to queer readers to tell them that my book contains queer characters. So many books with queer themes are presented as “coded” queer rather than openly queer. I know that by being so up front about it, it will turn off some readers, just as it will be a draw for others.
Honestly, it’s a political decision I’m making. I’m happy that there are readers such as yourself who can help to point out that the book is about many things in addition to the love story that “Cinderella” implies.
I can understand why you – as an author – would want the book to be (labeled seems a bad word choice but it’s all can come up with) “labeled” as a lesbian Cinderella. And yep – the GBLTQ kids will love that. As a reviewer who gets a ton (literally) of YA titles each month, I try to push back on every label because invariably they focus on one small segment of the book. I think the book’s copy captures the lesbian romance quite well (and that cover is a stunner also!) but I didn’t want it….well to be dismissed that easily by reviewers. It is a lesbian romance, but it is coming-of-age, it is about loss of parents and abuse, it is about faerie, it is about power, it is about sorrow and death and survival. It is about choosing to live which is the biggest thing perhaps – choosing to live and not just being saved.
Look at me, I’m lecturing you on your own book! ha!
At the end of the day, it’s just how I review – always looking for a way to make a book as accessible to the widest range of readers as possible. Doesn’t mean it won’t connect more with some kids but I just want them all to read it and give it a chance.