Exploring Dark Short Fiction #3: A Primer to Nisi Shawl

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

BY ERIC J. GUIGNARD

ABOUT NISI SHAWL

THE BEADS OF KU

THE BEADS OF KU: A COMMENTARY

OTHERWISE

OTHERWISE: A COMMENTARY

JUST BETWEEN US

JUST BETWEEN US: A COMMENTARY

AT THE HUTS OF AJALA

AT THE HUTS OF AJALA: A COMMENTARY

STREET WORM

STREET WORM: A COMMENTARY

CONVERSION THERAPY

CONVERSION THERAPY: A COMMENTARY

WHY NISI SHAWL MATTERS

BY MICHAEL ARNZEN, PhD

IN CONVERSATION WITH NISI SHAWL

WRITTEN ON THE WATER: AN ESSAY

BY NISI SHAWL

A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE FICTION FOR NISI SHAWL

INTRODUCTION

BY ERIC J. GUIGNARD

THIS IS THE THIRD VOLUME IN THE SERIES Exploring Dark Short Fiction and, like raising children, it has become my favorite in different ways from its siblings. The stories of Nisi Shawl straddle the amorphous bounds between the world we live and the world(s) we could live, alternately presenting views of both dark dystopian and hopeful utopian scenes, or simply offering an alternate view to today. Her writing speaks to societal issues and to philosophy, and to political activism and global awareness, to issues of culture and history and identity, all the while wrapping her messages within an invigorating artistic prowess of beauty, whim, and fantasy.

Or, more succinctly, Nisi pushes the boundaries of meaningful fiction, to the benefit of us all.

In 2016, The Washington Post wrote of Nisi’s work (Everfair):  . . . It’s a tribute to Shawl’s powerful writing that her intricate, politically and racially charged imaginary world seems as believable—sometimes more believable—than the one we inhabit.

In this, I find the essence of Nisi’s collected output, a sense of believability that no matter how fantastic the setting or situation, it allows me to consider, This could happen.

Case in point: One of my favorite stories of Nisi’s is The Pragmatical Princess, in which a French-speaking dragon is converted to Muslim by a captive princess for the most pragmatic of reasons. In only a 4,600-word story, the author discusses differences in ancient culture, doctrine, and eastern religion, while also painting a remarkable setting and relationship between characters. And the plot: Regardless how implausible the storyline, to me it makes complete sense. It’s reasonable, and it’s beautiful. It’s Fantasy with a message, with significance. It’s Nisi Shawl, and it speaks to her savvy.

Another example is Vulcanization, which is a tie-in to her novel, Everfair, and a haunting characterization of Leopold II, king of Belgium, who is historically atrocious for his exploitation and genocide of millions of native Congolese while pursuing personal riches via the lucrative rubber trade. Herein is an alternate view to history, and a steampunk one at that, filled with murky mechanizations and the tragic maimed ghosts of Leopold’s own reign, torturing him with sights of what his violent subjugations have wrought. As somber as The Pragmatical Princess is hopeful, Vulcanization nonetheless humanizes a despot, while speaking to issues of racism and colonialism, and also the human emotions of guilt, of fear, of disgrace. Again, it’s Fantasy with a message, and again, it speaks to Nisi’s savvy.

And there are so many more! Although I did not include the above mentioned stories within this Primer, there are six others, and in each selection Nisi’s distinctive voice and message shines through in ways that are sometimes inspiring, sometimes grim, yet always complex and satisfying. Whether speaking to ideas such as empowerment in At the Huts of Ajala; love and multicultural unity in Otherwise; or sexual identification and liberation in Conversion Therapy, Nisi finds way to connect and to nurture the reader.

And perhaps her avid perceptions are due to life experiences, for vast exposure to those around us leads to vast understanding, and there is little that Nisi has not done or been involved with in the literary realm since auspicious leanings away from college (where she began at only age 16), and into a sort of artists’ colony for immersion into writing, art, and discourse, of which—in the early 1970s—sounds like an exquisite culmination of what I imagine as the ideals of a young bohemian lifestyle. By now, it seems, attempting to label Nisi as only an author or writer would seem too constrictive, as she is involved with any number of other tangential belletristic callings.

