A Rowdy, Rip-Roaring, Speculative, Christian Parable: BLACK CHERRY, a Graphic Novel by Doug TenNapel

One does get tired of Christians painted in SF (and out of it) as inneffectual, pie-in-the-sky or head-in-the-sand boobs. Or of belief in "truths" (dare I say, absolute truths?) as something to pooh-pooh as naive, uninformed, unintellectual, or just plain silly.


This week, with a bit of chronic fatigue chasing me down, I got to read a bit of "light stuff"--which wasn't light at all, which was graphicky novelish, which was sometimes gory, sometimes hilarious, and not at all cheery.


Yes, well, I am given to melancholia.


I read the latest Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Season 8) to find the statement "There is no truth" and "There's only what you believe." Yes, one can say that. It's hard to LIVE that. How does one campaign for female equality if one isn't convinced that the TRUTH is that women are NOT inferior to men. How does one battle racism and not hold to the truth that all races are equal and all humans are of equal worth in the sight of...other humans? The cosmos? GOD? A lot of people battling fiercely on matters from animal rights (so, are animals worthy of protection--true or no? Or is it just preference?) to human rights (Is torture wrong? Is THAT true?) to dietary habits (Is it true that trans fats are unhealthful? Or is that just, er, what we believe?)


I get sick of that crap. I don't think people can actually live, day to day, and not believe X and Y and Z are true and A and B and C are untrue. 1 is right and 2 is wrong. You can't live in LaLa "There is No Truth" land. Otherwise, why have Buffy battle so fiercely against demons and deny herself so much that humans enjoy (er, a normal life)? Because it's TRUE that a slayer must fight EVIL cause EVIL is BAD and protecting humans is GOOD. Those are truths. Duh.


Let's move on to GIRLS, shall we? It's a terrific series (so far, I've not read all the bound volumes). Has some great components from SF past--the destructive hot naked chick (think LIFEFORCE), the trapped and can't get out and something's after us scenario, the "zombie-ish" non-zombies, the alienish craft in a cornfield (heh), the bunch of people at each other's throats trying to survive The Menace, the battle of the sexes, etc. It's really excellent in terms of characterization and pacing and, oooh, gross horror-ry stuff. But what's the Christian character like so far? (Only one that I can recall, and he may end up more heroic and fine later, dunno.) He's a weenie. He's a "Let's pray" and "It'll be all right" and so far USELESS.


Which reminds me of SPIN (a novel about which you'll hear more next week when Marcus Goodyear examines it for you as a guest blogger right HERE): Three main characters, and the one who turns religious (the gal) is a wuss, an ostrich-head-in-the-sand weenie who has to be rescued. Geesh.



Okay, back to the graphic novels:



Thank God for BLACK CHERRY by Doug TenNapel.



I got it in the mail yesterday and dropped everything (kinda literally, as I was really tired and when I'm tired I drop stuff) to read it. Here we got Christians--active and muscular and some even backslidden and messed up--but they're not sitting around spouting platitudes and not doing the work. This graphic novel takes the taboo words and topics of Christian fiction and, well, I would say shoves them up the censor's you-know-whatsits, but that would be rude, wouldn't it? Not to mention just too close to what the demons do in BLACK CHERRY. Yup, there be demons. And an angel, even.In fact, the preface to the story is TenNapel explaining exactly why he does what he does in the story, go for REALISM even in the midst of all the speculative/genre wackiness: "Criminals don't talk like they are trying to keep from offending soccer moms."




He's also quoted saying the following in an interview at Newsorama :

"Doug TenNapel: It’s a deliberate change of tone in order to properly swim within a decidedly seedy genre. I thought it would be criminal to take a steamy genre like crime-noir and baptize it with conservative Christian culture; that’s what the Christian ghetto does in all forms of media today.

I don’t go into genres and say, “How do I Christianify this story?” because it degrades both the literary history of the genre as well as what the Christian enterprise should be. So making Black Cherry “safe” was not on the table.

At the same time, I have a duty as a man who follows Christ where my understanding is that I’m not to just camouflage myself with my culture and bury the light of Christ so that it’s indiscernible from that which is non-Christ. I’m not hiding anything faith-based in my writing either. That’s also not on the table when it comes to my stories that address religion (and I love to take a break from telling stories about religion whenever possible).



