Requires Hate/Requires Love

[rachelmanija]

If you are not already aware of the Requires Hate situation, there is a full report here. Briefly, a person who writes under the pen name of Benjanun Sriduangkaew was revealed to be the notorious harasser Winterfox/Requires Hate/Lesifoere/many other aliases.

For over ten years, Requires Hate made death threats and rape threats, and stalked and harassed many people, including myself. To date, she has not responded to my public request for her to promise to leave me alone.

She engaged in a systematic campaign to destroy the careers of writers whom she apparently saw as her competition, primarily women writers and writers of color, by abusing and intimidating anyone who reviewed their books, harassing and threatening the writers themselves, attempting to get the writers professionally ostracized, and engaging in blackmail. (The blackmail link goes to an anonymous report; however, I have personal knowledge of the blackmail and vouch for it.)

I am posting to state that I have reported her to the police. I previously didn't say so publicly because I didn't want to give her the pleasure of knowing that she succeeded in making me fear for my life. However, I believe that the chances of her retaliating violently against me or others, whether in person or by hiring someone, are lessened if she knows that the police are aware of the situation. If any harm comes to me, a detailed report is on file documenting that I have a longtime stalker with a history of threatening death and violent attacks, including acid-throwing.

Supporters of Requires Hate often try to garner support for her and suppress discussion of her abuse by saying that speaking out against her is inherently racist because she's a woman of color, and that to support women writers of color, one must support Requires Hate. This erases the many other women of color in the field - a number of whom have been abused by her. Despite her efforts to suppress other female writers of color, she is hardly the only one.

Marginalized people are often unfairly persecuted and falsely accused. It's reasonable to be suspicious when you first hear claims that a woman of color is abusive. But marginalized people are people, and some people are abusive. Some marginalized people are abusive. Supporting abusers is not justice.

If you would like to do something positive, I suggest that you make an effort to read and review the works of writers with marginalized identities, and to promote the writers themselves whenever possible, such as by considering them as convention guests, lecturers, columnists, and so forth. There are very genuine obstacles in their paths that non-marginalized writers don't face, and they could use your support. Also, I very much doubt that Requires Hate will revive her campaign of harassing reviewers, so it should now be safe to review again.

If you're not sure where to start, here is a non-exhaustive list of sff/mythic fiction writers with marginalized identities of various kinds. The majority are women writers of color. Writers who were targeted by Requires Hate are starred. Please consider purchasing and/or reviewing at least one book or story by one of these writers, or by another writer of your choice.

*Saladin Ahmed
*Athena Andreadis
Samhita Arni
Samit Basu
Joseph Bruchac
Joyce Chng/J. Damask
Zen Cho
Aliette de Bodard
Tananarive Due
Zetta Elliott
Andrea Hairston
Nalo Hopkinson
S. L. Huang
*N. K. Jemisin
Alaya Dawn Johnson
*Caitlin Kiernan
Yoon Ha Lee
Malinda Lo
*Rochita Loenen-Ruiz
*Karen Lord
Lyda Morehouse/Tate Halloway
Shweta Narayan
Ty Nolan
Nnedi Okorafor
*Cindy Pon
Michelle Sagara/Michelle West
Sofia Samatar
Cynthia Leitich Smith
*Kari Sperring
*Tricia Sullivan
Judith Tarr
Shveta Thakrar
*Liz Williams

If you want to talk about Requires Hate, feel free to email or PM me. Please do not discuss her in comments. Trolling and off-topic comments will be deleted.

I am enabling comments ONLY for the discussion or recommendation of works by marginalized writers other than her, and for topics related to that. (My book reviews are tagged by author: surname.) Feel free to state a subgenre or tropes that you like, and maybe I or other commenters can rec something for you.

Please note that you don't necessarily know exactly how people identify, so stating the nature of a writer's minority identity is not necessary. Let's not do any identity-policing or arguing over whether any given identity is sufficiently marginalized to be called that. Definitions differ, so we can all decide that question for ourselves.

Comments

[recessional]

If you have any young queer women in your life, Malinda Lo's Ash holds a very special place in my heart, not for being the best book ever written, but for being the simple but beautiful f/f fairy-tale that my fourteen year old confused and terrified self needed. So I think it would make a very good gift.

