The Subversive World of Tolkien

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There's this huge ongoing effort to convince publishers over the course of many decades that anybody other than straight white men wants to buy and read fantasy and science fiction. And so she is, I read a piece in the Guardian from 2018, I think must have been part of the same like big 40th or yeah, because she'd passed in 2018. She has said that the Earthsea books, at least the first three are quote, a total complete bust as feminist literature. True. There's a long tour piece by Gabrielle Bellott about how Earthsea like features a like a brown skinned protagonist and white skinned antagonists. But it doesn't call attention to it. It just like

Would a rose by any other name smell as sweet? If you're a wizard of Earthsea, you can make it smell however you want if you know it's TRUE name. LeGuin's beloved fantasy novel is notable for how it plays both against and into common fantasy tropes, delivering a proper hero's journey without the same Sturm und Drang we've come to expect in the genre.

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