Present Writers: Suzy McKee Charnas

[mrissa]

I missed a month when September happened to me, but we're only looking back to remember where we were and what we were doing, not for regrets. What we're doing: the Present Writers series is explained more fully with its first installment, about Marta Randall, with posts about Dorothy Heydt, Barbara Hambly, and Jane Yolen following it.

I've been thinking a lot about women's anger lately, as I think many of us have--productive and otherwise. And there has been no writer more formative for me in how to write about anger in a respectful way--no writer who leaves me feeling understood and invigorated with her spiky depictions of female fury--than Suzy McKee Charnas.

Charnas's work spans genres and decades. Like most of the people in this series, she is not easily pigeonholed, writing vampire fiction and post-apocalyptic SF with equal fluency. But there's the matter of that voice, that quintessentially New Yorker take-no-prisoners done-with-your-shit Charnas voice. Most of the late-night pretentious writer conversations I've had about confident narrative voice confused an authoritarian voice for an authoritative one, but this is a mistake Charnas never makes.

I first read The Bronze King when it was new, when I was seven. I last read it this morning. Valentine, its cranky teenage protagonist, used to be a Big Kid in my perception, with all the baggage Big Kids have to deal with. Now 14 looks pretty darn young, and Charnas simultaneously doesn't have illusions about what teenagers are dealing with (sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll all get at least a mention in this book) and recognizes how new it all is. When Val gets berated by a male character who feels that he should have had the more heroic role that she performed because she was just a girl, it didn't shock me that a boy might behave like that, because some already had. It shocked me that we didn't have to pretend that there weren't any boys like that. And that we didn't have to take any lip from them when they showed up in our lives.

Later, when I was about Valentine's age, I read the short story "Boobs." I punched the air and yelled when I finished with it. Suzy McKee Charnas knew what was coming even back in 1989; she won a Hugo for it. There was a girl harassed for her body in this story. There was a girl triumphant. And the setting was not removed, not quasi-medieval, faux-historical; the contemporary setting meant that it spoke to me very, very directly. It gave me so much fierce magic. Almost a decade after I first read it, at my first WorldCon, I spotted a familiar name on a badge going the other direction on the escalator. "Oh my God Suzy McKee Charnas! I loved your 'Boobs'!" I burst out and then wanted to sink through the escalator floor, but she just laughed happily. She knew what she had done, what it could mean to girls like me. To women like I grew up to become.

Since I started writing this post, I have felt more and more determined to go back and reread Charnas's work. The Holdfast Chronicles are definitely worth another look, and there are short stories I've never gotten to. This is one of the best side effects of writing a series like this, and it's one of the reasons I'm so immensely glad Charnas is present with us just when her work is most needed.

Comments

[supergee]

Blogging this, thanx

[sartorias]

Oh, yes, yes, yes! She was always saying what I was thinking and needing about. And saying it well.

[thanate]

Ooh; I have The Bronze King on my shelf, but am pretty sure I've never read anything else of hers. Anything you'd particularly recommend?

[mrissa]

There are two more in that series you can find and enjoy! Also the Walk to the End of the World series. Also short stories. Also....

[thanate]

Cool! I just pulled that down & it is really good in ways I was entirely unequipped to appreciate at 10 or whenever I was given it. (Pretty sure it was a days of christmas book, but it's not written in) Will look for the others. Thanks.

[anne]

Oh good grief. I just realized that 12yo me couldn't tell the difference between Suzy McKee Charnas and Suzette Haden Elgin. I bounced off the Ozark trilogy and that was it.

So hey, a new author I get to dive into headfirst! Hurray!

[anne]

(and I might possibly have matured enough between then and now to ignore the fingernails-on-a-blackboard effect of Elgin's "would/could/should of." But, knowing me, probably not.)

[mrissa]

I am SO HAPPY FOR YOU.

[anne]

\o/ where do I start?? Other than "with whatever the library has," I mean.

[mrissa]

The Bronze King for YA, Walk to the End of the World for adult, whatever you can find for short story.

[nocowardsoul]

"Oh my God Suzy McKee Charnas! I loved your 'Boobs'!" I burst out and then wanted to sink through the escalator floor, but she just laughed happily. LOL!

I was not familiar with this author but I'm now interested in reading her.

[thistleingrey]

oh yes, very much. I taught her "Listening to Brahms" once--needed a short, and really wanted to include her work somehow. It went well, though possibly partly because we weren't in "this is fine" mode at the time.

[vcmw]

The Bronze King is so so so good. I should re-read my copy.

All three books in that series were great. <3