[rachelmanija]

It would. And it's great to be reminded of how meaningful stories can be.

[nenya_kanadka]

SL Huang's Zero Sum Game is the first novel I've read with an action hero mathematician in it. :D The heroine has a superpower, and that superpower is being able to calculate ALLLL the math, really quickly. This apparently translates to making every gunshot every time, dodging out of the way safely, climbing walls in a trice, etc. I liked it a lot, though the heroine being somewhat amoral and having no friends but a serial killer who only kills for God made it a bit bleak at times. But I'm eagerly awaiting the sequel, in which we find out more about their fight against the evil mind-controlling villain. That was pretty great in the first book, but it definitely left off with something of a cliffhanger.

I'm on my third Karen Lord book right now, as well--Redemption in Indigo was lovely (got it off a 50 Books POC rec), The Best of All Possible Worlds was an entirely different book and pretty good, and I'm really looking forward to its sequel The Galaxy Game, which picks up with some side characters from the first book whom I'd been quite interested in the first time around.

The only Nalo Hopkinson I've read to date was Sister Mine, which was equal parts familiar setting (Canada) and unfamiliar mythology (African/Caribbean) and had a narrator I came to love. Whose sister is dating Jimi Hendrix's guitar. (It makes sense in the book.) I realized while reading it that I'm more into the magic-as-technology kind of fantasy (like Diane Duane's Young Wizards or Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers of London) rather than the ineffable-mystical-beings sort, but I ended up liking this one even though it was heavier on the latter. It did a great job with the sister/sister relationship, too. (Though, content note for consensual incest between adolescent twin goddesses. Bothered me less than I expected but it is in there.)

[muccamukk]

I loved Throne of the Crescent Moon by Ahmed so much because it was from the PoV of the cranky mentor, rather than the young apprentice. I'd love to see more books like that. There were a couple graphic torture bits that I didn't like, but otherwise it was a massively fun adventure novel.

I also really liked Ahmed's "Without Faith, Without Law, Without Joy," which podcastle did up. Creepy and very effective.

Someone sent me this list of SF/F by women of colour, and I'm going to try to read through it this year. It has a fair bit of overlap with yours.

[nenya_kanadka]

Not that I need MORE books to read, but I still want to read Throne of teh Crescent Moon! Just somehow with a warning for which chapters or sections to skip to avoid the torture scenes.

[taelle]

I adored Zen Cho's "Perilous Life of Jade Yeo", which is novella and (used to be) free as e-book on Amazon. I don't often read DW-recommended fantasy because a lot of people recommend poetic and mythic stuff and go on about beautiful language, and I like everyday stories about sensible people most of all... and you rarely get someone as sensible as Jade Yeo, who has an interesting view on life in London and is commonsensical in places you'd expect people to be dramatic.

... I don't know if I am making any sense, but I just noticed she will have a novel published in September and I will definitely wait for it:

"Sorcerer to the Crown is my debut novel, the first of three historical fantasy books set in Regency London, featuring magic, romance and lots of hijinks.

Zacharias Wythe, England’s first African Sorcerer Royal, is contending with attempts to depose him, rumours that he murdered his predecessor, and an alarming decline in England’s magical stocks. But his troubles are multiplied when he encounters runaway orphan Prunella Gentleman, who has just stumbled upon English magic’s greatest discovery in centuries."

... sounds just the thing.

[muccamukk]

That sounds awesome. I loved Jade Yeo, and hadn't heard about the Novel. I'll check it out for sure.

[elspethdixon]

Aliette de Bodard's Obsidian and Blood books are one of my favorite recent fantasy series - all three are supernatural mysteries, set in a pre-Columbian Aztec empire where magic and the various Aztec gods are real (which, fair warning, means that there's a lot of blood, gore, self-mutilation, and characters thinking of human sacrifice as a good/necessary thing). I'm unsure of how accurate any of the historical details are, but Bodard whumps the heck out of her hero (always relevant to my interest) and it's an interesting setting I haven't encountered in fantasy very often.