The title character (although not the one you see most in the story) is a stripper. And yep, in one panel, she's working the pole. Hair is strategically placed, you'll be glad to know. Then there's the other character (the main active one) named Eddie, and he's in love with Black Cherry. He's also got a filthy mouth, but then, he's a mobster/criminal/bad-dude/gambler. He doesn't talk like your Aunt Letitia at tea parties.



I'm not easily offended, so I can enjoy the story and not get bristley about the "how" of its telling. If you're easily offended:Not for you. If you can handle how people really talk, go for it. Urban folks know that this is part of what we see daily. I lived in the ghetto. I grew up cussing (out of the house, with my "homies.") I walked over a blue-faced, dead junkie once who breathed his last on our front stoop. I got beat up by gang members on days when I wore the wrong dang color coat to school. I had to walk past old geezers smelling of accumulated urine and who-knows-what bodily and urban filth as they panhandled at me on the way home from school. I watched hookers get it on in the alleyways of the neighborhood. Drug dealers lived next door. Drug users lived upstairs and downstairs and all over.. And I knew that fathers and mothers sometimes did unspeakable things to their kids--and I knew that by the time I was EIGHT. And by the time I was nine, I carried a big, honking hunting knife in my book bag, that my dad gave me. For protection. (One of my grade school pals got gang-raped at age 11. I got propositioned by a gang member when I was 14. Protection became mission one.) I got a good look at the dark side of the world kinda early.




So, some people cussing, this doesn't rank high on my "Offend Mir Scale."


What does? Smirking gossip offends me more. Snobbery offends me. Pharisees oppressing new believers into cowering submission to stupid dress code or "millstone" rules offends me. Churches that barf if a drag queen shows up for service offends me. Pastors who refuse (or refuse) to visit the AIDS afflicted offends me. White Christians who don't wanna worship with minority Christians offends me (and vice versa). Materialistically driven believers in an afflicted and dying world offends me.





But showing strippers and gangsters in their milieu...no. I think: Jesus would have gone to have lunch with them. He would have talked to them like neighbors. I figure they need some Jesus-loving types interceding for them, caring for them, because these are folks who clearly have no clue there is something much finer and lovelier between men and women, and when you add God into the mix, it's beyond believable how wonderful love and sex can be. This is part of the arc in BLACK CHERRY--sordid to hopeful and touched by the sacred.




The underworld types, the pole dancers, the junkies: They need grace. Bad. Like us all.



Black Cherry and Eddie are people who have been hurt by some really lousy parenting (can we say ABUSE?) and some really bad choices, but when it comes down to it, they take risks for the rank and reeking planet they inhabit. And for other planets, interestingly. And love ends up being a mighty powerful thing. As does the sacrament of the Eucharist. (There is a Catholic priest and a monastery in this one by TenNapel. CREATURE TECH had a Protestant minister and one of the most creative depictions of the substitutionary sacrifice of Christ I've seen.) BLACK CHERRY shows God's grace in some very odd but effective action.




It's got sci-fi. It's got horror. It's got crime drama. It's got humor. It's got religious stuff. It's got chases and action. It's got romance. (I did say TenNapels likes to mash genres together, right?)




If you've heard the parable of the lost sheep, how God will go out of his way to find that one when the 99 are safe, well...this graphic novel is a ripping, wild ride of a depiction of THAT parable. And what TenNapel does with his trademark blending of genres (he never stays put in just one) and his kooky humor and his really strong sense of the neediness of humans (he manages to get me misty-eyed in EVERY SINGLE one of his G.N.'s), well, it's exciting and it's got an awful lot of truth.




But it's also the parable of the prodigl son, retold.




After so many comics with either NO believers (in a country where, what, 80+ percent identify as Christian and 90 percent believe in God) or show believers as well-meaning doofuses or criminals and pederasts and embezzlers, it's refreshing to read one that shows faith as important, prayer as important, grace as ever-working, and love as life-changing.



