Originally shared by NASA
“Katherine Johnson, the NASA Mathematician Who Advanced Human Rights with a Slide Rule and Pencil” via Vanity Fair: http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2016/08/katherine-johnson-the-nasa-mathematician-who-advanced-human-rights
Study seems to show that, for each Harry Potter book you read, your view of Trump goes down by a couple of points.
Only the books, though. No effect from the movies.
Interesting for a number of reasons: for biography affecting literary output, for the questions it raises about “writing the Other,” and for its reminder of shifting societal norms.
A conversation between two Asian-American writers about their experience of writing Asian-American characters, the things they were worried about, and the response they’ve had.
Originally shared by Jon A.
Via The Mary Sue.
I know nothing about this author except what is in this article, but I like what she says there.
Via Charlie Loyd’s excellent newsletter, some different perspectives on cultural appropriation.
Tangentially, I was watching Elementary, and it did a horrible anthropological fail. One of the characters who was part of the investigation they were doing in this particular episode owned an ISP of some kind, and he said, “We’ve just picked up New Zealand.” Cut to a piece of sculpture which anyone at all familiar with NZ native art would know had nothing whatsoever to do with New Zealand.
It wasn’t even close; even the colours were ones that are never used here. Perhaps Pacific Northwest, but I’m no anthropologist. And I thought, how hard is it to get something like that right? Have an intern spend 30 seconds on Google Images. Don’t just fish some random tribal-looking sculpture out of the props department and pretend it’s from New Zealand because that’s what it says in the script.
Although the whole thing is good, I’m sharing this video (I hope) starting from 58:25, when Brandon Sanderson starts talking about issues of representation in writing, considered as a spectrum.
He starts with blatantly obvious objectification and moves on up, freely admitting that some of his published books have these issues (he doesn’t give this example here, but the first Mistborn book has only one woman, though she’s a fully realized character).
This part of the video is about 9 minutes, and well worth watching if you’re a writer trying to include characters who aren’t like you.
The really interesting thing here is that this is not coming from an ideological position by the company of “there should be more of these images available”. It’s based on data mining of popular culture, social media, and what people are already searching for on their site.
Originally shared by Derrick “Quite Clever” Sanders
h/t Tonya Wershow
This is powerful.
Via Lisa Cohen.
Originally shared by Cheryl Martin