(Some readers might also be interested in the fact that the protagonist is probably asexual - it's never stated in so many words, probably because I doubt ancient Aztec culture had a word for it, but it's implied in a couple of places)

[sholio]

Going for lesser-known authors here, Karin Lowachee's Warchild books are really excellent (Warchild, Burndive, and Cagebird -- and now she's working on a fourth one, apparently; hurray!). They are harrowing and brutal books, not because they're graphic (actually they're very discreet, given the subject matter) but while being nominally space-opera-ish in nature -- the overall plot is focused on the misfit crew of a starship engaged in an interstellar war -- they deal with war, piracy, and various forms of abuse, and particularly with children being affected by and dealing with those things. Basically, they're good character-focused ensemble space opera with tons of psychological h/c. She does a particularly good job with narrators who are unreliable about their own emotional states. I also really love the unusual structure of the series -- each book is self-contained with a different narrator, but the timelines overlap, so you get to see major events from multiple points of view, and get various views of different major characters/events as you see them through different people's eyes. (I went into the third book absolutely hating the character who was going to be narrating it, a minor antagonist from earlier in the series, and I STILL DON'T KNOW HOW SHE MADE ME LIKE THIS GUY.) Also, there are a number of queer characters -- it's a bisexuality-as-default kind of future, but there's also a character who's asexual as well as some who identify as straight or gay -- and various complicated character relationships that straddle the line between romantic and platonic in interesting ways.

[elspethdixon]

Oh, yes - I love those books!

[davidgillon]

I'm (selfishly, it's my minority) hoping for great things from Accessing the Future, the anthology of disability themed SF due in a few months. Table of Contents now up here here which may suggest names to watch for.

For something diversity focussed and already out: Kaleidoscope, edited by Julia Rios and Alisa Krasnostein has a whole bunch of wonderful stories by diverse authors you may not have previously come across. I think “The Truth About Owls” by Amal El-Mohtar is my personal favourite, but there's so much goodness to choose from.

[lydamorehouse]

Thanks for listing me! I would like to add Eleanor Arnason to your list. She may or may not identify as queer, but her writing certainly is. Plus, we've been having a discussion in another venue about women "of a certain career length" and i think there is a real issue with marginalizing women over 50. They tend to disappear in the same way women of a certain age do, in general.

Anyway, great list. Thanks again!

[rachelmanija]

Eleanor Arnason is wonderful!

I completely agree about women over 50.

[calimac]

Let me just say, off the top of my head, that I've terrifically enjoyed Malinda Lo's Ash, Huntress, and Adaptation. Gripping, thought-provoking, and imaginative novels.

And that N.K. Jemisin wrote perhaps the most searingly memorable story (though there's some competition for that honor) story in the Lightspeed "Women Destroy SF" collection.

[littlerhymes]

Great list. :) I really enjoyed several of Zen Cho's and Rochita Loenen-Ruiz's short stories, and I loved Nalo Hopkinson's novel Brown Girl in the Ring.

I'll rec some Australians - I love the illustrated books of Shaun Tan, especially The Arrival and The Red Tree, though all his books are great. And I love the non-fiction of Alice Pung, especially in the memoir Unpolished Gem; she's ventured into fiction recently too.

[lenora_rose]

Seconding Shaun Tan. His books are mainly picture books, but while they work for older kids, the themes are often ones you wouldn't appreciate in full until adulthood, and could come back to several times and gain deeper understanding.

[gaudior]

Daniel Jose Elder does some pretty kickass urban fantasy, by which I mean ghost stories and such that really feel like they're set in real cities.

[aelius_rufus]

David Anthony Durham has written a Fantasy triloy, Acacia. His historical fiction novels, Gabriel's Story and Walk Through Darkness, featuring characters of colour, are also worth checking out.

[lenora_rose]

Silvia Moreno-Garcia has at least two short fiction collections and a novel (Signal to Noise) out. I've only read one of the short story collections (This Strange Way of Dying) but I thought the stories were gorgeous and I want the novel.

[ar]

Anyone who enjoys young adult fiction should familiarize themselves with Tu Books, Lee & Low Books' speculative fiction imprint. Lee & Low's blog is a great place to get information on what's happening both in their publishing company and in children's/YA literature in general. The finalists for the 2015 New Visions Award are especially exciting--I want all of them to win!