Aaaah. Thanks, Doug T. Melancholy Mir loves ya. I hope some soccer moms will, too.


Visit Doug's site!


Note: This should be my last post for a while (possibly for the rest of the year). Next week, Marcus Goodyear guest blogs for your pleasure. Expect also some cool posts by Jim Black after that.

Please visit the original posts for comments from readers.

"Samaritan" by Connie Willis: Is it CSF? What Can We Learn as Writers and Readers?

I hope some of you have had a chance to read the story that I'm analyzing today. Connie Willis is a supremely skilled writer of SF fiction, and I have a personal preference for her short works.

Like the Yolen story, this is science fiction. No spaceships. No aliens. But it is set in a future, speculative Earth where some religious upheaval has changed the nature of the religious social structure in our country. And, as Willis herself prefaces the tale, its inspiration comes from the story of Jacob and Esau, where Esau is red and hairy, and Jacob steals Esau's inheritance. Postulating 1. a wild, end-time madness among future fundamentalist and Charismatic communities that turns violent and forces mainline churches to band together ecumenically for survival and 2. that humans are "kin" to the hairy, red primates who can be taught sign language communication and perhaps...more...we get "Samaritan."


STORY OVERVIEW:


Rev. Hoyt, is asked by his kinetic female asst. pastor , Natalie Abreu, to baptize Esau, an orangutan who does janitorial duties at the church when on leave from the preserve where the nearly extinct creatures are bred and studied. When Hoyt asks Natalie how she knows the ape wishes to be baptized, she answers that Esau has observed a confirmation class and signed, "I would very much like to be God's beloved child, too."

In a particularly important and nicely crafted scene, Rev. Hoyt, knowing Natalie is hyper-enthusiastic, suspects she exaggerates the minimal signs Esau is capable of forming; that, in fact, the baptism is Natalie's new pet project, so to speak. Natalie, after all, already forces Esau to sit in unatural (for him) postures, and has attempted to dress and shoe him. While interrogating Esau, the orangutan answers that, yes, he loves God. Hoyt suspects Natalie of coaching the ape. He continues to interrogate, asking Esau if he loves God. Esau makes a clumsy signing of letters...S...a...m.... Natalie says it's Samaritan. Esau has recently learned the story of the Good Samaritan, she explains. Esau again signs: S...a...m...a..r...i...t...a...n. Observing both Natalie and Esau, Hoyt suspects that Natalie is imposing her will on the animal, and Esau is merely pleasing his human teacher.

Hoyt decides to ponder the matter, not simply dismiss it out of hand as ludicrous.

He starts closely watching Esau, who swings from the high beams, dusting the church, listening to humans below. Ladders are unsafe with the large windows, and Esau doesn't need them to do this job. He's built for heights and swinging.

Hoyt prepares for a sermon on humility he thinks Natalie needs to hear—a key text being Psalm 73, with this quote: "But as for me, my feet had almost stumbled, and my steps had well-nigh slipped. I was stupid and ignorant. I was like a beast toward thee. " He consults with his bishop, who's gotten wind of the rising controversy over animal baptism. Her advice: Deny it as indoctrination. But Rev. Hoyt says that any argument against baptizing Esau would apply to his congregation: "He's lonely. He needs a strong father figure. He likes the pretty robes and candles. Instinct. Conditioning. Sexual sublimation." Even doing it to please Natalie compares to some humans who seek to please others by acting religiously. The bishop tells Hoyt that the "hodge-podgey" Ecumenical Church can do nothing but leave it in his hands: he must decide and take the flak either way.


Hoyt talks to the guy from the animal preserve, who can only say that Esau has been very happy since he started working at the church, avoiding the neuroses that older male orangutans are prey to, and the preserve likes happy apes, because happy apes breed. Letters of complaint or support for the baptism pour in. One older congregant says she sees Esau fold his hands and bow his head during prayer time in service. Rev. Hoyt dreams of Esau as a saint. He starts to wonder what Jesus would say, would do.

Then he considers something: The other famous Samaritan. Could Esau, in signing out the word have meant not the Good Samaritan tale, but the woman at the well, the outcast. Hoyt has an epiphany wihle conversing with his bishop: "I have thought all along that the reason he wanted to be baptized was because he didn't know that he wasn't human. But he knows. He knows." The bishop agrees with his assessment.