Praised by literary journals, news outlets, and leading fiction magazines, Nisi Shawl is tirelessly celebrated as an author whose works are lyrical and philosophical, speculative and far-ranging;  . . . broad in ambition and deep in accomplishment (The Seattle Times). Besides nearly three decades of creating fantasy and science fiction, fairy tales, and indigenous stories, Nisi has also been lauded as editor, journalist, reviewer, teacher, speaker, afrofuturist, and proponent and mentor of feminism, African-American fiction, and other pedagogical issues of diversity.

And now she is here in this third Primer. So whether, dear reader, you are a first time visitor to Nisi’s worlds, or else a fan wishing to learn more of her merit, consider that while her messages may wind in surprising directions, growing to beautifully intricate constructions, my message is quite simple: Read Nisi Shawl.

Midnight cheers,

—Eric J. Guignard

Chino Hills, California

October 31, 2018

ABOUT NISI SHAWL

MY LIFE

WHEN I WAS LITTLE, I TOLD MY MIDDLE SISTER Julie convoluted tales of how I, a mermaid, had come to dwell in the small Midwestern town of Kalamazoo, Michigan. This odyssey involved the Saint Lawrence Seaway, several of the Great Lakes, and mysterious underground passages my schoolteacher called aquifers. Her own origin was much simpler, of course; our parents, I explained, had found her in a garbage can.

At sixteen, in 1971, I moved from Kalamazoo to Ann Arbor to attend the University of Michigan’s Residential College. I took several French courses, Oral History, Cosmology, and a poetry seminar that taught me ten weeks of nothing. Most classes took place in the dorm, and I got a job in the dorm’s library. One day I was startled to notice an extremely short person walking toward me. They were less than two feet high. It took me several seconds to realize that this was a child.

Anyone under a certain age had become alien to my experience. It wasn’t this isolation that led to my dropping out of school. I had an abortion. I became depressed. I quit going to classes two weeks from finals. I failed to finish my assignments, and left the University without a degree.

I moved into a house called Cosmic Plateau and lived with people who called themselves Bozoes. I paid $65 a month rent. I worked part-time as a janitor, an au pair, a dorm cook, an artists’ model. I wrote. I performed my writings publicly, at parks and cafes and museums. I learned a lot.

I read Charnas, Russ, Delany, Colette, Wittig. I sent out a horrible story about fornicating centaurs and got a wonderfully sweet rejection letter. Then our landlady kicked all the Bozoes out of Cosmic Plateau, and I had to live by the sweat of my brow.

I worked at a natural foods warehouse. I sold structural steel and aluminum. I sold used books. I got married. I joined a band.

I kept writing. I got better.

My first science fiction appearance was in the nude. I modeled for one of Rick Lieder’s illustrations for Bruce Sterling’s Crystal Express (the Arkham House hardcover—I’m the Dark Girl of Telliamed).

My first science fiction publication was in Semiotext(e) (see my bibliography for dates on this and the rest of my print oeuvre). I shared the table of contents with William S. Burroughs, J.G. Ballard, Bruce Sterling, William Gibson, and a bunch of less well-known but quite cool others. I owe my part in this literary conspiracy to Crowbar, publisher of the ’zine Popular Reality.

In 1992 I attended a cyberpunk symposium in Detroit. Sterling, in his inimitable manner, supposed that no one in the audience had heard of Semiotext(e), let alone read it, and I was able to retort from the third row that I was in it. So I got to hang out with him, and with Pat Cadigan and John Shirley, which last professional offered to read my stories! He was of the opinion that I could write. He recommended that I attend the Clarion West Writers’ Workshop, where he and Cadigan were to teach that summer.

At Clarion West I learned in six weeks what six years at the University could never have taught me.