As far as specific authors go, I'll gladly read anything Sherri L. Smith publishes; her Orleans is a dystopian novel without a single love triangle (!!!), inspired by Smith's experiences related to Hurricane Katrina.

Unfortunately, most of what I read is contemporary or historical, so no one else yet unmentioned here is coming to mind, but I'll come back if thaat changes. ♥

[rachelmanija]

I want to read this one:

The Amaterasu Project by Axie Oh, Las Vegas, NV
• YA science fiction/action novel set in Korea about a former gangster who is recruited into the military over a secret prototype weapons project—which turns out to be a genetically modified girl

[dantesspirit]

I first heard about this 'campaign' via N.K. Jemison mentioning it. When I read up on it, it was appalling to know that someone could feel this much hatred and spew this much vitriol at their fellows writers of color and fellow women writers.

It really saddens me to see several authors whose works I thoroughly enjoy on that list with the stars next to them.

And thank you for that list, it gives me dozens more authors to check out and hopefully enjoy. }:).

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the list. I'll be taking it with me wherever I go looking for reading material.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Fantastic! I'm sure you'll find some great books.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

What a positive approach. I really appreciate your efforts to provide a positive channel for other people's strong feelings about a topic that is so very difficult for you.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Thank you. I appreciate it.

See any writers you plan to check out?

[larryhammer]

Good response.

What does the bolding mean?

---L.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Same as the stars. I was just trying to make the targeted writers more noticeable. (Yes, I see a stray bold, I will fix it.)

Do you see any writers you'd like to read or rec?

[tool-of-satan.livejournal.com]

I heartily second the recommendations for N. K. Jemisin, Yoon Ha Lee, Karen Lord, Nnedi Okorafor, and Sofia Samatar.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Have you read Karen Lord's space opera books yet? I haven't, but I've heard good things.

[jorrie-spencer.livejournal.com]

I'm extremely keen to read Zen Cho's upcoming Regency fantasy, Sorcerer to the Crown. Meanwhile The Perilous Life of Jade Yeo is historical short fiction that has received a number of good reviews.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I reviewed it! It has an absolutely marvelous voice.

[egelantier.livejournal.com]

i've really enjoyed alaya dawn johnson's brazil-inspired post-ap ya book - beautiful, unusual, with a strong narrative voice and inspiring worldbuilding.

and i've read s.l. huang's zero-sum game, and it was an incredibly fun romp with an interesting heroine in the center, and general theme of forging ties.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Oh OH OH I HAVE A REC!

I *loved* "Huixin Sees a Ghost," short story by Eve Shi, who is Indonesian. She has a bunch of others linked from her website. Unfortunately her novels are all in Indonesian.

I also enjoy Yukimi Ogawa, who has been published extensively in Mythic Delirium, and recently also by The Book Smugglers (the novella In Her Head, In Her Eyes, which I haven't read, but I've liked what I've read in MD).

[ivy]

Have you read Ted Chiang? I discovered him last year (courtesy his short stories) and then found out that he was local to me! (Double bonus; that means we're more likely to have readings/signings/etc.!) His Stories of Your Life and Others was amazingly good; I hope he writes more.

[dhampyresa.livejournal.com]

The only one on the list whose books I've read is Judith Tarr and I enjoyed the book, despite it not being the book I thought it was (mistake all mine).

I've been eyeing books by some of the others on that list, so on the to-read pile they go!

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Lovely to see so many fine writers listed here! I'm a particular fan of Joyce Chng: her characters are so strong and memorable. And I'll put in a word, if I may, for two US writers of colour, and one British-Caribbean writer. The two USians are Carole McDonnell, who is one of the few fantasy writers who writes really deeply and thoughtfully about religion, and Charles Saunders, who writes fabulous swords and sorcery. The British-Caribbean writer is Stephanie Saulter, who writes complex, challenging sf about embodiment, dis/ability and gender.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I hadn't heard of McDonnell or Saulter, and Saunders' books are hard to find. I keep hoping he'll issue them as ebooks.

[tamsin]

I'm doing the Queer Authors 50 Book Challenge again this year, so I would love to get some recs for queer writers of color who write entertaining books that stay on the lighter side of things. I'm open to any genre.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I haven't read these yet, but the S. L. Huang books described in the threads here and on DW sound like they meet those criteria.