But Esau, who has been mimicking human behavior (sitting straight,), has been using a ladder ill-suited to his frame for his chores. And he has fallen. As the ape lays dying, Hoyt signs to Esau, to comfort him: "Esau God's child." Esau counters with the letters s...a...m... Hoyt stops him. Insists Esau is God's child and makes the sign for "love." Esau is too broken physically to make the sign back, though he attempts it. Hoyt decides to baptize the ape. Esau dies.

Natalie is humbled (what the sermon did not do, Esau's death accomplishes). She realizes she was forcing him to dress and act human, and that led to his demise. Her energetic light dims with her sense of guilt. Hoyt comforts her, and he tells her, "God chooses to believe that we have souls because He loves us. I think He loved Esau, too." With just the right compliments, he encourages her to be herself again. And Hoyt shows he himself has changed, become more flexible, by dressing differently to please her—reminiscent, in that last moment, of Esau.

Is It CSF?

"Samaritan" is a story with humor and also with some very touching moments. It's the kind of story that makes me weep, and that is part of its effectiveness, since we are supposed to weep for Esau. But is it Christian SF?

Well, there is a worldview that believes in God, has a church setting with church rituals (baptism, confirmation) and with clergy. There is discussion of theological issues—God's love, the prerequisites for baptism, religious outcasts, religious conflict (the liberals versus the Charies). Bible verses are used to illuminate (and direct) the theme and plot. By Angela Hunt's briefer criteria, it pases. By Martin LaBar's, I think it also passes.

Does it pass mine? It does.

I am not happy with some elements of it: I think that the "picking on the fundies" thing is a scosh over-the-top and unkindly. I think the last scene statement about "God chooses to believe we have souls because He loves us" is, upon the most cursory examination, a highly troublesome statement. God doesn't have to believe. He knows. He know if we do or do not have souls. And that is one of the weakest parts of a very good, moving, fascinating story: Demoting God to one of us.

All along, the story is about raising up an outcast—another species— to a position of acceptance and being loved and honored by humans-on the chance that God loves him, too. That, while a bit wacky, is presented so kindly, that we root for Esau to be baptized, because we see evidence of love for God and true faith in this "lesser being." Leaving it to God to decide is fine with me in this context and doesn't offend me as it might under another less skilled presentation.

But the condescending and scornful way that Willis presents fundamentalists/charismatics is a violation of the spirit of the main part of the story.

Still, it fits with the pride vs. humility part. In the story, endtime fervor rises to such a state that fundamentalists decide to declare the Rapture already here . They go on rampage after The Beast, which is an excuse in the story to attack liberal churches. Granted, there is antipathy between liberal and funamentalists. We see them as losing grip on orthodoxy and compromising with the depravity of the culture, in part becoming non-Christian in doctrine. They see us as narrow-minded and uneducated and focused on the letter of the Bible to such an extent that we are isolationist and judgmental. Postulating an extrapolation—all out war—is one of the speculative fictional techniques. But Willis is judgmental of Charies, and becomes a victim to what she decries in the story—looking down on another group as "outsider" and "not like us."

But that doesn't bother me as much as that "God chooses to believe" bit, which just seems to be some loony proverb created to fit the story idea. Never mind that it's really silly: It violates orthodoxy. God is omniscient. Belief is not part of God's being.He knows. Knows all. Knowing excludes believing. The dialogue feels as if it was put in there to sound good, but it makes no sense. None at all. It stopped me cold and made me go, "Huh?" You tell me what the heck that means.

That's not traditional, orthodox, apostolic, Biblical Christian doctrine. And it's just plain BAD logic.

However, taken overall, all its parts together, I would say this fits the Mir Manifesto. We must allow latitude in speculation, because the message is about more than the then-and-that. It's about the here and now. Yes. This is Christian SF. And it's a well-done tale, despite my quibbles.

What Can We Learn From it?

