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homelike place
Aug. 5th, 2011 07:21 pmHere are some neat posts: On SF and simplicity and Ladies, Don't Let Anyone Tell You You're Not Awesome (everyone's read that post about Mary Sues by now, right?).
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Home.
I have been thinking about home, particularly home-in-speculative-fiction, at least since the Readercon panel "There Is No Homelike Place" (for which I skipped most of the Kirk Poland, because I had previous interest in the subject). The panel covered a lot of ground, and was one of my favorite panels at the con this year, but part of the basis for it was that, in this Modern Age, people are becoming less rooted in physical space. Part of what I started puzzling over then, and am still puzzling over, is, well--think of the children!
Because yes, in American society, people change jobs and people move and people get divorced and remarry and bring stepchildren into families, and people are more and more digital and Internet-based, and all of this changes children's feelings and thoughts about home. The middle class is also expanding--I forget the exact statistic, but a huge sector of American society self-declares in the middle class, and with that many people, it's no wonder there are more stories, more feelings, more people who don't fit into the mold of 'one picket fence and one building-structure on one plot of land for the greatest part of your life'. And this changes children's feelings and thoughts about home.
Some of it's positive, some of it's negative, some of it could go either way:
My parents divorced when I was in the beginning of high school; for the next two years, I bounced weekly between their houses (the third year I put my foot down... and moved every two weeks), and for most of that I used the word "home" very sparingly. Both houses were nice, I like both my parents, but it still just felt wrong. So they were "my dad's house" and "my mom's house", and they remain that to this day. Odyssey (six weeks living in the same place!) and then college (entire months in one room!) were a relief.
And yet-- to a certain extent, my home was on the Internet, and still is. My first real and awesome communities were on the Internet, during middle school, formed on Neopets guild boards. There remain plenty of people I mostly or only talk to via the web--although I have moved more of my socializing off the Internet in recent years.
College has become a sort of home, but as I go into my third (!?) year of four, how temporary it is becomes more and more apparent.
I still feel weird about using the word "home" sometimes, to refer to any place.
I still dream about living in one place for an entire year. It seems remote, almost impossible.
And there are countless more stories. This one's just mine.
Mainstream-children's and mainstream-YA might be doing better at this; I haven't read much recently. Even as a kid, I didn't read much. I loved to read fantasy and science fiction--especially in YA, the non-fantasy novels were mostly Issue Books or heterosexual romance, which has never interested me. Fantasy novels often ended with the finding of home (Narnia was brought up in the Readercon panel--England is their home, they have to go back at the end of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe), or began with it (the Enchanted Forest Chronicles, which I adore). Or there's a dichotomy--the Happy Family versus the Broken Home--while really, for many or most people, it's more complicated than that.
Fantasy and science fiction, though, have the power to address lots of people's issues and problems and thoughts and longings for and about home. They don't have to be specific to one situation. Look at Diana Wynne Jones' Homeward Bounders--a book which almost gives not enough resolution to the issues it raises (okay, it gives enough, it's just a resolution that hurts so I don't want to admit it).
Look at--as the Readercon panel suggested--Bella in Twilight. (Divorced parents, feels aimless, no real home, obtains boyfriend with ready-made, eternal family, wants to really belong.)
Look at (again, Readercon panel) Harry Potter. Harry grows up, simultaneously, with and without a family. Over the course of the series, sometimes he almost finds home, but it's snatched away. (Sirius Black.) Why? Well, as much as the books are ostensibly about beating Voldemort, they're at least as much about finding home. Harry does find a sort of surrogate family in the Weasleys, but their house is never completely his home. As Kate pointed out when we were on our way home from the last Harry Potter movie (I was grousing about how I dislike the epilogue and find it pointless and a too-easy jump into the future when Everything Is Okay), the epilogue is the end of that arc--Harry has a family, he has a home. Can you imagine the Harry Potter series where he spent the last three books living with Sirius Black? It's almost beyond plausible.
I have no answers, just observations, just questions, trying to spot patterns. Could this be part of the mythical Reasons Why Twilight (et cetera) Is So Popular? Are these popular books in fact doing more with the concept of home than less-popular ones are--or are these just the ones we think of first? Do series, which take longer to get to the home--if there is one--satisfy this need for the readers more comprehensively? Is this part of the dystopia trend (home isn't safe)?