Because of Clarion West and another writers’ program in the Puget Sound area (Cottages at Hedgebrook, a retreat on Whidbey Island), I put Seattle near the top of my list when considering a move from Michigan. I’d gotten divorced. We’d sold the house. When I asked my ancestors where I ought to live, they said this was the place.

My apartment is one block off of the #48 bus route. King County Metro takes me all the way to the beach. Gray and wild, or smooth as oil, the water is unfailingly beautiful. By ways as circuitous as those I described to my sister almost four decades ago, this mermaid has returned to the sea.

~

A BIOGRAPHY

NISI SHAWL’S DOZENS OF ACCLAIMED STORIES have appeared in Analog and Asimov’s Magazines and in anthologies ranging from the groundbreaking Dark Matter series to Salon’s online Trump Project, among many other publications. Her story Vulcanization was selected as one of twenty offered in Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy. Though best known for her short fiction, Shawl wrote the 2016 Nebula finalist and Tiptree Honor novel Everfair, an alternate history in which the Congo overthrows King Leopold II’s genocidal regime. Everfair was hailed by Karen Joy Fowler as luminous and original, a wonderful achievement. Ursula K. Le Guin described Shawl’s 2008 Tiptree Award-winning short story collection Filter House as superbly written.

In 2005, Shawl co-wrote Writing the Other: A Practical Approach with Cynthia Ward. This book is now considered the standard text on diverse character representation in the imaginative genres, and it forms the basis of her years of online and in-person classes offered under the same name. She is a founder of the inclusivity-focused Carl Brandon Society and has served on the Clarion West Writers Workshop’s board of directors for nineteen years.

Since the turn of the millennium, Shawl has reviewed books for The Seattle Times, her local daily newspaper. She also occasionally freelances reviews for Ms. Magazine, The Washington Post, and The Los Angeles Review of Books. She contributes monthly columns to The Seattle Review of Books and to Tor.com—the latter column expanding on her seminal 2016 Crash Course in the History of Black Science Fiction essay.

Shawl edits the reviews section of the feminist literary quarterly The Cascadia Subduction Zone. In the past she has edited and co-edited several fiction and nonfiction anthologies such as Stories for Chip: A Tribute to Samuel R. Delany; and Strange Matings: Science Fiction, Feminism, African American Voices, and Octavia E. Butler; both finalists for the Locus Award. Currently she’s in the final stages of editing New Suns: Original Speculative Fiction by People of Color, to be published in March 2019 by Solaris Books.

She lives in Seattle, near a lake with enticingly strong currents, and takes frequent walks through the neighborhood with her mother June and her cat Minnie, at the pace of an entitled feline.

THE BEADS OF KU

THERE WAS A WOMAN NAMED DOSI, AND SHE GAVE birth to twins. At first both were weak and sickly, but the boy died, and then the girl prospered and grew strong. She was a good girl, willing to work hard, and with good sense.

When she was still very young, Fulla Fulla helped her mother in the market, running messages for her and bringing her the news. Mother, she would say, the women of Dit-ao-lane are over by the baobab, looking for cloth to make beautiful robes. Quick, give me that basket of feathers, that I may tempt them with bright colors. And Fulla Fulla would run to the river and sell all the feathers very dear. Or she would return from an errand leading a row of porters bearing salt. Mother, she would say, I have traded all our leather for this salt, and I got it very cheap. The merchant did not want to take it on with him and pay another duty. He did not know that in two days the taxes will be lowered because the King himself will be trading his salt for a new shipment of gold from the South . . .  And this was when Fulla Fulla was just a little girl.

As the woman Dosi grew older, she began more and more to stay at home and to leave all the business to Fulla Fulla. At last she became ill, and though Fulla Fulla nursed her mother diligently, she died. Fulla Fulla grieved for her mother, but she did not let grief make her weak or stupid. Those who tried to take advantage of her state soon found that this was so. It was harder than ever to read her face beneath the gray ashes of mourning. And though her eyes were red and filled with tears, they missed nothing. So Fulla Fulla kept her place