1. To be willing to take leaps, risks, as writers and readers: I suspect a great many Christians, if told a story debated the merits of baptizing an organgutan, would assume heresy, blasphemy, and who knows what all else and refuse to read it. I say, think of the impossible situation that makes you pay attention. Go for the long steps. Take the risk. Shine a light on some key doctrine without being predictable or easy. Make the reader stretch. Stretch yourself, too.

2. Make readers feel: Even with the parts of this story that might offend me (as I'm one of Willis' targets, the fundies) or with which I doctrinally disagree (female bishops and pastors, baptizing animals, ridicule of pretrib/premillers) , she made me care—care about a ditzy assistant pastor and a sweet orangutan. And she made me realize, by using speculative storytelling, how some people out there are made to feel by those of us who are quick to say, "No, you don't belong here. You're not good enough." Samaritans continue to exist, and we must continue to say to them like Jesus did, "I have water for your thirst."

3. Find inspiration in the Word of God: Read the key text for this story, Psalm 73, and you will see how much it influenced the plot. This story is a speculative variation on much of Psalm 73. What favorite Scripture passage can you take and re-imagine boldly and humanely and beautifully?

4. Be careful of demonizing the opposition: A weak spot in this story of tolerance and open-mindedness and love is the lack of tolerance and open-mindedness and love for "the enemy" that is the Charies (fundamentalist Charismatics). When you write your story, feel free to have enemies, but perhaps a character who gives insight to the enemy would be a good balance. Don't lessen a story's power by making snide, one-dimensional attacks on cultural groups you oppose. In this case, the humor aspect softened it. Humor allows for that. But if your story is serious, think twice before making the enemy just one big black wall of badness or lunacy or stupidity.

Please comment with your opinions on the story, on my analysis, on what else we can learn from it.

Feel free to answer any of the above questions? Also, does that bit of final dialogue bother you as it does me? How might it have been improved to suit the story and make sense doctrinally?

Next week: Another story comes under the Mircroscope.


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Subtle Fictional Christianity: What and Why?

Over the past few months of 2006, and in the recent cool discussion following (and including) Stuart's Tuesday post, I've come across repeated calls for subtler Christian speculative fiction. As I’ve read the discussions online, I'm starting to think I'm not at all clear on what is meant.

No, really. I'm not dumb. I'm just unsure if I'm reading into it rather than getting the true gist. Multiple "gists" may apply. If it means X certain things—I'm okay with those. If it means this other Y thing—it makes me want to tear heads off with my furious teeth. In sisterly Christian love, naturally. Ahem.

Does the use of "subtle" as an adjective mean:

1. Let's include more dealings of the daily experience of the Christian (or pseudo-fantasy Christian), not just throw in a whiz-bang "come to Jesus" moment.
2. Let's examine some of the more difficult aspects of our doctrines, such as the paradoxes, the mystery of grace, or the reconciling of regeneration in the new birth with continued sin in the daily life.
3. Let's not have preachers and church sermons and everyone sounding like a catechism. Let's just have people living out faith normally as they do the wash and date and eat shrimp scampi or fried Zeta Rigellian sandlizards.

Or is the meaning ...
4. Let's tone down that Christian stuff , keeping it so low-key, so courteously discreet, that maybe only Christians themselves would pick up on it. And maybe not even them.



Well, the first few possibilities are laudable. The last one ticks me off like you wouldn’t believe.

I ask, “You want non-obvious Christianity, Christianity that whispers and doesn't call attention to itself?"



All right.

Stick with the ABA SF houses and editors. The atheists and secular humanists and anti-Christians will be happy to provide readers with barely discernible to non-Christian stories. Christian-wary editors and agents will happily take your free-of-overt-religiosity work, if it's good and they think it will sell. Great writers populate the ABA SF. It's a bigger arena and they've been producing more and better SF than CBA publishers. They let you speculate big and bold. (But even they have their limits: Try writin a novel with an anti-homosexual premise or one that glorifies Patriarchy. See how far you get.)


But I'm writing for and targetting the CBA. A rough row to hoe, I do know, and not my first choice. I’m doing that after much prayer and hesitancy about it. The deciding factor was—is—that I am writing, and want to be able to write in future, stories of OBVIOUS faith.