Do you have any recommendations for recent books, children's or YA, that deal with this sort of thing in a complicated, non-Problem Novel sort of way? Any thoughts?
---
Home.
I have been thinking about home, particularly home-in-speculative-fiction, at least since the Readercon panel "There Is No Homelike Place" (for which I skipped most of the Kirk Poland, because I had previous interest in the subject). The panel covered a lot of ground, and was one of my favorite panels at the con this year, but part of the basis for it was that, in this Modern Age, people are becoming less rooted in physical space. Part of what I started puzzling over then, and am still puzzling over, is, well--think of the children!
Because yes, in American society, people change jobs and people move and people get divorced and remarry and bring stepchildren into families, and people are more and more digital and Internet-based, and all of this changes children's feelings and thoughts about home. The middle class is also expanding--I forget the exact statistic, but a huge sector of American society self-declares in the middle class, and with that many people, it's no wonder there are more stories, more feelings, more people who don't fit into the mold of 'one picket fence and one building-structure on one plot of land for the greatest part of your life'. And this changes children's feelings and thoughts about home.
Some of it's positive, some of it's negative, some of it could go either way:
My parents divorced when I was in the beginning of high school; for the next two years, I bounced weekly between their houses (the third year I put my foot down... and moved every two weeks), and for most of that I used the word "home" very sparingly. Both houses were nice, I like both my parents, but it still just felt wrong. So they were "my dad's house" and "my mom's house", and they remain that to this day. Odyssey (six weeks living in the same place!) and then college (entire months in one room!) were a relief.
And yet-- to a certain extent, my home was on the Internet, and still is. My first real and awesome communities were on the Internet, during middle school, formed on Neopets guild boards. There remain plenty of people I mostly or only talk to via the web--although I have moved more of my socializing off the Internet in recent years.
College has become a sort of home, but as I go into my third (!?) year of four, how temporary it is becomes more and more apparent.
I still feel weird about using the word "home" sometimes, to refer to any place.
I still dream about living in one place for an entire year. It seems remote, almost impossible.
And there are countless more stories. This one's just mine.
Mainstream-children's and mainstream-YA might be doing better at this; I haven't read much recently. Even as a kid, I didn't read much. I loved to read fantasy and science fiction--especially in YA, the non-fantasy novels were mostly Issue Books or heterosexual romance, which has never interested me. Fantasy novels often ended with the finding of home (Narnia was brought up in the Readercon panel--England is their home, they have to go back at the end of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe), or began with it (the Enchanted Forest Chronicles, which I adore). Or there's a dichotomy--the Happy Family versus the Broken Home--while really, for many or most people, it's more complicated than that.
Fantasy and science fiction, though, have the power to address lots of people's issues and problems and thoughts and longings for and about home. They don't have to be specific to one situation. Look at Diana Wynne Jones' Homeward Bounders--a book which almost gives not enough resolution to the issues it raises (okay, it gives enough, it's just a resolution that hurts so I don't want to admit it).
Look at--as the Readercon panel suggested--Bella in Twilight. (Divorced parents, feels aimless, no real home, obtains boyfriend with ready-made, eternal family, wants to really belong.)
Look at (again, Readercon panel) Harry Potter. Harry grows up, simultaneously, with and without a family. Over the course of the series, sometimes he almost finds home, but it's snatched away. (Sirius Black.) Why? Well, as much as the books are ostensibly about beating Voldemort, they're at least as much about finding home. Harry does find a sort of surrogate family in the Weasleys, but their house is never completely his home. As Kate pointed out when we were on our way home from the last Harry Potter movie (I was grousing about how I dislike the epilogue and find it pointless and a too-easy jump into the future when Everything Is Okay), the epilogue is the end of that arc--Harry has a family, he has a home. Can you imagine the Harry Potter series where he spent the last three books living with Sirius Black? It's almost beyond plausible.
I have no answers, just observations, just questions, trying to spot patterns. Could this be part of the mythical Reasons Why Twilight (et cetera) Is So Popular? Are these popular books in fact doing more with the concept of home than less-popular ones are--or are these just the ones we think of first? Do series, which take longer to get to the home--if there is one--satisfy this need for the readers more comprehensively? Is this part of the dystopia trend (home isn't safe)?
Do you have any recommendations for recent books, children's or YA, that deal with this sort of thing in a complicated, non-Problem Novel sort of way? Any thoughts?