I'm working with characters who have to deal with the spiritual, like it or not. There's obvoius and vigorous faith—and obvious and vigorous antipathy to faith, as well. Knowing I'm targeting CBA leaves me free to delve into deep aspects of religious experience—the process of apostasy, of repentance, the experience of conversion, the mysteries of the nature of Supreme Beingness, the riddles of prophecy—AND the subtler quotidian aspects: choosing to be hospitable out of love of God, a small act of mercy because it's the right thing to do. Or ever the daily events of a rougher world: a hurriedly whispered prayer while nursing an insane friend, or anointing a child sick with a new plague— believing that can make a difference—or refraining from killing an enemy out of obedience to sacred text, even when every part of you wants to run them through with a blade.

I can touch on doubt, on questions of what is right and wrong in difficult scenarios, on temptation resisted or given into, on sexual matters, on all sorts of things that we struggle with daily as believers in a hostile world. I may write stuff that is unplaceable—I know this—but I do not want to write a story where I have to rub out the spiritual component, the clearly Evangelical overlay.

Cause I'm an evangelical believer.

My WIP’s character is an apostate surviving in a society hostile to a certain sect of believers. Anyone who doesn't toe the government's line about acceptable religions is in deep doodoo. And my persecuted believers do have community and vibrant faith and, yes, miracles, and battling against spiritual and secular evil, and yes, crises of faith. Stuart has listed these as cliché or predictable items in Christian spec-fic. I consider them typical aspects of Christian life from ancient times to the present. I'm not surprised Christians will have it in their fiction. I'm not surprised I have it in mine.

If that is obvious, so be it. I'm gonna be obvious; because I'm tired of NOT seeing who I am reflected in speculative fiction.

I am a religious being. My day includes reading ancient and sacred texts that sometimes don't make sense, speaking to a higher being who sometimes seems not to be listening, and asking that higher being to act in my life and in my world, even when the world seems to deserve nothing but to be blown to bits by the Creator. I make hourly decisions on what I allow my mind to dwell on and weekly decisions on how I spend my money, always with an awareness of God’s expectations of me. Everything—EVERYTHING—is about right and wrong to a Christian. Everything is about loving God. What we war. Who we marry. How we treat strangers. How much we do or do not drink. Who we allow to be a bosom pal. What we teach our kids. How we treat our parents. How we face death. How we face taxes. For some, even the very food that goes into their mouths is a moral decision guided by love or fear of God. That’s part of my Christian daily life—constant self-examination and constant awe and constant analysis. It's not a closet religion for me. It's air and water.



It’s gonna show in my novel. How can it not?

I am a Christian.That is more important than being Cuban-born, than being an American citizen, than being female, than being a writer. I do not apologize for being Christian in my thoughts and speech and decisions and actions, even if I do apologize for failing my Lord in my gluttony and lust and coveting and self-centeredness and arrogance. I will not apologize if I make characters just like me. That is my reality and my truth.



And here is my big question of the day: Why should I or my fellow Christians have to be subtle?




Joanna Russ and Sheri Tepper and Ursula Le Guin and Margaret Atwood get heaps of praise: They aren't subtle about their feministic ideology being overt in what they write. (Or overt religion bashing on occasion.) Samuel Delany was not subtle in infusing his work with gay sexuality like his own sexual experiences. Other writers have not been subtle in their positions on consumerism or Darwinism or militarism or conservationsim or secular humanism or demanding space exploration. What they believe shows up on the page.



Why do Christians need to be subtle about Christianity?

Is it to not ruffle feathers? To be palatable.




This is a sore point with me. Some segments of our society vehemently want us to shut up and go pray in a closet and keep our beliefs to ourselves and out of the public square and voting booth—and even the artistic square. "Play nice. Don't talk about sin or salvation or hell. That's so judgmental and so cliche."



Christian fiction should not be quiet about what it is to be Christian.



Speculative Christian Fiction should not be ashamed to work in Christian elements freely and broadly.


I believe authors should be free to pursue subtle or overt religiosity as their creative impulses move them. I would examine it from a craft perspective: Did the faith aspects fit the milieu and tone and premise of their work and the nature of their characters? Was it entertaining and not just didactic? Was it well-written? It's all about the story working. If religion springs organically from characters and worlds and the author's mental and emotional fibers, and if the work's fashioned with attention to craft and artistic vision, I believe it will work, whether overt or subtle in matters of faith.



And sometimes I wonder if what we're critiquing is, at core, ineffective writing, but we're calling it something else—too much religion or too preachy or too allegorical.


I will stand firm on this: I think it's dangerously close to a form of bigotry to tell Christians to tone down their Christianity. And when Christians rally around this, I can't help but ask, "How come?"

I know there are good answers, clear answers. I'd like to hear them.



That doesn't change the feact that I'm sick of hearing how Narnia suffers artisticaly because it has blatant parallels to Christianity. Right, gimme a break.


Do we tell black authors to tone down their blackness? (I dare you to suggest such to Toni Morrison or Terri MacMillan.) Go and tell Hispanic best-serllers to bring down the level of their cultural references? (Yeah, like Sandra Cisneros and Julia Alvarez and Gabriel Garcia Marquez are gonna listen to that without snorting.) Tell gays to tone down the gay sexual perspective. (I'm ready to hear what Edmund White and Jeanette Winterson and Tony Kushner have to say to you when you do.) And please, tell me, would you have told Isaac Bashevis Singer or Bernard Malamud to stop with the blatant Jewish stuff? Maybe Faulkner and O'Connor were just to dang Southern.



Kushner and Morrison and Singer, in their works, are blatant about and what they believe and who they are: gay, black, Jewish. And they got awards for it—Tonys, Nobel prizes, etc.



Why should Lewis have been less Christian?

I think that's a good question to ask, for Lewis and for our current crop of Christian speculative authors.


I'm not a subtle Christian. I wear a cross jewelry often to declare what I believe, not just to be trendy. (I own several, from a delicate and pricey gold and amethyst one, to my silver and amber one, to my silver and turquoise one, to my "goth look" three-inch long studded cross, to my Celtic one.) I wear a chunky, tough, "I mean business" cross ring on my right hand when I'm in an "in your face" mode—usually after I hear someone say something about "those right wing nutjob Christians." I talk God. I sing God, I read God. I've worn buttons that had Bible verses. I've stood out in the street with an ABORTION KILLS CHILDREN signs, because I believe that we insult God by permitting it. I've marched in religious processions down urban streets, singing hymns to all who would listen. I may put a big Celtic cross in my yard next year, if I find a really big one that I like and a hurricane won't sweep into the Atlantic.



But—what?—I have to suddenly go all demure about what I believe when I write a novel? That bastion of self-expression and ideological exploration?

Maybe Dante should have written THE DIVINE COMEDY: A Nice Secularish Stroll Through Florentine Improvisational Comedy With No Relation To Heaven or Hell.



Maybe Milton should have written PARADISE LOST: How My Vacation in the Lake Country Went Awry And Satan Had Nothing WhatsoeverTo Do With It.

So, yeah, Lewis was better off just writing THE LION (who is not a Christ Figure) THE WITCH (who is politcally correctly good and has no connection to the devil) and THE WARDROBE (which has no offensive furs!): Aslan Lets Children Ride His Strong Back, The Witch Passes Out Turkish Delight That Does No Harm, and Then Everyone Goes Home To Tea Before an Obtrusive Christian Symbol can Rear Its Furry Head.



When I write Hispanic characters, I don't feel a need to hold back the Cuban aspects or the religious tapestry of the immigrant community I grew up in. When I write a female protagonist, I don't feel the need to quench my femaleness as I create her, and that may mean how she acts sexually and religiously as a woman. So, why am I asked to quench what is as much a part of me as my gender and my ethnicity when I write a spiritual character and world?



I'm really hoping there is a semantic discrepancy. I'm hoping what people—Christians— really want is better craft, stronger stories, more vivid and new worlds—not less overt faith.


So. . . What do YOU mean by SUBTLE Christian elements in Speculative Fiction? And why do you pursue it? And where am I just not getting this?





(Next week: What is Christian Speculative Fiction, anyway? Two Propositions and My Take On It.)


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